"Ant-Man and the Wasp" Stands Just Tall Enough

When the original Ant-Man debuted three years ago, many believed Marvel Studios must have been running out of worthy material if this character was the best they could come up with after the dead-seriousness of Avengers: Age of Ultron.  It turned out the hokey-jokey, techno-babble, pseudo-heist film was just the palate cleanser the audience of Marvel’s films needed, getting us all more grounded in our expectations so things could build back up over the course of several more films to the awesomeness and heartbreak of Avengers: Infinity War.  Not to mention it was just dang fun, too. Well, here they go again. Ant-Man and the Wasp takes the same place in a Marvel release schedule its predecessor did, serves much the same purpose as its predecessor did, and delivers results just as impressively.

Paul Rudd’s style and personality are used so perfectly in this role that it’s become one of those instances where you can’t imagine anyone else doing it.  His Scott Lang may be a superhero, but everything he does right is so heavily qualified — mostly because he never manages to save the day without alienating his friends and loved ones — that his sense of self-worth is constantly reduced to human scale.  His character-defining shortcomings are on display throughout the new film every time he tries to puff out his chest. You know, he helped Captain America that one time, but only after he stole a super-suit from his mentor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas, who is still the master of convincing an audience that he’s suppressing an angry outburst).  Yeah, he saved the world in Captain America: Civil War… or helped to, anyway, but without consulting his training (and romantic) partner Hope van Dyne (played with an air of self-confidence by Evangeline Lilly that in itself almost seems like a superpower). Sure, he's behaving now and starting his own security business in San Francisco, but he’s still under heavily-monitored house arrest.  Lang is such a loveable loser because he’s the relatable, well-meaning small fry who tries, and often fails, to live up to expectations.

Director Peyton Reed did such a wonderful job with the first film that it was a no-brainer for him to helm the sequel, and among the many things he did right with both movies is how we see the consequences of our hero’s actions on his everyday life.  Reed and his (FIVE) screenwriters craft a story of how all of these characters overcome their ego-driven tendencies long enough to work together as a raggedy team. Supporting characters — like smug weapons dealer Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), mysterious super-villain Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), clueless FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), and Pym's estranged former colleague Dr. Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne) — frequently throw Lang and Pym off their best-laid plans, particularly their shared goal of securing the equipment that Pym needs to rescue his long-missing wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the trippy, sub-atomic (and very dangerous) Quantum Realm.

But the tangent-filled nature of Lang's story is the most charming aspect of both Ant-Man films.  Lang's narrative is a revolving door of well-meaning outsiders — his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) and her amiable wet blanket husband Paxton (Bobby Cannavale), along with Lang’s eager-to-please daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) — and neurotic colleagues, like Lang’s "X-Con" security crew team of Kurt (David Dastmalchian), Dave (T.I.), and Luis (Michael Peña, again stealing every scene he's in).  Many of these characters are also struggling to suppress their own habitual catastrophizing: if Ghost doesn’t steal and fire up Pym’s equipment now, she will die; if Pym doesn’t get Lang’s help in recovering his equipment, his wife will vanish; and if Lang doesn’t get back to his house before the FBI returns to check up on him, his new post-“Ant-Man” life is over.

Thankfully, Reed capably (though not always gracefully) juggles these various plot points.  Speaking of personality: the first half of Ant-Man and the Wasp — the part that’s most reliant on plot-pushing expository dialogue — definitely feels like it was cobbled together by a creative committee that includes the five credited writers and Heaven-only-knows how many uncredited ones.  This minor shortcoming is why I spent much of this review praising the film’s characters and ideas, but not its brick-and-mortar storytelling. Like many films produced by Marvel Studios, this one sometimes feels “Paint-Superhero-Movie-by-Numbers,” marred by uninspired cinematography (by no less than Dante Spinotti, who has done stunning work on Michael Mann’s films over the years), and over-edited set pieces… but only sometimes.

