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Topic: Logan (2017)

Sam Graham
AKA: "The Evil Sam Graham". Wackiness ensues.

Posts: 1431
From: Waukee, IA
Registered: Dec 2004

posted 03-04-2017 09:33 PM

CINEMA: Warren East, Wichita, KS
AUDITORIUM: 4
PRESENTATION: Warren 21 Recline-O-Vision with the WAVE, playing the best soft rock hits since 1974
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: Guy next to me reeks of beer
RATING: Three stars (out of four)

The guy to the left of me reeked of beer. The guy to the right of me spent the time before the trailers watching the first X-Men movie on his phone.

THE PLOT: A limo driver is threatened. Wackiness ensues.

I guess Deadpool's success clears the way for F-bombs because they're not held back by anyone in this farewell to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. Even Professor X doesn't hold back. The movie is set in 2029, a time when everything...cars, cell phones, clothing...hasn't evolved since 2017 at all.

The overall tone is pretty dark, it's violent as hell, and the ending is sad. Still, it's the best of the Wolverine-specific movies.

There is no scene after the credits (which is fitting given the finality feel of the feature) but Marvel has people so well trained to expect something that literally NO ONE left the theatre until the house lights came up.

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Jonathan Goeldner
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1360
From: Washington, District of Columbia
Registered: Jun 2008

posted 03-08-2017 08:04 AM

I must admit, I am not a fan of the stand alone Wolverine movies ... at all, but this... wow! the R-rated violence was vicious and ferocious. Also, hand it to have a surprisingly outstanding Atmos mix that put some of the Disney's MCU Atmos mixes to shame.

on the negative side, the screening I saw, the projector decided to shut off for some bizarre reason - we had the audio, but the image just up and disappeared for the last four minutes of the movie (a friend told me what happened).

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Geoff Jones
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 579
From: Broomfield, CO, USA
Registered: Feb 2006

posted 03-08-2017 08:16 AM

I saw this at Harkins Northfield in Denver on Sunday.

A manager with a microphone came out before the show and made an announcement, going over three things:

1) Turn off your cell phones because the light is distracting.
2) Logan is rated R for a reason, and it's more than 2 hours. If your toddler starts to make noise, take them out in the hall. If you feel like you're missing too much of the movie, let us know and we'll give you a pass.
3) No smoking, even e-cigarettes. The smoke is distracting.

He also mentioned that management would be checking in every fifteen minutes or so.

He had a good attitude about it all and he came off well. I applaud the theater for doing this. I also wonder what happened on Friday or Saturday to prompt it.

Logan was good, but not as much fun as Deadpool.

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Michael Brown
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1522
From: Bradford, England
Registered: May 2001

posted 03-12-2017 12:55 PM

Attendance: Showcase Cinema Leicester
Screen 11 X-Plus Screen with Dolby Atmos

This was my first go at Dolby Atmos so this is as much a review of that as the movie. Both of which I thought were average. I think my favourite of the "Wolverine" movies was the origins one. Apparently everyone hates it but I recall having fun with that one. Don't think this one was bad, but it didn't live up to the hype. I didn't cry in the end!.

Not too much to say about the Atmos mix, it felt like this was a front heavy mix anyway not much surrounds. In the opening rain storm you could hear rain above your head. Not sure if that was worth the £11 I paid to watch this in the atmos theatre.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 03-12-2017 04:11 PM

Cinema: Carmike (or is it AMC?) Patriot 13, Lawton
Screen: "IMAX"
Format: 2K 5.1 (but it's BIG, so pay us more money)
Presentation Problems: More than 2 surround speakers would be nice. On a positive note I didn't see/hear any phone activity from the audience.
Rating: 3 stars out 4

I actually watched Logan last weekend. The movie on its own is a pretty good movie. I liked it more than The Wolverine and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (screw what they did with Deadpool in that movie). Logan is definitely good if you don't think at all about any of the previous X-Men or Wolverine movies. If you do think about those movies then the very dark, very R-rated, tragic tone won't make any sense. How did we go from the happy endings of previous X-Men movies for Logan to open in such a sad, awful situation? It's like this movie takes place in an entirely different, alternate movie reality. I guess we're not supposed to care since the previous movies pretty much blew story time line continuity all to shit.

All of the previous X-Men/Wolverine movies were pretty sanitized in terms of the violence. Viewers never really saw in detail the kind of injuries Logan's claws could deliver to an opponent. This movie is quite different. I was laughing a little at some of the over the top graphic violence, "aww, claws through the face!" My girlfriend winced and turned her head away from the screen.

quote: Sam Graham
There is no scene after the credits (which is fitting given the finality feel of the feature) but Marvel has people so well trained to expect something that literally NO ONE left the theatre until the house lights came up.

There were lots of people hanging around after the credits after this movie waiting on a scene. That was despite the Carmike crew telling them there was no after credits scene. BTW, we were only staying to check out credits to see filming locations. This movie (like so many others) has some glaring problems with bullshit geography. I've driven all over Oklahoma City many times, but never have seen an Oklahoma City limits sign placed on what looks more like the mountainous outskirts of Albuquerque.

The Deadpool "coming soon" teaser on the front of the movie was pretty funny. I guess Marvel and 20th Century Fox had to license that Superman movie music.

quote: Michael Brown
Not too much to say about the Atmos mix, it felt like this was a front heavy mix anyway not much surrounds. In the opening rain storm you could hear rain above your head. Not sure if that was worth the £11 I paid to watch this in the atmos theatre.

