Released: March 2017

Director: James Mangold

Rated R

Run Time: 137 Minutes

Distributor: Fox Studios

Genre: Action/Drama

Cast:
Hugh Jackman: Logan/Wolverine
Patrick Stewart: Charles Xavier
Dafne Keen: Laura
Boyd Holbrook: Pierce
Stephan Merchant: Caliban
Richard E. Grant: Dr. Rice

When the original X-Men hit theaters back in 2000, one of the biggest surprises of the film was Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.  Some people thought that he was too tall for the role, but it was soon agreed that he was absolutely perfect.  This was the role that made Hugh Jackman a world-wide phenomenon.  Over the course of many movies and spin-offs, Hugh Jackman’s take on the classic X-Men character has evolved in more ways than anybody could have imagined.  Of all the X-Men characters, whether they were in the comics, the TV series or the movies, the Wolverine was always my favorite.  Why?  Because I can somewhat identify with the character.  He’s a lone-wolf; he doesn’t like or trust people, but beneath that gruff exterior he’s a good guy.  The character’s been through more hell than almost any character in the X-Men universe.  After 17 years of playing Wolverine, Hugh Jackman decided to do one last movie before hanging up his claws for good.  Thus, we come to Logan, the final film in the Wolverine spin-off trilogy.

The year is 2029.  There hasn’t been a mutant born in 25 years.  We catch up with Logan as a limo driver so he can buy medication for the ailing Charles Xavier.  After waking up after a drinking episode, Logan stumbles on a couple of thugs trying to steal his car.  After getting shot and beat up, Logan unleashes his rage and slaughters the crooks.  During one of his trips, he comes across a woman that’s begging him for help, and he just shrugs her off.  After heading back to Mexico, Charles is unable to convince Logan that there are more mutants out there.  Turns out, that the woman begging for help, is trying to save what appears to be her daughter, Laura.  The story is pretty straight-forward, with a few surprises here and there.  Still, it’s a very compelling story about an aging mutant who is no longer in his prime and has been beaten down by the world with no hope and no sign of redemption.  It’s tragic and heartbreaking to see a hero like Wolverine brought down like this, and yet, Laura may be the key to his redemption.  It is a fantastic story, that feels like it has elements of The Unforgiven thrown into the mix.  It’s pretty solid.

The heart of this story are the characters, and there isn’t one character that’s really overlooked here.  Yeah, the focus is obviously on Logan, but other characters like Charles, Caliban, Laura and Pierce all get their moments to shine.  Special mention has to be made for Dafne Keen’s Laura.  This character, who is more like Logan than he thinks, holds her own against a multitude of villains.  She doesn’t just have claws in her hands, but her feet as well.  This is a character that a lot of people have been anxious to see, and Dafne Keen just tears it up, both figuratively and literally.  Boyd Holbrook plays Pierce, a mercenary who is on Laura’s trail.  The character has a bit of charm, but he’s not a good guy.  In fact, he’s pretty damned evil.  The best villains often think that they are doing the right thing.  Patrick Stewart IS Charles Xavier.  There’s no doubt in my mind about that.  The character, much like Logan, is extremely ill, and suffers from a debilitating brain disease, which is a problem considering Xavier’s unique gift.  Now let’s get to Hugh Jackman as Logan.  There’s nobody else quite like Hugh Jackman.  He knows the character inside and out, which allows him a bit of freedom in how to interpret the character.  The character of Wolverine is a tragic one.  This is a guy that’s lived nearly 200 years, been brainwashed and had adamantium grafted to his skeleton.  He’s been put through the grinder, and it really shows.  He’s older and in pain.  Hugh’s performance is quite frankly, Oscar-worthy.  This is probably the best performance that Hugh Jackman has ever given for this character.  The acting is really, REALLY strong across the board.

Let’s talk about the action here, since this IS an X-Men movie.  Holy.  Shit.  This is easily one of the most violent and brutal movies I’ve seen in theaters in a long time.  Like Deadpool, Logan is rated R for a reason.  Unlike Deadpool, however, Logan is deadly serious.  Unlike the other X-Men films, which were by and large, bloodless, Logan is covered head to toe in the red stuff.  Blood flows freely here.  Limbs are sliced off, people are decapitated and shot to hell and back.  This is NOT a movie for kids.  It really isn’t.  There were scenes in this movie that I didn’t expect to be as brutal as they were.  No punches are pulled.  When Wolverine goes berserk, it’s unlike anything that I’ve seen before.  Yeah, we got bits and pieces of his rage in previous films, but not like this.  The rumor is that Hugh Jackman took a pay cut to make sure that this story was done right.  Not all stories have to be PG-13.  Some need to be unrelenting and as vicious as Logan.  I think the lack of restrain when it comes to the violence helps make Logan a much more compelling and visceral experience.  We finally see what the Wolverine is truly capable of.  THIS is what many people have been waiting for.

