Film

“Why should you never make an agreement with me? Because of my retractable clause. Get it?”

Rated X

And now for something completely different …

Hugh Jackman—allegedly—says goodbye to Wolverine with Logan, a total shocker of a superhero movie that lays waste to the X-Men and standalone Wolverine movies that came before it. Director James Mangold, who piloted the decent The Wolverine, revamps the character’s mythos, and pulls along Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) for the gritty, bloody, nasty, awesome ride.

It’s the future, and the X-Men are gone. A mutant hasn’t been born in a quarter of a century, and Logan isn’t looking too hot. He’s driving a limo to make ends meet, coughing up blood, and basically not aging well.

He’s doing a lot better than Xavier, the mutant formally known as Professor X, who’s prone to seizures and suffering from some sort of degenerative brain disease. Logan has to keep him in a big empty tank to shield the world from his spells, which can cause major physical distress to those in the vicinity, including Logan. He’s assisted in caring for Xavier by Caliban (comedian Stephen Merchant), an albino mutant with mind powers.

In short, the days of X-Men glory are way, way over, with Logan and Xavier having a shit time in their autumn years.

Just when it seems as if the pair will waste away in their miserable existence, along comes Laura (a dynamite Dafne Keen). She’s a genetically engineered mutant equipped with the same retractable claws and viciously bad temper as Logan. When her life becomes endangered, Logan throws her and Xavier in the back of his vehicle, and they are off on one wild, dark road trip.

To say this movie is violent would be an understatement. On the heels of Deadpool and its R-rated success, Mangold and company have let the flesh and profanity rip with this one. Mangold brings some of his Western chops (He directed the 3:10

to Yuma remake.) to the proceedings, even making direct references to Shane. It’s remarkable the liberties he’s been allowed to take with an otherwise family-friendly franchise. People die hard in this one. Nobody sports any fancy uniforms. The action scenes are flawless, top-notch enterprises, a marvel of special effects and awards-worthy editing. There is a scene in this movie that is one of the best scenes I have ever seen in an action film. The sequence involves Xavier having an especially bad seizure. That’s all I’m going to give away. Believe me, you’ll know it when you see it. Jackman has always been a terrific Wolverine. Of all of the “superhero” performances through the years, he goes into the Hall of Fame with the likes of Reeve, Keaton, Bale and Downey, Jr. He’s all in for this picture, and he’s finally allowed to take Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine, to his most violent, sadistic extremes. There’s no holding back Logan with his work here. It’s a fitting conclusion to his run with the 12345 character. There’s a long way to go in the film year, but Stewart should already Director: James Mangold be getting some Oscar buzz for his Starring: Hugh Jackman, turn in this movie. While Jackman Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen takes Wolverine to an extreme some of us geeks might expect, Stewart is allowed to explore the sad, broken side of Xavier, and it’s absolutely heartbreaking. He honestly has some of the greatest moments of his career in this film, and the same can most certainly be said for Jackman. All elements of this movie are Grade A spectacular, and we’ll just make the call right now. Logan is one of the very best comic book films ever made, and if you were to call it the all-time best, you probably wouldn’t be met with much opposition. It’s an example of a great idea delivered with stupendous results. So, it’s only March, and the last two weeks have given us Get Out and Logan. The movie year is off to one of its better starts in many years. As for the X-Men franchise, it’s doubtful the accomplishments of Logan will ever be topped, but it will be interesting to see somebody try. Ω

4Get Out Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young AfricanAmerican man, is a little nervous. He’s going to visit the parents of Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), his white girlfriend. Rose is relaxed about the trip, but Chris is anxious. His anxiety proves justified shortly into the trip. Upon arrival at her large estate, her parents like Chris. They really, really like Chris. Actually, parents Missy and Dean (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford) like Chris at a level that’s a bit unsettling. Chris shrugs it off at first, as does Allison, but strange things start happening. Writer-director Jordan Peele, the comedic performer from TV’s Key&Peele, and the adorable, funny cat movie Keanu, delivers a huge cinematic surprise with GetOut, a twisted, darkly satiric, nasty little horror film that pulls no punches when it comes to race relations and dating. Peele has cited Nightof theLivingDeadand TheStepfordWivesas inspiration for this journey to the dark side of his creative soul. Those films’ influences are detectable, and I’d say you could throw in a pinch of Rosemary’sBabywith a side of BeingJohn Malkovichas well. Two of the hardest things to accomplish with a movie are to make people laugh and get them legitimately scared. GetOut manages to do both for its entire running time. Peele takes taboo subjects and stereotypes and doesn’t let his pen get restricted by fear of offending anybody. This is an appropriately evil, scabrous movie.

