Logan
Dir. James Mangold
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After 17 years and 8 movies in the X-Men franchise, Hugh Jackman's (apparently) final outing as Wolverine pulls no punches - other than literal ones of course. Thanks to the smash success of Fox's R-Rated superhero gamble last year with Deadpool, James Mangold was for once able to make the Wolverine movie fans have waited for; no longer subjugated to PG-13 bloodless battle sequences, we finally get to see the realistically gory consequences of a furious man with 8-inch metal blades sticking out of his fists. Luckily, though, Logan isn't just an excuse for mindless violence - it's also a well-conceived family drama, a dark sci-fi western, a tragic elegy on mortality, and an overall great send-off for an iconic character.
The story is set in the near future of 2029, in a timeline where no new mutants have been born for 25 years. Old man Logan (Hugh Jackman) is now thanklessly working as a limo driver to make ends meet and to help care for a dying Professor X (Patrick Stewart). They both live off the grid in an abandoned desert silo, and they're both getting older and unable to control their powers. Wolverine's healing powers are failing him, leaving him scarred all over (there's one cringe-inducing scene in which he forcibly pulls out a stuck blade in his hand), and Prof. X's unstable mind can only be controlled through an illegal drug that Logan has to smuggle. Shortly, they're drawn into a conflict between a shady scientific organization, Transigen, and their runaway experiment X-23, a little girl otherwise known as Laura (Dafne Keen). Soon they're all on the run from Transigen, led by a robotic-armed baddie, Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook). The film then turns into a kind of "road trip" movie, with these three making for one strange family unit.
Just as much inspired by comic books as old westerns, Logan makes explicit references to Shane, which appropriately is about a gunfighter whose attempt to settle down leads to tragedy. Although the promise of slicing and dicing is what probably got butts in seats, the dysfunctional family dynamic between the three leads is what makes this movie shine. Jackman and Stewart's mutual resentment and reliance on each other is the sort of thing that could only have been built on 17 years of X-Men films to draw from. You can tell underneath their gruff exteriors there's a deep familial love between them. Laura is the final piece in their family; her silent brooding and ferocious energy is reminiscent of a young Wolverine and her character keeps the film from wallowing in old man misery. I don't know where the casting department found this girl, but she is incredible in the role - her action-heavy, nearly wordless performance holds up against Hugh freaking Jackman and to me is as revelatory a "find" as Millie Bobby Brown from Netflix's Stranger Things.
Deadpool may have led the way for mainstreaming R-rated superhero movies, but Logan is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. It's not cynically playful or quippy with a cute Stan Lee cameo, it's a heavy, brutal, adult tragedy where kindness is seemingly always punished. Although the story eventually deteriorates into repetitive hack-and-slash action, and the villains feels pretty "stock" (one henchman in particular suffered from being a typical action movie cliche I won't spoil), there's still so much cinematic goodness to love here. With its rich characters, exciting action, and emotional pay-offs, Logan is possibly the best X-Men film to date.
Rating: B+
Kong: Skull Island
Dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts
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Although the main draw of the King Kong franchise has usually been the special effects, one of the reasons I think the films endure is because they always have some kind of "message" behind them. The 1933 original can be seen as a commentary on imperialism and racism (though in reality it was probably more of a perpetuator of negative stereotypes), and the 1976 remake was a kind of protest against oil companies. Kong: Skull Island contributes to the "thoughtful" giant monkey subgenre of film by making an anti-war tale set during the Vietnam War era. Similar to that conflict, here we have a band of American military men going into the jungles of a foreign land and causing an unnecessary ruckus. However, despite its loose, mostly aesthetic relations to Apocalypse Now, Skull Island is ultimately just another mindless, b-movie monster mash like Godzilla (2014) or Jurassic World.
Skull Island, like Peter Jackson's King Kong, is a period piece. Set in 1973, the story follows a team organized by Bill Randa (John Goodman), a member of the shadowy Monarch organization who believes there might be something valuable on an uncharted island off the pacific. His military escort is Samuel L. "MF-ing" Jackson, who's a war hawk that doesn't give an "F" at the prospect of dropping seismic charges around the island to scan for resources (hmm... I wonder if that idea will backfire?). As soon as they drop the charges, the movie more or less becomes one long mindlessly cool-looking drone to the finish line as Kong awakens and promptly starts beating the hell out of everything he sees.
That being said - the aforementioned "beating" is really well done. The many creatures found on Skull Island are Guillermo del Toro-level cool; they often casually blend into the environment so the characters - and the audience - don't even know everyone is surrounded until it's too late. Kong himself is also bigger than he's ever been (mostly to compensate for the future Godzilla vs. Kong movie set to release in 2020) - unlike previous Kongs this guy wouldn't be shot down by any dinky planes. The film is also shot with a frenzied, hyper-colorful comic book style that at once energized the film and also made me feel a little uncomfortable due to its themes of war. In a way, Skull Island romanticizes the aesthetic of the Vietnam War in the same way that La La Land lovingly recreated the "feel" of 1950s musicals; it's a bizarre choice and one I'm still not sure how to feel about.
