Logan (5/5 Stars)

The resiliency of comic book franchises rests on the enormous wealth of material that subsequent installments of the franchise may draw upon. Whereas a franchise made originally for the screen like a Rambo or a Die Hard often face a narrowness of choice (in chronological order and with bigger explosions), something like the X-Men franchise has an extraordinary versatility in the types and time periods in which the story-lines take place.

After three movies that took place in the early 2000s (X-Men in 2000, X2 in 2003, and X-Men: the Last Stand in 2006), the next movie took place in the 1960s (X-Men: First Class), another one simultaneously in the 1970s and the apocalyptic future (X-Men: Days of Future Past), another in the 1980s (X-Men: Apocalypse) and two Wolverine centered movies (X-Men: Origins Wolverine, I think in the 1980s and The Wolverine (set in 2010s Japan).

Now we have Logan, which is set in the future in 2029. Logan, like all the others, is based in part on a comic book. Like all the others, it does not feel like the intuitive choice for the next movie in a franchise (i.e. in chronological order and with bigger explosions). It’s tone and style is very different, more Western than Superhero blockbuster, which says much about the incredible diversity in X-Men literature. I’m sure there are nerds out there fretting what the presence of “Logan” does to the canonical X-Men Universe. These movies don’t always fit together. (In fact, I think because of the time paradoxes of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the events of the third movie X-Men: The Last Stand has now officially never happened.) Who knows what the installment of “Logan” will do to the status of the overall story, given that it is particularly dark and according to its plot, all the mutant X-Men are dead.

What is left in the dusty world of bleak 2029 is an aged Wolverine who is slowly losing his powers of indestructible healing, a now dangerously senile Charles Xavier (played again by his old counterpart Patrick Stewart), and their albino housekeeper named Caliban (played by the comedian Stephen Merchant.) They live right across the Mexican border on a dusty farm. Charles is being housed in a giant steel tank and takes knock-out medicine. His mind is too powerful and unstable to focus. Technically the government now considers it to be a weapon of mass destruction.

Everything is bad and then it gets worse. Logan is found by a nurse who has absconded with a child that was created with mutant powers by an evil corporation with the evil intent of patenting the mutating genes. She asks Logan for help, Logan is reluctant to help, Logan reluctantly helps, and many people die in the aftermath.

“Logan” is a great movie masquerading as a comic book blockbuster. It directly reminded me of the Christopher Nolan “Batman” movies in style and tone. There seems to be almost no digital effects. Everything is down to earth and gritty. The movie was written and directed by James Mangold who has shown before the ability to not confuse spectacle with drama (“3:10 to Yuma,” “The Wolverine”).

Hugh Jackman, as Wolverine, puts in his best performance out of the now nine times he has played the character. He also has never looked so much like Wolverine. Patrick Stewart makes a great case for why a man of his dramatic talent should be in a superhero movie at all. Stephen Merchant, best known for being a comedian, is an inspired choice of casting for the dramatic role he plays. And then there is Daphne Keen who puts in a performance that should not be possible given her age. I feel like I need to see a documentary in the quiet revolution of child performances in the past twenty years that make something like Ms. Keen possible. For those of us who remember Macauley Kulkin being the best child performer of his time, it is a revelation to see children pull off the myriad of great performances in “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Looper,” and now “Logan.”

Over the soundtrack the sound of old Johnny Cash plays. It is a fitting end for a great character.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (5/5 Stars)

The Great 20^th Century Mythos

X-Men: Days of Future Past is the seventh X-Men film and like nobody has ever said before, the sevent movie finds the series really hitting its stride. It is made special not only because on its own particulars but also because it feeds off the goodwill of several previous good films and because it seems to completely ignore (as if it didn’t even exist) the worst movie in the series, “X-Men: The Last Stand.” I actually wrote a review for X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. Here is what I wrote then, “This movie, the third installment of the X-Men series, literally killed the franchise. I mean seriously, everyone's dead.”

What an astute observation, Max, because in that movie several very main characters died amongst them Cyclops, Jean Gray, and Professor Xavier. So many died in fact that the next several movies either focused solely on Wolverine while he was not part of the X-Men or took a trip back in time to when everybody was still alive. Now ten years after that fateful movie, Bryan Singer, the original director of the very good first two X-Men films, has presented the audience with a bit of revisionist history. “Days of Future Past,” simply pretends that “The Last Stand” never took place. There is Professor Xavier still alive and breathing as if he wasn’t torn to a million pieces ten years ago. Does anybody care? The answer: a resounding no. “The Last Stand” has faded like the general multitude of inferior movies into the world’s collective amnesia unmourned. This is a hopeful thing. I think we can all think of a couple of movies in our favorite series that were just plain bad and should never have existed in the first place. And now “The Last Stand,” doesn’t. Thank you Bryan Singer.

The Last Stand’s inferiority stemmed from its assembly line of mutants and lack of depth. It had plenty of special effects but had no moral weight. It broke the promise of the X-Men series made when Bryan Singer decided to open the first X-Men movie in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Magneto, as a young child, realizes his powers for the first time at the moment his parents are taken away to the gas chambers. He reaches out to his parents and the metal concentration camp gates between them twist and bend to his budding mutant power of magnetism.  That scene is strong serious stuff and it is also acts a promise that the following movies will be good enough to deserve such drama because if they turn out to not be very good movies it is a dishonor to the memory of the Holocaust.

