TheRetroCritic

The film that started it all... kind of. Jon Favreau's Iron Man was really the moment where Marvel revealed to the world their mad intentions of putting together crossover mega-movie  The Avengers . As we all know, they pulled it off remarkably but it could have all gone pear-shaped super early. I mean, with the likes of Captain America and Thor it wasn't going to be a walk in the park to make each character and their far-fetched stories plausible, let alone cram everybody into one movie. But Iron Man showed early on that you can make a silly superhero flick without screwing it up, creating a movie that, even to this day, is simply a lot of fun. Robert Downey Jr is genius billionaire douchebag Tony Stark, who is made to face the reality of his misguided work directly and henceforth grow a conscience. The entire movie is one big build-up to the creation of that badass armored suit with some cool action scenes and a last-minute villain thrown in for good measure. Because

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