TheRetroCritic

Cowboys & Aliens may still be fresh in our minds but that doesn't mean we should NOT have another movie with cowboys and aliens, right? ...right? Come on, you know those two things kick ass and you know you want it... again. That's how John Carter begins: like a moody old western complete with saloons, the cavalry, feather-wearing native Americans and Sergio Leone-style swagger. "Beans: beans is the first item..." "My name is Carter. John Carter." Cut to: MAGIC! Shazam! WHOOSH! Mars. Fair enough. I mean there's no need for Disney to screw around with horses and sarsaparilla and shit when you can just beam to Mars! So anyway, Mars looks great. It's like CGI heaven but the effects are actually awesome. Like Avatar awesome. You've got these kinda gross-looking green guys with four arms, their even grosser-looking babies, some bulldog-type fast-as-shit mutt and loads more goodies. The Mars humans, on the other hand, are

You'd think with a film called Cowboys & Aliens there'd be very little room to mess things up. I mean, how much more straight-forward can you get? Just get some cowboys, a bunch of aliens...voila! And yet Cowboys & Aliens doesn't quite get there... Now don't get me wrong: it's a decent film and I really enjoyed it. But alas it falls just short, like all the other summer blockbusters we were treated to this year, of being actually awesome. Which is pretty frustrating as, much like Super 8 and Horrible Bosses , they had the material and everything served up to them on a plate. All they had to do was not spill anything! Here's the thing, it's really quite simple: if you're going for something purely retro like an 80's Spielberg flick or a cowboy sci-fi in the style of Westworld it's your DUTY as a filmmaker to leave the CGI out of it as much as you can. Yes stop-motion monsters can look animated but so does CGI and at the very least

Uwe Boll has been branded as the new Ed Wood by many critics and I've never really seen the similarities apart from the fact they both made bad, silly films...until I saw Bloodrayne 2. Ed Wood mixed genres like monster movies, sci-fi B movies and film noir together in the hope of creating something fresh and original and, as time as shown, he was succesful. Here Boll mixes spaghetti western with comedy, vampire horror and...video games. The result: vintage Uwe. Whereas the first Bloodrayne boasted a good cast, lots of silliness and a lot of boredom, here we have pretty much no relation to the games, no big names and lots of silliness once again but...it does have vampire cowboys. And after robot cowboys (see Westworld ) this is pretty much the best thing I've ever heard. Don't get me wrong: it's rubbish. But as a bad movie this one can be enjoyed on the same level as a good old-fashioned Ed Wood. It's stupid but proudly so and Boll clearly has fun cloning En