Ant-Man and the Wasp really takes off once it stops setting up the plot and starts showing how the better story ideas lead into dynamic car chases, fight scenes, and comedic routines (I especially love the bit where Lang, after being knocked out and tied up, asks his kidnapper to help him video-chat with Cassie).  For most of two hours, Peyton Reed and his colleagues take super-fans on a long, strange trip with some of the most sympathetic cinematic crime-fighters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Taken in its entirety, Ant-Man and the Wasp may not be the best of anything, but like it’s perpetually challenged hero, it’s plenty good enough at what we want it to be.

A Better Title Might've Been "Avengers: Infinity WOW!!!"

Yes, yes, I’m writing an essay about this one - because you just KNEW I would.  It might not really be terribly necessary, as every single human being on the North American continent will see it (at least once), as will large percentages of the human race on all the other continents… and possibly some of those Emperor penguins in the Antarctic as well.  This may not be a “review,” per se, as I loved it, and you knew I would, so you really didn’t come here wondering what my opinion would be. I suppose the only way to honestly convey my take on it is to not even attempt to summarize it in a way you non-nerd readers out there can follow, but instead just tell you how this two hour-thirty minute, seventy-something character visual explosion affected me.

All of that being said, I find writing this more difficult than you might imagine.  I first saw Avengers: Infinity War three days ago, then again the following day, and have struggled trying to start this piece.  “How can it be so hard???” you may ask. Well, I’ll tell you. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU, for short) has been a dream-come-true for those such as myself who grew up having these stories and characters become as important to us as daytime soap operas were to our mothers.  It’s a shared continuity featuring a varied cast of fascinating and colourful characters played by excellent actors starring in stories that have been adapted by talented filmmakers who actually respect the material. It’s something from our formative years that society has allowed us geeks to continue to enjoy as we hit our Golden Years without having to feel ashamed of it.

There are other film franchises out there that have been around longer and produced more films that this one, but none that has been as effective at stringing together a connective narrative throughout ALL of its entries and building to a dramatic conclusion like this one.  It has steadily been growing over the years by adding different characters and elements organically to create more depth as it goes. Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of all the work that went into building a universe by having it pay off in the biggest team-up movie ever made.

While this movie is one of those rare instances of a piece of incredibly over-publicized and over-hyped entertainment actually living up to said hype (and possibly even exceeding it), there’s never really been a film like it.  It’s not a standalone movie. It’s also not a direct sequel to anything. Do you need to have seen all eighteen of the other Marvel films to enjoy it? Will you be completely lost with so many characters flying/jumping about? Is more than two and half hours of all this going to feel like cinematic excess?  The answer to all of these questions is Yes… and No.

While I’m sure there are spoilers about the plot and its surprises out and about in mass media by now, I won’t be one to add to them.  Disney’s marketing people did a superb job of producing trailers and other TV/internet video spots that haven’t given away much of anything - and in some cases have even lied about certain elements.  The broadest stroke of plot-summary is that all these Infinity Stones that have been constantly popping up in the narrative of so many of these MCU flicks are finally being brought together to threaten the entire universe.  The Mad Monster from the planet Titan, Thanos (Josh Brolin, beneath a whole-heap of computer-generated imagery) is gathering them with the intent of killing trillions of beings, and all of our scattered, various heroes must unite to stop him.  Pretty simple.

One of the most surprising things to me about Avengers: Infinity War is that it is very much the villain’s story.  Thanos is one of the best villains the MCU has yet had. Sure, that’s not saying much (Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash from Iron Man 2… need I say more?), but I do think it accurate to say that we feel his motivation much more than we usually do from other Marvel movie villains.  Brolin’s often understated delivery is an excellent contrast to Thanos’ intimidating stature and immense strength (he did WHAT to the Hulk??? DAMN!!!). While those who have seen Guardians of the Galaxy are aware of his relationship with Gamora (Zoe Saldana), seeing how it began, and how important it actually was to him added an emotional weight to that part of the story that I didn’t really expect.  Thanos’ motivation is clear and simple, and makes sense from a certain point of view. There’s definite method to his madness, and time is taken to give him the depth required for a villain that has teased since 2012.

