Video review: "Logan"

As the superhero genre enters middle age, we’re seeing more films break out of the mold of the standard origin/call to duty/existential threat storyline. “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Deadpool” explored the comedy end of things. “Logan” goes the other way -- an uncompromisingly grim, sad and angry drama.

I heard one person describe it as the “Unforgiven” of Marvel Comics movies, and that wraps it up neater than I ever could.

Very loosely based on the “Old Man Logan” limited comics series, “Logan” is set a few years down the road in a dystopian future where nearly all the super-heroes (and villains) have been exterminated by a tyrannical government. Wolverine himself (Hugh Jackman) is a wreck: his fantastical healing power has withered, he walks with a limp and is racked by coughing. But he still has those freaky metal claws and a skeleton of unbreakable metal.

He’s staying incognito as a limo driver, earning money so he can buy a boat and put to sea, permanently. Logan is acting as protector/imprisoner of his old mentor, Professor X (Patrick Stewart), now in his 90s and suffering from dementia that causes him to go into fits – bad news for others when you’re talking about the world’s most powerful telepath. Puttering around as the help is Caliban (Stephen Merchant), an old enemy turned ally.

The threat is familiar: Mad scientists are experimenting with a new generation of mutants so they can harness their powers to do nefarious bidding. Laura (Dafne Keen), a mute young girl with abilities very similar to Logan’s, turns up to join their not-so-merry little band, which is soon being chased by mercenaries and… something else.

Once again, Logan acts as if he just wants to be left alone. But he’s constantly compelled to put others’ needs before his own.

Director/co-writer James Mangold gives us a relentlessly tragic film in which mankind has lost touch with its humanity, and the would-be savior is a self-hating fellow who slices people up with his claws. It was always an odd fit, trying to sandwich Wolverine into comics for preteens and PG-13 movies. Finally, the gore matches the character’s feral ferocity.

They needed three tries, but they finally got a Wolverine movie right – just in time to bring his grim saga to a close.

The most interesting Blu-ray bonus feature is “Logan Noir” -- an entirely black-and-white version of the movie. It also comes with a feature-length audio commentary track by Mangold, deleted scenes with optional commentary by Mangold, and a making-of documentary.

Movie:

Extras: B

Review: "Logan"

Death to the super-hero. Long live the super hero movie.

Movies based on comic books have been a going concern for 20 years now. That’s middle age for film genres, and we’ve witnessed movies agitating to break out of the mold. “Guardians of the Galaxy” was a straight-up comedy, and “Deadpool” ratcheted things up to gross-out laughs and self-aware spoofing. “Batman v. Superman” brought intra-hero beefs to the forefront of the story.

Audiences have grown tired of the same old thing, which is why when they tried to reboot another big comics team, the Fantastic Four, with yet another same-old origin story, people stayed away in droves.

“Logan” is an elegy -- for one of the most popular super hero characters, Wolverine, but also for the first blossoming of this kind of movie-making.

If films based on comic books are to have a viable future, then this is a good step toward reinventing themselves. And by that I don’t just mean casting a younger actor to take over, as they’ve done with the other X-Men characters.

This movie is dark, depressing and dreary. I mean that as a compliment. It’s not about super-powered nobility saving the day against an end-of the-Earth scenario. Nothing otherworldly comes dropping out of the sky. This is a fight played out in the dirt over the withered scraps of humanity.

It’s also the first Wolverine movie that’s rated R -- something which, given the berserker nature of the guy with foot-long claws, is long overdue.

Based very loosely on the “Old Man Logan” comic series, “Logan” takes us a few years down the road into an increasingly morbid future. All the big supers have been killed or banished; the government has become dictatorial and removed from the will of the people.

Logan has gone underground, using the name James Howlett (the one he was born with, according to some iterations) to drive a stretch limo for cash. He’s hiding out Professor X (Patrick Stewart) in the Mexican desert, as the ancient teacher and telepath is prone to seizures that cause everyone in the area to go into a crippling palsy.