1The Great Wall Matt Damon stars in this mess, and this may very well represent the low point of his career, a career that has included the atrocious JasonBourneand Hereafter. He probably thought he was in safe hands because TheGreatWallis helmed by director Zang Yimou, maker of such masterpieces as Hero, HouseofFlyingDaggersand—one of my very favorite movies—TheRoadHome. Damon was probably all like, “Hey, Yimou is calling the shots. If anything, I’m going to look good in this pic!” Then … he saw his wardrobe. A wardrobe that begins with big furry wigs and beards, and then declines into a sad man-bun wig as the film progresses. He looks silly from frame one. He sounds silly, too. He’s attempting some sort of accent here, a cross between Irish, Scottish and just plain dickweed. Every time he talks in this movie, it hurts the ears and the soul—especially the souls of those who love Matt Damon. It’s all in the service of a wannabe period epic about non-distinctive, stupidlooking CGI monsters attacking China’s Great Wall, with Damon’s character being the savior with a bow. It’s a meandering, dull, ugly waste of everybody’s time.

4Hidden Figures Katherine Johnson was part of a segregated division at NASA in the ’50s, a wing of mathematicians who did the work that computers do today. HiddenFiguresdepicts the humiliation she and two other historical African-American figures, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, went through while solving equations that helped put men safely into space. The women had to put up with a lot of racist bullshit, and the film shows their hardships, albeit in PG fashion. Taraji P. Henson plays Johnson, the “smart one” astronaut John Glenn personally demanded check the coordinates before his historical flight launched. Octavia Spencer is her usual great self as Vaughan, doing the work of a supervisor without the title and curious about that new IBM thing they just installed down the hall. Vaughan would become crucial to the implementation of computers at NASA, as well as being the agency’s first African-American supervisor. As Jackson, NASA’s first female African-American aeronautical engineer, singer Janelle Monae is so good, it’s easy to forget that this is just her second movie role. As a composite, fictional character named Al Harrison, Kevin Costner does some of his best acting in years.

5La La Land This is an all new, original musical from director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) that’s surprisingly low on melodrama while full of vibrancy, beautiful tunes, outstanding set pieces and a stunning sense of realism for a movie where the characters bust out singing. It’s the best original movie musical ever made. The story follows wannabe actress Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz composer Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) as they try to make it in crazy Los Angeles. They meet, they don’t like each other much at first, but then they fall in love, which provides Chazelle and his performers ample opportunities for musical numbers that surprise at every turn. This solidifies Gosling as one of the best actors of his generation. Stone doesn’t just make her mark with a beautiful voice and expert footwork—she embodies the character trying to “make it” in the business.

4The Lego Batman Movie This is the great Batman story that BatmanvSupermanfailed to be. Even better, it has Will Arnett voicing Batman with a new, super amped, still dark, but amazingly well rounded and sometimes humorous incarnation. After all these years of dark—and admittedly sometimes brilliant—Batman movies, it’s nice to have a vehicle where we can just have fun with the character. Director Chris McKay, along with a long list of writers, has come up with a story that will please adult Batman fans as much as the kids who will most assuredly be dropped off at the local Cineplex to watch a movie while parents catch a break from the little mayhem makers. Arnett’s Batman not only faces off against the Joker (a very funny Zach Galifianakis), but finds himself in a scenario where he’s battling a smorgasbord of movie villains including King Kong, the Gremlins, Dracula, evil British robots and Voldemort (Eddie Izzard), to name just a few. It’s a nutty plot element that also allows for Batman mainstays like Bane, Two-Face (Billy Dee Williams, who was Harvey Dent in Tim Burton’s Batman) and the Riddler (Conan O’Brien!) to get in on the act. It’s a geek fest, a movie lover’s delight that has a funny little trivia bit at nearly every turn, and an emotional center.

4Split Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has finally made his first good movie since Signs(2002) with Split, a down-to-thebasics, creepy thriller propelled by excellent performances from James McAvoy and Anya Taylor-Joy (TheWitch). The film reminds us that Shyamalan can be a capable director and writer when he’s not getting too carried away. Taylor-Joy plays Casey, a high school outcast who attends a birthday party but soon finds herself and two classmates imprisoned by a strange man with multiple personalities (McAvoy). In addition to the angry man who kidnaps them, he’s also a stately, mannered woman, a 9-year-old child and, well, a few others. One of those other personalities plays a big part in taking the film into other realms beyond psychological thriller. McAvoy goes nuts with the role, and Shyamalan takes things into supernatural territories in a chilling climax. Taylor-Joy is quickly becoming the new scream queen, and McAvoy’s work will surely stand as one of the year’s most fun performances.

3XX Four women direct short films in this horror anthology. Most notably, Annie Clark of the band St. Vincent makes her film directorial debut with a segment called “The Birthday Party,” where a frantic mom (Melanie Lynskey) panics when she finds a corpse just before her child’s birthday. The segment looks great, is acted well, and features some great sound and St. Vincent music. As a piece of horror, it’s a bit of a failure—it’s more jokey than horror—but the segment does show that Clark can direct performances and pull together the technical parts. It’s just not scary. Things get creepier in an EvilDeadsort of way with “Don’t Fall,” where some desert campers come into contact with demonic forces after seeing some sketches on a stone wall. The other segments, “The Gift” and “Her Only Living Son,” deal with starvation, parenthood and the antichrist. Available for download rental during limited theatrical release.