If there’s really a negative for me in this film, it’s that certain scenes run a little too long.  Honestly, though, that’s just a minor nitpick.  Everything else about this movie is absolutely phenomenal.  The sets, the make-up, the fight scenes and the story all come together in a very compelling, albeit bleak, package.  If you’re a big fan of the Wolverine and Hugh Jackman in particular, there is NO excuse to miss this movie.  For the Wolverine spin-off trilogy, the first movie was absolute garbage, the second film was really good, but Logan is quite frankly one of the best movies of the past few years.  I can’t recommend this enough.  I can definitely see that there is a lot of potential for Dafne Keen’s character in future movies.  It’s clear that due to the success of both Deadpool AND Logan, that there is a place for R-rated X-Men movies.  Do they all need to be R-rated?  No, but the rating shouldn’t scare off the studio from telling stories that are.  This is highly recommended.

Final Score: 9.5/10

Released: June 1989

Director: William Shatner

Run Time: 107 Minutes

Rated PG

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Science Fiction/Action-Adventure

Cast:
William Shatner: Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy: Spock
DeForest Kelley: Doctor Leonard McCoy
James Doohan: Scotty
Nichelle Nichols: Uhura
George Takei: Sulu
Walter Koenig: Chekhov
Laurence Luckinbill: Sybock
David Warner: St. John Talbot

There’s an interesting thing among Star Trek fans: The best Trek movies are II, IV, VI, and VIII.  Those would be Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country, and First Contact.  They tend to ignore the other ones.  Some rightfully so, others not so much.  However, it’s something I personally don’t subscribe to.  I’m as big of a Star Trek as much as the next guy, but I think each film, no matter how bad it gets, has some inherent value to it.  Some people might call me crazy, but I still consider The Motion Picture to be the best Star Trek movie, because it really addresses the ideas and themes behind Star Trek.  The exploration of ideas and certain philosophies tends to be sidelined among the other films in the franchise, but The Motion Picture dared to tackle some of these ideas head-on.  Was it successful?  I thought it was, especially now that I’ve grown up.  That being said, I understand that people didn’t care for it.  It did get pretty cerebral, but that was part of the point.  It made you think.  That’s what Star Trek is all about, at least from MY perspective.  That being said, there were a couple of movies that most audiences and critics will agree are not particularly good Star Trek movies: The Final Frontier and Generations.  Right now, I’m taking a look at The Final Frontier.

The story begins as Kirk, Spock and McCoy are on shore leave in Yosemite National Park, with Kirk climbing El Capitan.  After a near-brush with death, the trio are informed by Uhura that their leave has been cancelled because on Nimbus III, ambassadors for the Federation, Klingon and Romulan empires have been taken hostage by a rogue Vulcan named Sybock.  Sybock claims to have had a vision that God is waiting for them at the center of the galaxy, which lies beyond The Great Barrier.  The story for Star Trek V is surprisingly very interesting.  The themes that are present in this film, obviously include exploring the unknown and the possibilities of God’s existence.  But at the heart of the story is a very strong theme about family which, again, is at the heart of Star Trek.  Unfortunately, all this gets jumbled up, because the film surrounding the story is an incoherent mess.

There’s a lot of problems with Star Trek V.  Most of them stem from a great deal of studio interference from Paramount.  See, Star Trek IV was successful, because it managed to combine both Star Trek moments and a very light-hearted tone.  It was a bit of a comedy.  They wanted to duplicate that success, but the story that William Shatner wanted to tell apparently didn’t have enough humor in it, so Paramount forced him to find moments that could be funny.  Here’s the problem, the story that Shatner wanted to tell had more in common with The Motion Picture than with A Voyage Home.  There were a lot of things in this movie that could have worked if Paramount had let Shatner do things his way.  He’s not a bad director.  Far from it.  He knows how to stage action.  He also knows how to engage his audience with the characters because he knows them extremely well.  He just wasn’t allowed to.  Some people might also chock it up to Shatner’s ego, being put into check by Paramount, but I don’t know how much of that is actually true.  Due to constant changes in the script and budgetary cutbacks, The Final Frontier suffered in nearly every way.

The special effects in Star Trek V were another massive problem for the film.  Because of those budgetary cutbacks that I mentioned, and the fact that ILM wasn’t available, they had to go to a different special effects studio somewhere in New Jersey, I think, to do the effects for the film.  The previous films used Industrial Light and Magic for a reason.  Those guys are masters of their craft.  The effects in Star Trek V are almost universally terrible.  From simple animations to explosions, the visuals in this film are extremely half-baked.  It’s like they didn’t even try.  While Shatner may take some of the blame here, the majority of it can be laid at Paramount’s feet.  The visual effects are god-awful and that terrible dance sequence by Uhura before the invasion was just terrible.