Less caretaker than prison guard, Logan is keeping his old mentor under lock and key until he can save up enough money to buy them a boat so they can take to the sea, leaving their troubles behind. Puttering around their hideout is Caliban (Stephen Merchant), a former mutant-hunter who resents being treated as the chambermaid.

This is not your father’s Wolverine. Although it takes place in the year 2029, the seemingly immortal mutant looks like he’s aged 50 years in that span. Hugh Jackman personifies the character’s rapid decline, coughing constantly and shambling about with a limp. His healing factor, which made him able to heal almost instantly from nearly any wound, has diminished to the point he’s not much tougher than a normal human.

“You’re dying. You want to die,” another observes of the scarred wreck of a man, and not inaccurately.

The threat is a familiar one: nefarious science/military types looking to exploit mutants for their abilities. This brings Laura (Dafne Keen), a young girl who doesn’t speak, into the tiny circle of Logan and Xavier. She has abilities much like Wolverine’s, raising sticky issues of her progeny, about which I’ll say no more.

Boyd Holbrook plays Pierce, a mercenary with a cyborg hand who relishes the role of huntsman. Richard E. Grant plays the mysterious Dr. Rice, who apparently has his hands upon the reins. There’s also another x-factor that shows up to taunt Logan about his younger, wilder exploits.

Director James Mangold, who also helmed the last Wolverine movie and co-wrote the script for this one, seems to have finally stumbled upon the essential tragedy of Logan. He’s the ultimate killing machine who has come to abhor death. Now he races toward it, snarling that he’s no longer a hero but always drawn toward redemptive acts.

It’s been said that everything has a beginning, a middle and an end. With “Logan,” the end of an iconic character marks the passage of super-hero movies into a grimmer stage of relevance.

Video review: "X-Men: Days of Future Past"

Once storytelling franchises have been around while -- especially ones involving science fiction and/or super-heroes -- it can be hard for filmmakers to find enough creative real estate to let their imaginations sprawl. After all, histories have been set, great and terrible deeds done, characters evolved or killed off, and it's a bad notion to retread over familiar territory.

So what to do? More and more, these movies are going retcon.

Retconning is when a new set of creators essentially reboots everything we know about a mythos, blanking the slate so they can start over from a zero point of their own choosing. "Star Trek" did this recently, and now the X-Men comic book heroes have, too.

This bold new film, the best super-hero flick since "The Avengers," looks at a post-apocalyptic world where nearly all mutants have been destroyed by the menacing robotic Sentinels. Clawed, nearly unkillable warrior Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent 50 years into the past to occupy the mind of his younger self, and must convince the Professor X of that era (James McAvoy), who is wallowing in a pit of self-pity, to take action to prevent the terrible tide.

That means diverting power-mad frenemy Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and shape-shifting skulduggerer Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from their mission to make mutants the master of regular humans rather than the object of their hatred. Needless to say, they're not happy to go along.

There's one scene that may just be the most entertaining action sequence of the summer, and it involves a new mutant named Quicksilver who is so fast he practically lives in his own dimension of time.

A satisfying mix of action, convincing characterizations and plot twists, "X-Men: Days of Future Past" delivers one for the ages.

Video extras are quite hefty, and include deleted scenes with audio commentary by director Bryan Singer, a gag reel, gallery and several making-of featurettes.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "X-Men: Days of Future Past"

I am the guy who has been known to complain about superhero movies being too somber and serious. But I don't think it's a contradiction to celebrate that same quality in the new X-Men film.

In other comic books and movies, superheroes were usually regular folks who acquired powers through happenstance. Even if they might struggle with controlling them or the implications of their newfound responsibilities, these stories rode an underlying fantasy about becoming special.

The X-Men were always different. They were mutants, born the way they were, and their powers were not a source of joy but an instrument for prejudice and even hatred. And the stakes were always higher: X-Men comics were the only ones I read as a boy where people died on a pretty regular basis.