None of this comes at the expense of the heroes, though the film doesn’t spend any time introducing them to an audience that might be unfamiliar with them.  While no one hero has much of a chance to outshine any other (well, maybe Chris Hemsworth’s Thor has one or two more rays of light than the others…), this is a team-up, after all, so all of them are equally served by the screenplay, and all of them FEEL just like we’d expect them to after coming to know them in their own films.  It’s the characters that keep people coming back to this franchise, and this movie never loses sight of that. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo (the guys who also made the last two Captain America films) seem to assume audiences have at least a basic idea of who these people are, and can accept those characters' contributions to the story.  If audiences can meet those two expectations, then they will be tremendously entertained by the interplay between several vastly different characters whom we would never otherwise get to see interact and hear speak to each other in some pretty hilarious ways.

Infinity War uses every minute of its two and a half hour run time, and I can’t for the life of me think of anything that didn’t need to be there.  I was prepared for one of those struggles that only we middle-aged men with ever-smaller bladders have to face, but that didn’t happen. Despite large segments of dialogue, the action seemingly never stops until the abrupt, cliffhanger ending.  Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (all three Captain America flicks, among other things) have managed to craft a film story effectively utilizing more characters that normally appear in several movies, and given them all useful actions and witty things to say, a feat that may be studied in screenwriting classes for years to come.  Sure, it’s not Shakespeare, but the Bard never had to write a play for seventy-five characters.

The only disappointment from Avengers: Infinity War is knowing that you’ll have to wait until next year’s Avengers 4 (yet-to-be subtitled) to find out how it all ends.  If you can forgive that, and you dig superhero movies in general, then you may find Infinity War to be the perfect movie. Well, not Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia kind of perfection, but you get my drift…

"Black Panther" is more Marvel gold...

Yay!  A new Marvel movie!  Two or three times a year over the last decade, we comic-book nerds get to rejoice in the evidence that our once-sneered-upon culture has taken over the zeitgeist of the early 21st century.  This year begins with Marvel giving the Black Panther character introduced in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War his own film, and what a great addition to Marvel Studios’ ongoing series of movies it is. 

As Marvel tends to do, this particular movie fills something of a sub-genre - sure, it’s a “superhero” film, but much like Ant-Man was the “heist” film and Captain America: The Winter Soldier was the “political thriller,” Black Panther is a James Bond film with spandex.  We learned in Captain America: Civil War of the (fictional) African nation of Wakanda, and how T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) assumed the mantle of king of that nation when his father was killed.  We also learned that wearing the crown of Wakanda also means wearing the spandex of the Black Panther, but it is in this film that we learn what makes Wakanda so special and how the rest of the world knows next to nothing about it. 

Director/co-writer Ryan Coogler, who revived the Rocky franchise with Creed, (a flick that I promise I’ll get around to seeing one of these days) works movie magic with a cinematic blend of super sci-fi, Bond-ian type gadgetry and villains bent on societal anarchy.  He and his cinematographer and design team have set up a rich culture filled with wondrous locations and several distinctly different tribes, details that help make the characters become individuals, and not merely place-holders.  Even better, the screenplay amazingly does not waste any of the characters.  

All of the warriors, both men - W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya) and M’Baku (Winston Duke), and women – Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), Okoye (Danai Gurira), and the still-insanely beautiful Angela Bassett (who plays Ramonda, T’Challa’s mother) serve a purpose in driving the film’s story.  Heck, T’Challa’s sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) effectively serves as this movie’s “Q” to T’Challa’s Bond.  The script fleshes out the royal family’s in-house drama wonderfully, and crafts a villain, “Killmonger” (Michael B. Jordan), that is perhaps the Marvel movie universe’s second-best villain ever, after Loki.  

It is nice to have a stand-alone film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe every few times out, one that is not a TOTAL continuation of the ongoing narrative running throughout all eighteen movies of the series.  Ant-Man was like that, as was the first Guardians of the Galaxy.  This isn't really an origin tale, as T'Challa is already the Black Panther at the film's start, but his beginnings are touched upon.  Sure, Black Panther contains mentions of things that happen in other movies, and has characters that have been seen in other movies, but none of those items require you to have seen any of the previous titles in the franchise.

