Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig star in genre mash up Cowboys and Aliens a big budget little brain Hollywood travaganza. Wanted criminal awakes in the desert with an natty wrist band but no recent memories, on wandering into a nearby town the truculent hero finds himself defending it with his newly acquired bangle & soon begins a cliche riven quest against the alien visitors. It's not terrible just depressingly formulaic and despite the insertion of some "wit" and the aforementioned actor heavyweights it never shakes off it's paper thin plotting and reliance on gaudy special effects. It gave me the distinct impression of being built around the title, probably pitched at some meeting of awful, facile minds. Sigh.
Scifi is big business in Japan so it's quite surprising they've produced so few live action space operas. Space Battleship Yamato aims to rectify this with a tale of a ruined Earth besieged by a powerful alien race, only one ship survives and begins a epic journey in search of some alien tech that might help turn the tables. Based on a cherished anime series the film is stuffed with predictably cartoonish characters and a shed load of CGI and SFX to wash it all down with. I dunno somehow the I'm more willing to accept Japanese cheese than Amurican maybe it's their innocence or naivete that makes it palatable but anyways it's a decent enough watch and certainly didn't depress me as much as Cowboys and A's . Maybe if I'd seen the original anime I might have enjoyed it more. It's big glossy fun I guess but boy is it dumb.
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