"X-Men: Days of Future Past" is based on the concept of a 1981 storyline in which a future was envisioned where mutants had lost the war against their kind, with most of our favorite characters having been killed by monstrous Sentinel robots. It also attempts -- quite successfully in my estimation -- to combine the original X-Men trilogy from the last decade with the 2011 "First Class" movie that depicted the nascent days of the mutant movement in the 1960s.

Pop culture aficionados will recognize this as "retconning," in which storytellers retroactively alter the mythology of a franchise to fit their new schemes. (They recently did this with the "Star Trek" flicks.) But this is the mother of all retconning, in which both the present and future of the X-Men, as established in the previous films, are cleverly made to go kerbloowie.

In tackling this ambitious new project, they brought back original director Bryan Singer, who along with screenwriter Simon Kinberg manage to make a movie that is at once entertaining and sobering.
There's a darkness and a grandiosity to "X-Men: Days of Future Past" that has been missing from these movies.

Initially set in the near future, we witness a world where telepath Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his few surviving students fight against the Sentinels, which can adapt to and even copy the powers of mutants. Losing seems inevitable, so they hatch a plan to send the consciousness of animalistic warrior Logan (Hugh Jackman) 50 years into the past, inhabiting his younger self in 1973.

There, he must convince a distraught Xavier (now played by James McAvoy) to join with his friend-turned-arch-enemy Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to prevent the assassination of a power-mad scientist named Trask (a terrific Peter Dinklage) that sets off the war against mutants.

At the center of the mission is heading off Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), a shape-shifting assassin whose loyalties lie somewhere between the just-get-along sentiments of Xavier and the them-or-us creed of Magneto.

What makes this movie work is that even as we bounce through all these intrigues about robots and time travel and telepathy, the filmmakers never forget to focus on the characters. So the emnity between Xavier and Magneto feels personal, and Logan's battle between his berserker side and his better instincts has a tragic note.

Not that they forgot to include some terrific action scenes. Some of the best involve Quicksilver (Evan Peters), a super-fast teen who lives in a world that's almost another dimension, since he can do dozens of things in the blink of an eye. One scene where the team is breaking Magneto out of an impregnable prison is an utter delight.

Where do the X-Men go from here? Wait until after the credits for a (vague) glimpse. All I know is this movie blows up the franchise while also delivering the best film we've seen in the series.

Review: "Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return"

Before you get your knickers into a twist about a new animated movie compromising the purity of the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” I’d like to point out that there was already an “official” sequel in 1985. (Which is not well remembered because, well, it was pretty awful.) And there have been a handful of films over the years that continued or adapted the story of Dorothy & Co. – “The Wiz” and last summer’s blah “Oz the Great and Powerful” starring James Franco.

Author L. Frank Baum actually wrote a number of Oz books, and his descendants published even more. Heck, there already was an animated version in 1971 called “Journey Back to Oz,” and the Muppets did their own Oz flick in 2005.

So if the very existence of “Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return” offends you, then my advice is to just get over yourself.

It’s actually a rather agreeable little film, aimed more at small kids than grown-ups looking to relive childhood memories. The computer animation is decent, the voice acting lively and engaging – including a first-rate turn by Martin Short as the bad guy – and it even features a number of catchy musical sequences.

Sure, this is a few steps down the ladder from “Frozen” in terms of quality and artistry. But it greatly exceeds low expectations.

For Dorothy (Lea Michele), only one day has passed since the twister that transported her to Oz. She wakes up to find her Kansas home leveled, and a shifty appraiser (Short) convincing people to sign over their property and depart.

Back in Oz, though, many years have passed. Scarecrow (Dan Aykroyd) has come into his own as the resident brainiac running the wizard’s palace and contraptions, while Lion (Jim Belushi) and Tin Man (Kelsey Grammer) have become a brave warrior and emotional soul, respectively. But they’re under attack from the evil Jester (Short again) and zap Dorothy back to help out.

This requires a new journey down the yellow brick road, but with a new set of companions assembled along the way.