Of course, no movie is perfect (well, maybe Lawrence of Arabia was perfect, but that’s another discussion for another time…), and Black Panther is not without minor grumbles.  There are a few hints of story elements never followed through (Okoye and W’Kabi, for instance, are mentioned fleetingly as being lovers in what feels like might have been an excised sub-plot), and some of the CGI action shots were less than convincing, but if such things are the worst that can be found in the film, then I don’t have any problem calling it one of Marvel Studios’ best efforts to date.

While plenty of other writers, reviewers and commentators have waxed ad nauseum about the political, philosophical and “social justice” implications of this movie, I refuse to go down that rabbit hole.  This particular white Anglo-Saxon Protestant conservative heterosexual male is merely a comic-book nerd, and doesn’t apply labels or checkboxes to the factors that make up his entertainment.  That said, I can assure you with a broad smile that Black Panther is tremendously entertaining.

The DC Movie Universe course-corrects with "Wonder Woman"

There are large segments of the movie-going public who are hyper-excited about a superhero movie being centered on a female character, and that one has actually been directed by a female, and how this is oh-so long overdue and oh-so important in the annals of human history… blah, blah, blah...   All of that may or may not be true, but I don’t really give a fig about any of it.  Male, female, dog, cat, horse… who/whatever makes up a movie is irrelevant to me, as long as it’s good, and this one definitely is.  Wonder Woman is an excellent example of the “superhero” film genre, and I will explain why this is so, if you are kind enough to read on.

The story borrows aspects of Wonder Woman’s rich comic history while relying heavy on modern interpretations such as the character’s much-ballyhooed reboot by writer/artist George Perez in the 1980s.  After a short prelude, we’re introduced to a young Diana and her home of Themyscira.  In an island paradise inhabited only by the Amazons, Diana is raised by her mother Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) and trained by the Amazon General Antiope (Robin Wright, in a great performance considering her limited screen time).  Although it lacks a Loki, I felt we learned far more about Themyscira than we did about Asgard in the first Thor film, and the setting is put to good use to explore who Diana is and where she comes from before sending her out into the world.

Years later, with Diana grown into adulthood (now played by Gal Gadot) and starting to fully come into her powers, the Amazons’ solitude is intruded upon by an American spy named Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) and pursuing German soldiers who accidentally come across the island hidden from the world by the gods.  Believing the god of war Ares to be behind this “war to end all wars,” Diana chooses to leave her home and journey into man’s world to put an end to the villain’s schemes by re-assuming the Amazons true purpose in helping man reach his full potential and strive above the pettiness and violence caused by Ares’ influence.  Whew!  Simple, right…?

Credit goes to director Patty Jenkins and screenwriter Allan Heinberg for taking the best aspects of Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor and merging them into a film that might just be a tad better than either of those two.  Jenkins creates a lush, visual representation of a place steeped in Greek mythology, and balances that with History Channel-realistic depictions of the horror of the First World War, tossing some nice fish-out-of-water humor along the way.

What Wonder Woman gets so very right is its choice of stars and, for the first time in this DC Movie Universe since Man of Steel, a willingness to give the central character a bit of heart.  While fan reaction to the casting of Gadot was mixed, the choice has turned out to be a savvy one.  No, she’s not going to challenge Meryl Streep anytime soon, but she does what is asked of her in this role very, very well.  There is a moment in which Diana, lost in the midst of a war she doesn’t really understand, but knowing that the fighting is harming innocents all around, races across no man’s land and, with the help of a ragtag group, turns the tide of the stalemate.  It’s here, in Diana’s humanity, and in her need to put herself between others and danger, that the film so successfully sells us on the character, and I found Gadot’s eyes and her body language essential in doing so.