I'm not going to lie: watching a giant ape punch a giant lizard in the face is a thrilling prospect. Kong: Skull Island knows exactly what it is and totally delivers on its mammoth-proportioned creature clashes. But if you wanted something a little more than paper-thin archetypes helplessly running around clearly digitized monster battles, you may be a bit let down - especially considering its A-list cast (including such wasted talent as Brie Larson and Tom Hiddleston). While it had its flaws, at least Peter Jackson's Kong attempted to wring out some human emotions out of its b-movie plot and characters. Here you'll only find gorilla warfare.
Skull Island, like Peter Jackson's King Kong, is a period piece. Set in 1973, the story follows a team organized by Bill Randa (John Goodman), a member of the shadowy Monarch organization who believes there might be something valuable on an uncharted island off the pacific. His military escort is Samuel L. "MF-ing" Jackson, who's a war hawk that doesn't give an "F" at the prospect of dropping seismic charges around the island to scan for resources (hmm... I wonder if that idea will backfire?). As soon as they drop the charges, the movie more or less becomes one long mindlessly cool-looking drone to the finish line as Kong awakens and promptly starts beating the hell out of everything he sees.
That being said - the aforementioned "beating" is really well done. The many creatures found on Skull Island are Guillermo del Toro-level cool; they often casually blend into the environment so the characters - and the audience - don't even know everyone is surrounded until it's too late. Kong himself is also bigger than he's ever been (mostly to compensate for the future Godzilla vs. Kong movie set to release in 2020) - unlike previous Kongs this guy wouldn't be shot down by any dinky planes. The film is also shot with a frenzied, hyper-colorful comic book style that at once energized the film and also made me feel a little uncomfortable due to its themes of war. In a way, Skull Island romanticizes the aesthetic of the Vietnam War in the same way that La La Land lovingly recreated the "feel" of 1950s musicals; it's a bizarre choice and one I'm still not sure how to feel about.
I'm not going to lie: watching a giant ape punch a giant lizard in the face is a thrilling prospect. Kong: Skull Island knows exactly what it is and totally delivers on its mammoth-proportioned creature clashes. But if you wanted something a little more than paper-thin archetypes helplessly running around clearly digitized monster battles, you may be a bit let down - especially considering its A-list cast (including such wasted talent as Brie Larson and Tom Hiddleston). While it had its flaws, at least Peter Jackson's Kong attempted to wring out some human emotions out of its b-movie plot and characters. Here you'll only find gorilla warfare.
Rating: B-
The Red Turtle
Dir. Michaël Dudok de Wit
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Nominee at this past Oscars, The Red Turtle is an ambitious project produced in part by the legendary Japanese animation outfit, Studio Ghibli. Aside from a few grunts and screams, the film tells its Robinson Crusoe-inspired story completely without dialogue, in purely cinematic terms. It follows a nameless man who Cast Aways on the shore of an island, where he struggles to survive for a number of years. During this time, his attempts to build a raft and sail it to safety are consistently thwarted by the titular "red turtle." I don't want to give more away, but by its midway point, the film takes a dramatic turn away from its mostly realistic, survivalist narrative and turns into a kind of semi-Biblical spiritual journey. I thought the first half was a masterpiece, and the second half was pretentious garbage.
First off, I don't want to root against this film, because it's simply one of the most beautifully animated things I've ever seen, and one of the best-scored movies I've ever heard. The use of color to render the natural environment is so bold and elegantly minimalistic. It's hard to describe, but there's just something deeply moving about the rich simplicity of the imagery here (especially on a big screen) that it feels as if your eyes have been dipped into a dye like an Easter egg. The score, with its beautiful strings and haunting chorus add to the mystical beauty as well.
Despite its eloquent animation, I personally don't think the film stuck the landing, though I recognize I may not have been cultured enough to fully understand what was "really" going on. Its "cycle of life" narrative and forced-universality felt emotionally distant to me, and I wished it stuck with the survivalist angle it masterfully introduced at the beginning. Still, the sheer audacity and skill it must have taken to let the visuals do the talking makes The Red Turtle highly-recommended for fans of "adult" animation, though be warned - it requires patience and goes to strange places.
Rating: B-
Land of Mine
Dir. Martin Zandvliet
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As a general rule, the "order" I place my reviews goes by how likely I think my readers will have watched or plan to watch the movie. Although Land of Mine is on the bottom of this blog post, it deserves to be on top, because this was honestly one of the best, most heart-wrenching war films I've ever seen. It's a shame no one's going to see it.
This Danish film, nominated for Best Foreign Feature, takes place in the days following Germany's surrender in WWII. A group of young German POWs are handed over to the Danish authorities, who were ordered to defuse and remove the more than 2 million land mines buried along the sandy beaches along the West Coast. Crawling on their hand and knees under deplorable conditions, these boys are forced to perform this dangerous work as "contrition" for a war they never really wanted or even comprehend.
The film becomes more and more punishing as you get to know and grow to like this group of boys, only for them to start dropping like flies. Even though the war is "over," people are still dying and little sympathy is brought from the bitter Danish people.
Land of Mine is a rough watch, but it should be a rough watch. Despite the countless movies we've seen about this period of history, I have yet to see one from this specific perspective, and I'm glad it was told with such emotion, beauty, and brutality. I was left heartbroken and deeply affected by the end of it, and you won't find a film that better humanizes the pointlessness of war.
Rating: A
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