Wiser (Oliver Platt) is an immensely fat, clever owl who wears spectacles and has a tendency to finish other people’s sentences. Marshall Mallow (Hugh Dancy) is a brave, resolute soldier who just happens to be made of gooey marshmallow. The China Princess (Megan Hilty) is the brittle leader – both in terms of her body and fractious personality – of a tiny people made out of delicate china.

Rounding out the cast are Bernadette Peters as Glinda, trapped by the Jester, and Patrick Stewart as Tug, an aged tree who helps Dorothy along her way.

The Jester is quite a memorable villain. The sibling of the wicked witch killed by Dorothy, he’s both cursed by and hungry for magical power. He can work his sister’s crystal ball and broomstick, though not particularly well, and commands her army of flying monkeys. Short gives him a frenetic desperateness, and also displays some quite amazing singing pipes.

The music by Toby Chu will get toes a-tapping, though the songs tend to be short expositional transitions between scenes rather than show-stoppers.

Co-directors Will Finn and Dan St. Pierre keep things moving along at a brisk pace, and the action scenes are crisply-staged. We get to see a lot more of the fanciful world of Oz, including a bestiary of neat critters. (Though personally, I would have liked to see more than a token munchkin or two.)

This “Oz” film may seem like a cheap spinoff, but it’s fun and breezy. It certainly beats that smarmy Franco flick by a gold-bricked mile.

Review: "Ted"

"Ted" is funny when it's funny, and not when it's not, and boy is there a whole lot of that second part.

When it's on, this raunchy starring Mark Wahlberg and a computer-generated teddy bear contains some of the best laughs of any movie I've seen this year. Unfortunately, the dead spots in between the yucks grow larger and longer, until the funny stuff is the oasis and the rest of the movie is dry and endless as the Mojave.

"Ted" comes from the team behind much of Fox Television's Sunday animated comedy lineup: "Family Guy," "American Dad" and "Cleveland Guy." Seth MacFarlane directed and co-wrote the script with Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, and also does the voice of Ted. (Who sounds a heckuva lot like Peter Griffin from "Family Guy" with a heavy clam chow-dah ladling of Beantown accent.)

Their crude but witty humor is on full display in all its non-censored cinematic glory, personified by a magical plush bear who's horny as a beaver, smokes copious weed and uses the F-word liberally.

But MacFarlane et al are feature film novices, and it shows.

The setup is that John Bennett (Wahlberg) wished Teddy to life on Christmas Day when he was 8, instantly turning him into a worldwide sensation. But nearly three decades later, he's just another faded celebrity mooching off his best friend.

John has turned into a 35-year-old slacker who (barely) works at a rental car agency. His girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) recognizes that John can't grow up until he puts away childish things, but it's hard to split up these best buds.

Whenever the movie veers too long away from Ted and his antics, things come to almost a dead stop. The will-he-or-won't-he tension of John's big decision ends up becoming a dreadful bore, and pitiful attempts at pathos in between the fart jokes just stink up the place.

MacFarlane and his team are best at throwaway jokes and non sequiturs -- the same stuff, incidentally, that led to "South Park" mercilessly skewering "Family Guy" in one of their most famous episodes.

For instance, it's established that John and Ted are obsessed with the so-bad-it's-good version of "Flash Gordon" from the '80s. So when they get a chance to meet Sam Jones, who played the platinum-haired hero, it's a hilarious mix of pop culture references and self parody. Jones plays along gallantly, portraying a satirical, hard-partying version of himself a la Neil Patrick Harris in the "Harold & Kumar" flicks.

Other story elements don't work as well. There's a whole subplot of Giovanni Ribisi as an adult fan of Teddy who wishes to buy, borrow or steal him -- ostensibly for his kid, but really to satisfy his own creepy cravings.

It's a one-joke bit that goes nowhere, until Ribisi busts out some deliciously androgynous dance moves for no apparent reason. One thing has nothing to do with the other, but for a minute the laughs are switched on again.

That's the way it goes with "Ted," a comedic feast or famine. If you can stomach the long, dull stretches, you might find the prize worthwhile. For me, this bear story was overstuffed.

2.5 stars out of four