Pine and Gadot’s chemistry is wonderful, as each of them have moments of strength, wit and vulnerability with the other, without ever having one character dominate the relationship.  The interplay between all the characters is so entertaining that you shouldn’t find yourself waiting for the next mandatory action set-piece.  Even Trevor’s band of mercenary misfits, while obviously the sort of characters who merely serve as some screenplay motivation-providers, are played by actors (Saïd Taghmaoui, Eugene Brave Rock, and Ewen Bremner) who each manage to imbue their characters with enough to make us actually like them a bit.

I also found the choice to put the character in World War I to be brilliant, in that it distances this story from the other DC movies, allowing it to be told totally on its own, without any reference to the rest of DC’s “cinematic universe.”  That being said, I do find it a bit curious that this character has now been in one-and-a-third movies and the phrase “Wonder Woman” has yet to be uttered by anyone.  I wonder if the upcoming Justice League film will finally allow someone to speak that name.

While acclaim for Wonder Woman seems to be widespread, there are some poor, jaded souls out there who believe it necessary to find fault with the movie’s final act including a major action set-piece battle, full of explosions and destruction on a grand scale.  To complain seeing characters bash Hell out of each other amidst pyrotechnics and massive-scale property damage in a superhero movie is akin to complaining that all love stories inevitably result in two people kissing.  Dogs bark, cats meow and superheroes have landscape-destroying fights - it’s what they do, people.

Wonder Woman is a visually-lush, entertaining summer movie that is loads of fun. It injects a breath of fresh(er) air into the DC cinematic universe and provides some promise for the upcoming movies DC/Warner Bros. has in store. If you are growing tired of seeing costumed characters destroying each other and landscapes, however, then take heart, because Woody Allen is still making movies you might like.

Dancin' thru "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2"

Ah, the Curse of the Sequel - we all love the first (insert the franchise movie of your choice here), and because of that love, we all froth at the mouth in anticipation of the follow-up, then see it and either complain that it was either too much or not enough like the first one, and leave the theater in a snit.  Yes, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 is just as susceptible to this totally irrational judgment as whatever franchise you chose to insert above.  It possibly doesn’t have the same sheen of newness as its predecessor.  You may possibly find that it meanders a bit in the second act.  One could possibly observe that its climax revolves around yet another universe-shattering menace. I personally wouldn’t make such judgments myself about this movie, though.

The movie opens on a planet where our heroes await the arrival of an inter-dimensional monster they have been hired to dispatch. The ensuing chaos that follows the beast’s appearance plays behind the opening credits in what was probably intended to be a harkening to one of the fan-favorite moments from the closing of the first film, with more 70s-era pop tunes blaring away and CGI-cuteness shoved in our face, but I thought it was a bit too much “fan service” and went on a tad too long.  However, my gripes about the movie pretty much ended right there.

I didn’t find this to be a mere copy of the first film, as it embraces a completely different structure, something that brings with it positives and negatives.  While the first movie was a fast-moving caper movie, with various parties after the powerful Orb of which the Guardians had taken hold, Vol. 2 takes the time to build up its plot more naturally. As such, the first half of the movie, while still enjoyable, doesn’t have much in the way of forward momentum. Rest assured, though, things coalesce in the second half to form a stronger movie with a much more emotional climax than I would’ve imagined we’d get at the start.

There’s so much to enjoy throughout the rest of the film, starting with Kurt Russell being Ego, a “celestial” being who happens to be Peter Quill’s (Chris Pratt) long-sought father.  Who better to portray the father of the swaggering, cocky Star-Lord than the man who perfected that type of role while Chris Pratt was still in diapers?  I mean, this is Jack Burton!  This is Stuntman Mike!  Any movie Kurt Russell chooses to do MUST be worth seeing!  Forgive the nerd-gasm, Dear Reader, but I think one of the great strengths of the Marvel movies under Disney is that they have been able to successfully draw such top-level talent, in front of as well as behind the camera, to do these movies, getting National Treasures like Snake Plissken… uh, I mean Kurt Russell to play along with them.