While there are definitely some really bad things about Star Trek V, there are also some really great moments in the film that deserve mention.  The one thing that has been constant throughout all the Star Trek movies are the characters.  Whether they’re the original crew or the Next Generation team, the characters in Star Trek are extremely interesting, even the villains.  At the beginning of the film we see Kirk, McCoy and Spock go camping for their shore leave.  Scenes like these really sell the character development in the film for me, because we get to see the relationships between these characters on a more personal level.  Sybock, played by Laurence Luckinbill is also interesting, because he doesn’t come across as a straight-up bad guy.  He’s not, he’s an explorer, but his quest is on a more spiritual level, because he’s actually looking for God Himself.  He doesn’t want people to die, but he’s willing to break the law in order to achieve his goal.  His development and his relationship with Spock is one of the most interesting aspects of the film.  There’s a scene where things get really personal, because Sybock has this ability to show people their personal pain, and he shows McCoy his pain, which is McCoy’s dying father.  This is absolutely one of the best, strongest and most personal moments I’ve ever seen in a Star Trek movie.  We also see Kirk responding by not wanting his pain taken away.  These are very strong character moments that are aided by one of the strongest musical scores in the entire franchise.  The music by Jerry Goldsmith is absolutely one of the best scores that he’s ever crafted.  There are definitely the big heroic themes which includes the main theme from the original film, but we also have the theme for the Klingons, which is stunning.

While many people consider The Final Frontier to be the worst Star Trek movie ever made, I would personally disagree.  Is it a good movie?  No.  There are too many issues with the way the story progresses, the visual effects and some of the characters that aren’t fleshed out.  While William Shatner wanted this movie to be something special, and it really could have been, Paramount decided that it wasn’t really what they wanted and forced some the changes the really brought the movie down.  It’s a shame, there’s a lot of real potential here.  Honestly, though, I think Generations was a much worse film than this.  At least The Final Frontier didn’t have the audacity to kill Captain Kirk twice.  Maybe it’s because I grew up watching this film a lot when I was kid, but I have a special place in my heart for this particular entry.  Despite it’s MANY flaws, this is still a Star Trek film at its core.

Final Score: 7/10.

Released: February 2017

Director: Jay Oliva

Rated R

Run Time: 75 Minutes

Genre: Action/Animated

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Cast:
Matt Ryan: John Constantine
Jason O’Mara: Batman/Bruce Wayne
Camilla Luddington: Zatanna
JB Blood: Abnegazar/Merlin
Ray Chase: Jason Blood/Etrigan
Roger Cross: Alec Holland/Swamp Thing/John Stewart/Green Lantern
Jeremy Davies: Ritchie Simpson
Rosario Dawson: Wonder Woman
Alfred Molina: Destiny
Jerry O’Connell: Superman

It is no secret that when it comes to comic-book based movies, Marvel Entertainment and Disney clearly have the upper hand with their Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Their live-action films have done serious business and have been mostly well-received by both audiences and critics.  However, the same can’t necessarily be said of their animated films.  Their animated films, with the exception of maybe one or two, aren’t that good.  DC Comics and Warner Bros. have the exact opposite problem right now.  The two live-action movies released last year, Batman V. Superman and Suicide Squad were not very well received by anybody.  While I personally enjoyed Dawn of Justice, I can’t necessarily say the same for Suicide Squad.  It was a massive disappointment.  Their animated films though, are absolutely amazing.  Movies like Batman: Under the Red Hood really blew the lid off of the animated superhero genre.  Last year’s Batman: The Killing Joke, had issues with the opening, but was otherwise a really faithful adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name.  DC and Warner Bros. have two live-action films due this year, Wonder Woman and Justice League.  I really hope they get those two movies right.  But right now, I’m going to be looking at DC’s latest animated feature: Justice League Dark.

The film’s dark opening has us witnessing various horrible crimes being committed by law-abiding citizens because they seem to be seeing demons.  While the Justice League, being led by Superman, are investigating these crimes, one of them believes that the origin of these crimes may be magical in nature.  As a result, Batman recruits the talents of demon-hunter John Constantine to help investigate these incidents.  With the aid of magician Zatanna, it is discovered that there is a sinister magical force at work here.  So, they recruit a Dead Man and Swamp Thing to help fight these dark forces that threaten the world.  I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never been a very big comic book reader.  I’ve read my fair share here and there, but it wasn’t an obsession.  That being said, I found the story in Justice League Dark, to be very interesting.  This kind of mystical menace isn’t something that’s generally tackled by the normal Justice League.  A new team had to be formed to combat these new threats.  While the main villain’s motivations are still unclear, it’s really cool to see that there is a connection to the Merlin of legend, and the Knights of the Round Table.  It was actually a pretty gripping story and it was paced quite well.  It’s also really refreshing to see a DC movie with a bit of a horror movie slant to it.