Marvel movies have generally been pretty underwhelming when it comes to Dolby Atmos mixes. You'll get some sprinklings of ambient sounds but for the most part they're hardly different from conventional 5.1 or 7.1 audio. Movies that really make good use of the sound format's creative capabilities (like "Gravity" or "Edge of Tomorrow") seem pretty rare. I don't know how much more time it takes for a professional sound editing/mixing crew to put together a great Atmos mix of a movie versus that of an ordinary 5.1 mix. But I'm guessing the extra time needed is time not available to most post production teams.

Perhaps if more theaters are equipped with Atmos and maybe IMAX installs its 12-channel sound system in more than just its very small number of laser-based theaters then we might see a better effort made utilizing these next-gen audio formats.

I'm guess Atmos is not making much headway in home theater hardware sales. The current trend seems to be all about sound bars under the TV screen. That goes along with these silly pill-shaped Bluetooth speakers for mobile phones. Do those things even put out stereo?

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 03-13-2017 11:56 AM

Agreed. The violence hit my ok-this-is-too-damn-much level. There is just something really unpleasant seeing a kid slicing into someone multiple times and hearing that over-exaggerated squishing sound of what some sound designer thinks knives going into human flesh would sound like. I could have done without it.

Dark it certainly is. Plus, once you kill off Charles (the whole audience gave a collective moan during that scene and I even heard an out loud "Oh no." The whole dynamic of camaraderie that made the X group so appealing is greatly diminished -- Charles was the glue that held them together.

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Adam Martin
I'm not even gonna point out the irony.

Posts: 3686
From: Dallas, TX
Registered: Nov 2000

posted 03-13-2017 04:29 PM

Spoiler alert. [Roll Eyes]

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 03-13-2017 06:44 PM

Ah, guys, sorry about that; I didn't mean for it to be a spoiler -- I thought that it was already public knowledge -- Patrick Stewart had been doing the talk-show circuits and did reveal that tid-bit; I think I saw it either on Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert and definitely before it was released. But he also did it in other venues:

ConsequenceOfSound.net

quote:
It’s been known for some time that Logan would be Hugh Jackman’s final turn bearing the claws of Wolverine. Patrick Stewart had suggested the film might also be his last time in a wheelchair as Professor Charles Xavier, but now the actor has made it official. Stewart confirmed on The Graham Norton Show that he has indeed decided to retire from the X-Men franchise.

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Frank Cox
Film God

Posts: 2234
From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada
Registered: Apr 2011

posted 03-16-2017 06:33 PM

Superhero movies are certainly getting more "adult" than they used to be.

I think Logan is about the best superhero movie that I've seen in recent years.

The Deadpool thing at the beginning is clever but I'm thinking that there must be two different versions. I watched it on youtube when it was first mentioned and in that one Deadpool makes a phone call while he's in the phone booth, and then talks to Stan Lee when he come out of the phone booth. Neither of those two things happened in the version that's attached to the Logan movie that I have here.

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Stu Jamieson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 524
From: Buccan, Qld, Australia
Registered: Jan 2008

posted 03-23-2017 09:51 AM

Set in the future where mutants have all but been eradicated, an aging and ailing Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is shacked up with a mentally debilitated, nonagenarian Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and mutant tracker, Caliban (Stephen Merchant) in remote, desolate Mexico - the last of their kind, apparently. That is until 10yo Laura (Dafne Keen) enters the picture with abilities which are remarkably like the Wolverine's. Cue another nefarious government plot to genetically engineer and control mutantkind.

The great thing about the Wolverine spin off films is that they're more humanist drama/action movies than they are traditional comic book adaptations. This applies even to the much derided X-Men Origins: Wolverine. They represent a maturation of the comic book film which are freer to explore other genres outside the literally-derived, primary-coloured storyboard format.

James Mangold's two Wolverine films - this one and it's predecessor, The Wolverine - are a particular case in point. Absent are the ridiculous spandex suits which would be more at place in Strictly Ballroom, and in their place are civilian clothes, gritty drama, bloody violence and even (gasp) boobs! The gratuitous brutality and potty-mouth language are more at home in a Tarantino flick than an X-Men movie and that's not where the comparisons with Tarantino end. Interestingly, Mangold's films share much with Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 with his first Wolverine film being an "Eastern" (samurai/kung fu) and his second a Western featuring our favourite grumpy lone wolf bladeslinger reluctantly defending those in need. Indeed Mangold even goes so far as to explicitly cite the Western classic, Shane, as if to drive home the reference. This does, however, make these two films an admirably unique duo within the Marvel film canon.

Both Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart have publicly confirmed their departure from the X-Men franchise with this film and Logan is a good one to go out on. Largely casting off the shackles which usually restrict seasoned thespians in these types of roles, both have the freedom here to explore the idiosyncratic minutiae of their respective characters, allowing them to shine as performers like no other Marvel film before it. And we know from Jackman and Stewart's performances elsewhere that they are certainly up to this task.

The other stand-out is young Dafne Keen who gives a performance reminiscent of Natalie Portman in Leon. While she may not say much, it is a fine internalised performance with much depth. There's a future career to look out for.

There remains a couple of major plot point omissions (continuity errors, perhaps?) such as how on earth did Wolverine get his adamantium claws back after they were so dramatically excised in the previous solo film? And there still hasn't been a straightforward explanation as to how Xavier returned from being obliterated by Jean Grey in X-Men 3: The Last Stand. (Yes, I know they implanted his mind in another body - but the same crippled body......?) Given that these are two major features of the story arc, it's amazing that Mangold manages to get away with it. But it's a measure of his overall level of quality that we can so easily turn a blind eye to these seeming blatant oversights.

8.5 out of 10

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