Skip to main content
Tag

jon favreau

Review: Cowboys & Aliens

By Cinema and Reviews

Cowboys & Aliens posterDue to a parade of won­der­ful Film Festival screen­ings your cor­res­pond­ent was only able to get to one of this week’s new releases (and, thanks to the Empire’s fail­ure to open on Sunday morn­ing nearly didn’t make that one) so Glee: the 3D Concert Movie and rom-com Something Borrowed will have to wait until next week’s column. I’m sure you are breath­less with anti­cip­a­tion. But this means that Cowboys & AliensJon Favreau’s third com­ic book adapt­a­tion in a row after Iron Man 1 and 2 – gets the full review treat­ment. Does it deserve it? We shall see.

The scene is fron­ti­er New Mexico between the end of the Civil War and the arrival of the rail­road. A tiny little town, built for a gold rush that nev­er mater­i­al­ised, is only kept alive because of grumpy Harrison Ford’s cattle busi­ness. In the desert out­skirts Daniel Craig wakes up with amne­sia, a strange met­al brace­let and an abil­ity with unarmed com­bat that soon scores him a horse, a gun and a dog.

Read More

Review: Iron Man 2, Home by Christmas and Dear John

By Cinema and Reviews

Iron Man 2 posterOh dear, what a dis­ap­point­ment 90% of Iron Man 2 is. Rushed into pro­duc­tion after the ori­gin­al became the sur­prise run­away hit of 2008, rely­ing far too heav­ily on the dead­pan cha­risma of a coast­ing Robert Downey Jr. – the first time I’ve ever seen him this dis­en­gaged – and with a story that does no more than tread water until the arrival of the inev­it­able epis­ode 3, IM2 offers very little in the way of char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and not enough action to compensate.

Downey Jr is Tony Stark once again, milk­ing his fame as saviour of the free world while the secret power source in his chaest that fuels Iron Man (and keeps him alive) slowly pois­ons him from with­in. Just when he doesn’t need an adversary, along comes a crazy Russian physicist/wrestler named Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) look­ing for revenge on the Stark fam­ily who stole his father’s research. Vanko’s tech­no­logy is co-opted by Stark’s greatest busi­ness com­pet­it­or, weapons developer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) and between them they attempt to des­troy Stark and corner the mar­ket in high-tech mil­it­ary gadgetry.

Read More