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March comes in like a wolverine
Logan heads up a strong bunch of new movie releases
Logan: Hugh Jackman stars as a very grumpy old man.
Movie
Logan ***
Director and co-writer James Mangold takes another stab at the adamantium-clawed superhero (after 2013’s Japanese noir <em>The Wolverine</em>), this time turning him into an ailing Western hero tasked with transporting a very special youngster to safety, and winds up making the best superhero movie in years. It helps that the normally lone-wolf Logan also has an elderly father figure in tow: Charles Xavier, a super-psychic whose mind is going — a dangerous prospect. Xavier wants Logan to have a life before he dies, and sees the kid as a signpost pointing toward hope. Our hero knows better, knows that it’s all bullshit and bloodshed and bad guys stomping on good. The kid was grown in a lab! There is no promised land! And yet. It also helps that from the outset, we know that death is a real possibility, and that it takes a toll on the one who deals it. (When you deal with enemies by carving them up at close range, your life is nasty and brutish, no matter how long it’s made by your mutant healing factor.) Hugh Jackman stars alongside Patrick Stewart and newcomer Dafne Keen.
I liked the superhero movie Logan a lot, mostly because it was less about superheroes and more about keeping the flame of faith alive as the darkness closes in and about keeping civilization going by taking care of old people and kids. The scene where people watch Shane is no accident and not even a terrible overreach.
Movie
My Life as a Zucchini <em>(Ma vie de courgette)</em> ***
The sins of the fathers (and mothers) are visited upon the children in Claude Barras’s brief, stop-motion tale of little ones finding love among the ruins. The film mounts a direct assault on the heart’s tender parts — when we meet our young protagonist, he’s flying a kite that shows his absent father as a superhero on one side, and one of the chickens he so liked to chase on the other. And then he builds a pyramid from his mother’s empty beer cans. When an inadvertent disaster lands him in a group home, he hears that many of his fellows have had it even worse, and they’ve got the damage and sad coping mechanisms to prove it. They struggle to understand the adult world that has left them so bereft, and they struggle to live together with something approximating normalcy, but they don’t struggle to take happiness where they can. That part comes naturally. The animation serves to soften the blows while at the same time slowing the pace for maximum absorption of effect. In French with English subtitles.
Speaking of taking care of kids, I also really liked My Life as a Zucchini, another film that takes a normally kid-friendly format — animation, this time — and takes it into adult territory through simple honesty about the way young people suffer from grown-ups’ damage.
Movie
Before I Fall ***
Zoey Deutch stars as an entitled brat (and founding member of her school’s elite “mean girls” clique) who is inexplicably compelled to wrap up her final moments on Earth reliving the last day of her life before getting it right. Other than an unexpected air of adroitness that occasionally kicks in to boost the narrative, there’s nothing particularly original about this bald-faced lift of Groundhog Day that’s geared for teenage girls. Still, short of tipping friends and family to that day’s winning lottery numbers, the altruistic upshot of Deutch’s endeavors come off as a pleasant shock in a genre film that at any second could have veered in the direction of fanboy horror or soporific sentiment. Deutch’s naturalistic performance grounds the various layers of the story in a manner that keeps it from becoming either boring or wildly unrealistic. With Jennifer Beals as Deutch’s mother and Elena Kampouris as the school’s sheep-haired misfit. Ry Russo-Young directs.
Just up the lifeline from kids, you find young adults, and even they got solid treatment this week: Scott gave three stars to the Groundhog Day for teens that is Before I Fall.
Only the voguing doc Kiki failed to impress. (Maybe see Strike a Pose instead when it comes out online?) Of course, that was before Scott went to check in on Table 19 and The Shack today. He'll send the reviews along directly, but it's probably too much to ask for this week's genre basket to contain a fresh rom-com and a hearty faith-based entry on top of everything else.
Here's something you might be interested in.
March comes in like a wolverine
Logan heads up a strong bunch of new movie releases
March comes in like a wolverine
Logan heads up a strong bunch of new movie releases
Logan: Hugh Jackman stars as a very grumpy old man.
Movie
Logan ***
Director and co-writer James Mangold takes another stab at the adamantium-clawed superhero (after 2013’s Japanese noir <em>The Wolverine</em>), this time turning him into an ailing Western hero tasked with transporting a very special youngster to safety, and winds up making the best superhero movie in years. It helps that the normally lone-wolf Logan also has an elderly father figure in tow: Charles Xavier, a super-psychic whose mind is going — a dangerous prospect. Xavier wants Logan to have a life before he dies, and sees the kid as a signpost pointing toward hope. Our hero knows better, knows that it’s all bullshit and bloodshed and bad guys stomping on good. The kid was grown in a lab! There is no promised land! And yet. It also helps that from the outset, we know that death is a real possibility, and that it takes a toll on the one who deals it. (When you deal with enemies by carving them up at close range, your life is nasty and brutish, no matter how long it’s made by your mutant healing factor.) Hugh Jackman stars alongside Patrick Stewart and newcomer Dafne Keen.
I liked the superhero movie Logan a lot, mostly because it was less about superheroes and more about keeping the flame of faith alive as the darkness closes in and about keeping civilization going by taking care of old people and kids. The scene where people watch Shane is no accident and not even a terrible overreach.
Movie
My Life as a Zucchini <em>(Ma vie de courgette)</em> ***
The sins of the fathers (and mothers) are visited upon the children in Claude Barras’s brief, stop-motion tale of little ones finding love among the ruins. The film mounts a direct assault on the heart’s tender parts — when we meet our young protagonist, he’s flying a kite that shows his absent father as a superhero on one side, and one of the chickens he so liked to chase on the other. And then he builds a pyramid from his mother’s empty beer cans. When an inadvertent disaster lands him in a group home, he hears that many of his fellows have had it even worse, and they’ve got the damage and sad coping mechanisms to prove it. They struggle to understand the adult world that has left them so bereft, and they struggle to live together with something approximating normalcy, but they don’t struggle to take happiness where they can. That part comes naturally. The animation serves to soften the blows while at the same time slowing the pace for maximum absorption of effect. In French with English subtitles.
Speaking of taking care of kids, I also really liked My Life as a Zucchini, another film that takes a normally kid-friendly format — animation, this time — and takes it into adult territory through simple honesty about the way young people suffer from grown-ups’ damage.
Movie
Before I Fall ***
Zoey Deutch stars as an entitled brat (and founding member of her school’s elite “mean girls” clique) who is inexplicably compelled to wrap up her final moments on Earth reliving the last day of her life before getting it right. Other than an unexpected air of adroitness that occasionally kicks in to boost the narrative, there’s nothing particularly original about this bald-faced lift of Groundhog Day that’s geared for teenage girls. Still, short of tipping friends and family to that day’s winning lottery numbers, the altruistic upshot of Deutch’s endeavors come off as a pleasant shock in a genre film that at any second could have veered in the direction of fanboy horror or soporific sentiment. Deutch’s naturalistic performance grounds the various layers of the story in a manner that keeps it from becoming either boring or wildly unrealistic. With Jennifer Beals as Deutch’s mother and Elena Kampouris as the school’s sheep-haired misfit. Ry Russo-Young directs.
Just up the lifeline from kids, you find young adults, and even they got solid treatment this week: Scott gave three stars to the Groundhog Day for teens that is Before I Fall.
Only the voguing doc Kiki failed to impress. (Maybe see Strike a Pose instead when it comes out online?) Of course, that was before Scott went to check in on Table 19 and The Shack today. He'll send the reviews along directly, but it's probably too much to ask for this week's genre basket to contain a fresh rom-com and a hearty faith-based entry on top of everything else.
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