“Play” is the operative word when it comes to the Guardians of the Galaxy films, and with this outing, it continues to be the most lighthearted of Marvel’s cinematic efforts (yes, even more so than Ant-Man).  While this means the films don’t have quite the depth of previous films like Captain America: Civil War, there’s still something irresistible about watching a cast have this much fun.  Michael Rooker has to receive special mention, as while his surly Yondu was a secondary character in the first movie, he is elevated to full-star status here, and every minute he is on-screen is just golden.  

Family drama drives most of the story, of which Quill’s parentage is just one example.  As in the first chapter of the Guardians saga, Vol. 2 spends some time ruminating on its characters’ need for a family, whether they want to admit it or not (most of the time it’s not).  Drax (Dave Bautista) is still dealing in his own inimitable way with the death of his wife and children. Rocket (voice by Bradley Cooper) continues to have issues with his communication skills. Gamora and Nebula (Zoe Saldana and Karen Gillan) continue to struggle with their upbringing under Thanos' heel.  Baby Groot needs parental guidance. It’s all dysfunction at its finest.

Of course, this ain’t a Woody Allen film, where we expect gobs and gobs of whining and introspection.  We buy a ticket to a Marvel film for lots of flash-bang, pretty-colored-lights exploding around spandexed and heavily-makeup’ed famous people, and I promise you, folks, you get that in spades here.  The film’s $200 million-dollar price tag is all up there for you to see, and not a penny wasted.  Writer/director James Gunn’s passion for this section of the Marvel Universe is obvious, as we can tell this film was made by someone who cares deeply about the material.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 is not as good as the first film.  That is true. The first film was something incredibly original and caught movie-going audiences by complete surprise.  That is also true (boobie-prize if you get the reference!).  We all have expectations now, and humans tend to be very unforgiving when it comes to having our expectations met.  Do not let that prevent you from seeing Vol. 2.  It is fun, funny, touching and maybe even slightly-"touched," and is a great way to kick off the summer movie season.

No Country for Old Man "Logan"

Hmmm… so what would happen if The Coen Brothers, John Ford, Werner Herzog and … oh, let’s say... Clint Eastwood all got together in a room and decided to create a “superhero” movie?  I’ll grant you a moment to recover from the cluster-mash of images that have certainly just exploded into your movie-loving imagination… Better now?  I had never actually contemplated such a question myself, but after seeing Logan, I wonder if the result of that dream collaboration would not have looked something like this.

Hugh Jackman has spent almost eighteen years playing this character across nine movies, and doing it so effectively that the original comic-book version of the character as a five-foot, five-inch tall Canadian has been almost entirely forgotten. Some of the movies he’s been in have been less than stellar, but no one has ever accused Jackman of giving less than one hundred percent of himself every time he’s strapped on those CGI-created claws.  You may not believe him when he says this is the last time he’ll play the character (speaking for myself, I am not completely convinced), but if this is to be his last outing as Wolverine, then we should all be glad that he saved the best for last.

The time is 2029, and director James Mangold (who also directed The Wolverine) shows us a time in which mutants have all but vanished from the face of the earth and no new ones are being born.  Logan has outlasted all his friends save for a now-Alzheimer’s ridden Charles Xavier (once again played by Sir Patrick Stewart), and is now a limousine driver in El Paso.  When Logan is not caring for the former Professor in their sorta-hideout across the border in Mexico, he often finds himself at the bottom of a bottle, a sad broken shell of a former hero.

That all must quickly fall by the wayside when Logan comes across Laura (played superbly by young newcomer Dafne Keen), a seemingly mute child on the run with her nurse and caretaker, Gabriella (Elizabeth Rodriguez).  Gabriella explains that corporate mercenaries known as the "Reavers" are hunting Laura, and gives Logan a sizeable sum of money to ferry them to "Eden," a safe haven near the Canadian border.  Logan reluctantly agrees, but it doesn’t go according to plan, and he ends up with a surprise stowaway when he returns home.

Charles reveals he’s been communicating with Laura telepathically for some time, and that she is, in fact, a mutant.  The Reavers, led by the cyborg Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), descend upon Logan and Charles' hideout to take Laura, and here the reason for her being hunted is revealed. What ensues is a film that is equal parts road trip and western, as our three heroes set out for “Eden,” and along the way, the truth of what has happened to mutants, the X-Men, and why Laura is on the run is revealed.  