While the Justice League proper does appear in this film, they are mostly sidelined for most of the story, with the exception of Batman.  The heroes we get this time are very unique.  John Constantine is a magician who battles demons.  Zatanna is a stage magician who has unique powers of her own.  Deadman is an assassinated acrobat who can possess people while Jason Blood is a former Knight of the Round Table who, with the demon Etrigan, is bound by a curse.  Swamp Thing is obviously a creature of the swamp, who used to be human, but now protects everything green.  Like many people, my exposure to Constantine was in the Keanu Reeves movie of the same name.  That was my introduction to the character.  There was also a TV series about the character that lasted only 13 episodes.  Zatanna I had heard of, but my only experience with that character was in the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us.  Swamp Thing I was more familiar with because of the campy movie from the 80’s.  These are very interesting characters and their relationships with each other are fairly complex.  The villain/s in this film are where this film starts to falter.  We have Felix Faust and Destiny.  While they have very cool superpowers, we aren’t given any kind of motivation other than world domination/destruction.  We don’t even see Destiny for nearly the whole movie.  He’s in a flashback scene, where he’s basically a disciple of Merlin that went insane, and a full-blown demon towards the end of the film.  Not that impressive, I have to say.

The voice cast they got for this movie is impressive, to say the least.  Matt Ryan, who actually played Constantine in the TV series, returns to voice the character in this film, and he’s definitely one of the biggest highlights of the film.  Jason O’Mara has voiced Batman for at least six or seven animated movies so far, and he’s not shabby.  He’s no Kevin Conroy, but he gets the job done.  Camilla Luddington really gives her character that extra pep and feistiness that you would expect from Zatanna.  Alfred Molina is the voice of Destiny, even though you couldn’t tell, but he’s mostly wasted.  It’s a shame, too.  Molina is one of the best actors out there.  Overall, the voice acting is pretty good.

The artwork in this film is rather impressive.  I didn’t see a single 3D image in there whatsoever, so it appears that the whole thing was hand-drawn.  That’s a good thing.  There aren’t many movies out there anymore that employ these kind of visuals.  It’s dark, gritty, and it gets violent from time to time.  It’s definitely action-packed and visually interesting to watch.  The character designs are very unique and the animation is pretty solid.  So, aside from some issues with the villains, Justice League Dark is actually a pretty good time.  It’s got stellar voice-acting and some really outstanding visuals.  I would definitely recommend this one.

Final Score: 8.5/10

May 17, 1955-February 25, 2017

As some of you may or may not know, one of my favorite actors died last night.  Bill Paxton, born May 17, 1955 to Mary Lou and John Lane Paxton, passed away last night due to complications from heart surgery.  He was 61.  For those of us who are enormous fans of Mr. Paxton, this comes as a major shock.  I was talking to one of my friends at work about movie stuff, as we usually do, and he told me that Bill Paxton had died.  At first, I refused to believe it, because Bill was not that old, nor did he suffer from any serious cancer.  Sure enough, I get home and to my dismay, it was true.  This is absolutely tragic, because it came out of nowhere.  I don’t to focus on his death, because I want to celebrate his life and the amazing career that he’s had over the past 30+ years.

Bill Paxton was born in Fort Worth, Texas and lived there until he turned 18, when he moved to Los Angeles, California.  He found work as a set dresser for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures company.  While he’s had a few bit parts in a couple of things between 1975 and 1984, Bill got his biggest break when James Cameron cast him as a blue-haired punk in The Terminator.  It wasn’t a huge role and only lasted a few minutes, but it was more than enough, because Cameron would again cast Bill Paxton in another blockbuster movie, Aliens.  It was his portrayal of Pvt. Hudson that put him on the map.  While Bill Paxton has rarely been considered a leading man in movies, the characters that he inhabits are nothing short of spectacular.  Obviously, Hudson is probably his most famous role.  At that point, it didn’t really matter what kind of material you threw at the guy, he would always find a way to make it memorable, even if the movie surrounding him wasn’t as good.  Mr. Paxton has worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Kurt Russell, Tom Hanks, James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sigourney Weaver, Donald Glover and Tom Cruise.  Yeah, he doesn’t necessarily get the A-list status that these other folks do, but his body of work is no less impressive.  He’s worked in television and film, both in front of and behind the camera.  His love of the art form and the industry was evident in every single thing he did.  He never half-assed ANYTHING.  To say that the world has lost a great actor and artist is an understatement.  Bill Paxton leaves behind a wife, Louise Newbury and two children.