Quantum Cowboys

"Quantum Cowboys" is the most creative film I've seen in a while, maybe since "Fantasia" or "Rumble Fish." While it's clearly fiction, it's also unclearly truth.

I actually put down my phone while watching because I didn't want to get lost. Background: earlier today, I navigated my way along backroads, passing wild turkeys, beds of irises, fields of yellow wildflowers, donkeys, vultures, and other large birds, driving more than 100 miles, taking unplanned turns on roads named Blackberry, Bobtail, and Elder, yet still arriving at my destinations.

The point is: the movie resembled my day. It also budged my perspective, which recently has been stuck in an existential rut. I've been spending a lot of time on my phone playing "Cat Physics," complete with its wormholes, levers and tiny tinkerings, trying to pass a ball from one cat to the other, time after time again. I've also been trying to wrap my head around quantum mechanics and time travel because I haven't been delighted with the current trajectory of the future.

Back to this review: the film was a surprise mashup of live action, animation, space, and time. I loved it in my darkened living room, and I would love to see it again on a giant theater-screen.

As an artist myself, a painter specifically, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie as a moving, literally and figuratively speaking, flowering of rich, unique, and varied animated imagery. I will include "Cosmic Cowboys" in my own personal curatorial list of works I find particularly insightful, entertaining, and strangely relevant in a world hellbent on violence and destruction. Regarding relevance or the question of why this movie is of our present time, the movie offers Hope, at least, a hint that we are not totally powerless and without agency, that we have the ability to peer beyond an authoritarian materialism, and that our mere observation, our particular focus, can indeed affect future events.

David Kwiecinski, Hatch,NM. 2023.

QUANTUM COWBOYS is a very challenging film yet so much fun to watch, talk about with your friends afterwards, speculate and theorize about. This movie takes such huge and ambitious swings intellectually and visually there is no way you can't applaud it. Director/writer Geoff Marslett is a true mad scientist of a filmmaker with a wild imagination.

The cast and performances are captivating. It's so easy to fall in love with the trio of Lily Gladstone, Kiowa Gordon and John Way. David Arquette and Frank Mosley as Colfax and DePew really daw you in and help bring even more scope and layers to the story. The rest of the supporting cast bring so much life, fun and intrigue. I cant believe French New Wave icon, ANNA KARINA is this movie!!!

I want all the sequels/spinoffs to QUANTUM COWBOYS so definitely tell your friends about this and check it out!

Super blend of animation that is fascinating to watch. Interesting and engaging from start to finish. Great and wacky cast. Strap in for this wild ride. Lily Gladstone anchors the cast along with some very strong supporting performances. Love the connection between the multiverses and the styles of animation. Who could imagine a cast that includes Kiowa Gordon, David Arquette, John Doe and Alex Cox. Add in Gary Farmer and Neko Case and John Way and you have as many acting styles as animation styles. The original music by Neko Case and Howe Gelb is great. This film really pushes into creative story telling and was super enjoyed it.

I did not expect to like this movie and i was more than pleasantly surprised& impressed. I had the opportunity to see this at AFF23 and you never know with indie films (especially westerns set in the past, present, and future) Not to get too religious, but I lowercase-b believe we live in a matrix & this movie shook hands with my already held ideas about life & the universe+ time and space. I can't wait to watch this again when it is available to screen at home for hidden treasures. Please also make more of this content for me to consume & absorb. I will buy mercy, share with my friends and family and anyone who will listen. I will make memes for Reddit. I will make tiktok videos with the characters. It will make everyone involved a lot of money.