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James Mangold’s Logan
Logan, the second Wolverine film directed by James Mangold and featuring the final performance of both Hugh Jackman as Logan and Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, is a great film, without caveat or qualification, a grim, near-future Western that’s firmly grounded despite the metal claws and psychic mindquakes. What the film also is is a very definite finish; I don’t see where else the current form of the X-Men film series can go now; Logan isn’t simply a great film, but a series-ending one as well. →
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Review of James Mangold’s The Wolverine
The tendency for film adaptations of superhero comics has been to provide spectacle and city-smashing action. The stakes are always high in these films; the whole of humanity or mutantkind itself is usually in danger of imminent destruction or oppression. The Wolverine, which sees the character mooching around Japan charged with protecting just a single woman, is pretty refreshing for its small-scale ambitions. →