While the plot has some incredible revelations about the X-Men Movie “universe,” what drives this movie is character.  Carrying the physical and emotional weight of a 200-something year-old man, Logan limps his way across the country, coughing and exhausted, slowly grinding into nothing.  If not for the charges in his care, one would think Logan would like nothing else but to lie down in front of an oncoming train, but what Laura is (a human molded into weapon, not unlike Logan himself), and maybe more importantly WHO she is, gives the Wolverine one last purpose.

Of course, Jackman is once again iconic in this role, but let it be known that Dafne Keen is a showstealer here. Even in silence, she carries her character’s tragic history with her, eyes conveying years of horror and torture. When she finally does speak, it is powerful, yet incredibly charming.  If you thought Arya Stark was a little Toughie, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet (even to the point Laura has her own list of names to recite, though in an entirely different context).

The rest of the cast is exceptional, too.  Stewart is heartbreakingly good in the film, as dementia makes him both vulnerable and dangerous (his brain, which has the power to release psionic blasts paralyzing those anywhere near him, has been labeled a Weapon of Mass Destruction).  Stephen Merchant is endearing as Caliban, an albino mutant who helps Logan care for the professor, and while none of the villains are given a robust characterization, they are all given enough moments to shine in their roles that they are not mere mustache-twirling caricatures.

Logan is a visceral tale of what happens when a man given too much time finally starts running out of it.  It is an inspired, ambitious, and violent Neo-Western/ Superhero Chase film, leading me to think of David Mackenzie’s recent film Hell or High Water afterwards, with a couple of mutants thrown in there for good measure.  Mangold’s story takes time to allow a few key sequences to really stretch out and breathe, which may lead some viewers to feel the movie to seem "long" at times, but I did not see it that way. On the contrary, the film’s two-hour, twenty-minute length gives us an opportunity to see so much more of these characters, their surroundings, and how they respond to them, and makes the violence that ends some of those moments all the more shocking.

The best mutant stories, both in the comics and on film, give insight into the nature of humanity, and Logan does this in spades.  Time, mortality and legacy are all at the heart of this film, making it what I believe to be the strongest X-Men film to date.  Surely Messrs. Coen, Ford, Herzog and/or Eastwood could not have done any better.

"Batman V Superman: Dawn (and morning, and midday, and afternoon) of Justice"

In my nearly half-century of life, I have spent more than my share of time and money on comic books.  There are Marvel Comics fanboys and there are DC Comics fanboys.  I have no loyalties - I am a comics slut and give my love freely to ‘em all, and then some!  This admission means, of course, that I am instantly and unashamedly incapable of giving an objective review of the first movie depiction of DC Comics’ “Holy Trinity” of superheroes, namely Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.  Like many geeks, I have been longing for such a movie the majority of my life, so it would take a pretty atrocious film of these characters meeting and doing battle to earn a horrible review from me.  Is this an atrocious film?  Absolutely, positively not.  So, is it a fantastic film?  Absolutely, positively not.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a mouthful of a title if ever there was one, is directed by Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen), who also directed this film’s predecessor, Man of Steel. The movie opens with that film’s climax, but showing us the mass carnage of Superman’s (Henry Cavill, back again) battle over Metropolis from ground level this time.  The seemingly World War III-ish destruction from that film is not glossed over, and serves as the impetus for this one.  Bruce Wayne’s (Ben Affleck) financial empire has holdings in Metropolis, and he is there that day, seeing his property and, more importantly, his employees, being crushed by the aliens engaged in a death-match all over the city.  Who’s to blame for all this?  Sure, Superman saved the world, but a world now with a few hundred thousand fewer people alive.  Congressional hearings are held, CNN spends large chunks of airtime debating the issue, and lots of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump voter-types go wacko in voicing and showing their opposing fervor on the subject of this “alien” who may be our salvation or our doom. That thought drives both Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) to decide we’d be better off without him, and each begin making moves to act on that belief. Let the battle begin!