“Days of Future Past” makes good on that promise. That even though it is a action blockbuster with plenty of special effects and extraordinary mutant powers, it is also a sober metaphor for intolerance whether it be racial, religious, or class. The mutants are beset with persecution by the outside world for their differences. They are viewed as dangerous threats to humanity. Professor Xavier, in a wheelchair like FDR, has a mentality of Martin Luther King Jr. and works pragmatically to heal the divisiveness of the world. Magneto, using terms that parallel Malcolm X, speaks of doing whatever is necessary to achieve protection for mutants even if that means violence with humans. Mutants line up on either side, some attending and teaching at Professor X’s academy and others arming themselves and joining Magneto’s army. Take away all the boyish dazzle of a comic book blockbuster and you have a great 20^th century mythos tackling the most important questions of the last 100 years. How do we live peacefully with people who are different from us?

Of course this is a boyish comic book blockbuster so we also get to have lots of fun as well. There are outlandish spectacles based on mutant powers, big action pieces, and at least one Nixon impersonator. But at its heart ‘X-Men’ is great because it is a series that focuses on character. The mutations work like all great science fiction as an exploration into what regular people would do faced with extraordinary decisions. A person has character and now they are presented with these powers usually upon puberty that expose them to a hostile world. Almost none of the powers are welcomed. In the first movie, Rogue realized her mutant power of power absorption by almost killing her boyfriend with a kiss. Wolverine’s power of regeneration basically makes him immortal, not necessarily a good thing.

Because the characters are so strong and the movie is so big, we are treated to some of the best actors in the world all in the same movie. The movie covers two time periods. One in the future where a Sentinel army with mutant powers are covering the world in epic darkness and one in the past (1973) when the events that brought on the bleak future come to pass. This actually brings together the cast from the first two X-Men movies and the last X-Men movie that took place in 1963. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, giants of great dramatic parts, are the elderly Professor X and Magneto now facing extinction and united in remorse of past choices. With the help of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) they send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to the past to stop an assination. It has to be Wolverine because he is the only one that could survive such a trip. His mission is to pull together the young Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) at a time when could not have been further apart to stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating a scientist named Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) whose work would lead to the Sentinels.

Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Peter Dinklage are some of the most interesting actors to watch on screen for the past five years. They exude screen presence, i.e. the ability to draw your eyes to their part of the screen by simply being there. Mystique larger role in the story comes from perhaps the rising star of Jennifer Lawrence in general who has become in recent years the largest female star in Hollywood not only by being annually nominated for Oscars (winning one) but also by being a box office heavyweight with the “Hunger Games” series. Perhaps no actress since Sigourney Weaver in the 1980s had this kind of streak and I’m pretty sure it is okay to say Jennifer Lawrence has eclipsed even that example. Unlike many other actresses that have their day and fade away, J-Rentz has a dangerous edge to her. In fact, I don’t remember the last time she played someone who wasn’t desperate or veering off in some wild direction. Like Meryl Streep, she seems to have monopolized most of the great roles in her age group and some outside of it. Her normal state is a skin of blue scales, cat eyes, and wild red hair. Her mutant power is her ability to transform into the likeness of anyone she sees. This makes her perfect for anarchy and at heart Mystique is an anarchist.  

One last thing needs to be about Peter Dinklage but not necessarily about him. Peter Dinklage is a little person but is in this movie playing a character that was not a little person in the comic books. That is to say, the part did not call for a little person to play it but Peter Dinklage got the part anyway. Moreover, upon the presence of the Peter Dinklage in the movie there is not the ubiquitous quip or joke or surprised reaction of another character that generally coincides with the presence of a little person in a movie. Peter Dinklage is simply in this movie as this character, period. As far as I know, that is the first time it has ever happened in a movie before. I remember watching the DVD commentary of the “Manchurian Candidate.” The director, John Frankenheimer, was especially proud of this army psychiatrist that was not written as a black person, but for which he decided to cast a black person in the role anyway. Nobody in the movie pays any attention to the man’s race. Frankenheimer said he was proud because never in a Hollywood movie had a black person been cast in a role that wasn’t specifically black. I think Bryan Singer can be proud of casting Peter Dinklage and yes it fits perfectly into the X-Men mythos of tolerance for those of us who are different. 

X-Men: The Last Stand 05/27/06

This movie, the third installment of the X-Men series, literally killed the franchise. I mean seriously, everyone's dead. LIke most characters in today's blockbusters, they are the victims of great special effects. This movie has some of the best visuals one will ever see, but I don't know about you, I seriously couldn't give a shit about landscapes. That's why I didn't paticularly like Brokeback Mountain and that's why I can't give this one a passing grade either.
They call it X-Men but what they should call it is a freak show. This movie suffered like I thought it would in the absence of Bryan Singer, the director of the first two movies. I don't know who directed this one but he didn't much care about the characters. (Rogue has about 3 scenes, Cyclops dies in the first ten minutes, Pyro is incredibly one dimensional) Any identification with any of them comes predominantly from the first two movies in the series, in fact if I hadn't seen the first two already I don't think I would have the slightest idea what was going on in this one. This movie is a roll call for special effects. Since the effects are mutants, the characters basically show up on screen, give us a show, and then leave. Just like the circus. 
It also is a bad sign when the most effective line in the movie is a ripoff of Shakespeare and the funniest line is an expletive. This movie suffers from the disease called no-more-than-two-syllables-in-a-conversation syndrome. Talk about dumb downed for mass appeal.
Another thing I'll say before I stop complaining. Remember how I said alot of people died. Well most of them are shredded into many many pieces. Kids should definetely not see this movie, and it really should have been rated R. 
Two years ago after seeing the horrible Men in Black II, I promised myself, no more sequels. Why oh why do I betray myself so readily