This movie is breakneck-paced from the opening titles to the closing credits. With a two-and-a-half hour running time, and so much material to cover, Snyder gives us a visual orgy of explosions and costumes and vehicles and heat-ray-emitting monsters that would make Michael Bay blush.  We bounce around disjointed events from around the globe, and the movie hopes we can keep up and string them all together in our minds to see the overall picture. We’re beaten over the head with Hans Zimmer’s score (credited along with something/someone called “Junkie XL,” whatever that is), and see enough CNN on-air personalities that we’re absolutely certain that Warner Bros. owns them, too.

On the other hand, the pace also prevented Snyder from wasting time retelling us things we of which probably didn’t need reminding. Wayne is driven to almost-psychosis over the mayhem and destruction he witnessed, and the movie conveys just enough to convince me of that and moves on.  As he did with Superman’s origin in Man of Steel, Snyder does not bog us down in the minutia of Batman’s beginnings, as he’s confident in our knowledge of the broader strokes of how Batman came to be.  Sure, he gives us two minutes of Bruce Wayne voicing over a dream/remembrance of his parents’ deaths early on, but that’s it, and it’s enough.

But is the movie good or bad? Well, The Good - the majority of the cast’s headliners do excellent work.  Henry Cavill has Superman down-pat now, and while his performance in Man of Steel was probably more personal and touching, that movie was meant to be more emotional than this one (an actor’s gotta do what he’s given to do, right?).  Affleck is fantastic as Bruce Wayne AND as Batman, instantly shaming all those haters who went wild upon his casting announcement two years ago.  Oh, he may get some ribbing for adopting the Christian Bale gravel-voice while wearing the cowl, but that’s actually explained as a plot point and shouldn’t be held against him.  As stated, Wonder Woman makes her debut, played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, and if you don’t applaud when she appears in costume for the first time, then I don’t want to talk to you.  She doesn’t have much opportunity to take over any scenes, and given Godot’s previous work, that may be a good thing (I guess we’ll find out if she can REALLY act in next year’s Wonder Woman solo flick), but she sure as Hell LOOKS the part, and that’s enough for me so far.

Now The Bad - Chris Terrio and David Goyer’s screenplay doesn’t do Lois Lane (Amy Adams, also back for more) any favors, and Jesse Eisenberg was a horrible Lex Luthor.  Lois, while portrayed to be more independent and less bumbling that almost all previous incarnations of the character, is still basically a catalyst for rescue situations, and disappointing, given Adams’ talent.  The Luthor character is the movie’s biggest and most glaring disappointment, though, being played as something akin to Eisenberg’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, but with Parkinson’s or something.  Every time he was on screen was like nails on a chalkboard to me, and while one is supposed to be somewhat turned off by a movie’s villain, Eisenberg’s performance turned me off in the wrong way.

The overabundance of characters and plot points, of course, serve as seeds that will someday bear fruit as spinoff films and a Justice League movie. Yes, the two minutes or so that teases the soon-to-be-members of the Justice League feels shoehorned into the narrative (and may literally have been, as rumors have it that the sequence was filmed many, many months after principal photography wrapped), but I understand the purpose the sequence serves, and it didn’t take me out of the movie.  A less geeky viewer may find his or her experience somewhat different.

The movie is far from perfect, but it’s far from a failure, too. I can understand how a more casual moviegoer would find the movie’s pace almost too frenetic to allow him to keep up with all these characters and their possible motives.  I can tell you with all-but-certainty that the half-hour of excised footage that Snyder and Warner Bros. have promised us for the three-hour R-rated Blu-ray release of the film is sorely missed.  Batman v Superman doesn’t make any pretense about being “Hamlet,” however - it’s a superhero movie.  It’s a flick about dudes (and dude-ettes) in brightly-colored spandex blowing stuff up and bashing the crap out of each other, and setting the table for more such movies to come. If that’s your cup of tea, as it is mine, then you may enjoy it as much as I did.