Logan

An action flick for adults that works with characters and emotions as though it was an epic drama, Logan is set in realistic locations overflowing with atmosphere, with action scenes worthy of James Cameron and the most effective, ultra-dark music Marco Beltrami has ever made (though not suitable to be listened to on its own) plus one soundtrack hit from Tarantino’s Django Unchained. It’s only once in a few years that I give five stars to a movie based on a comic book. (01/03/2017)

The more raw, the more mature. The comic equivalent of the Unforgiven / Gran Torina, in other words thank God it's not an adaptation of Old Man Logan, but an uncompromising advanced neo-western road movie from the department of "no change that things will go better, we just need to last till our death". It's just another Eastwood movie about the autumn of the life of an icon tortured by inner demons, only the footage is unreasonably long. (02/03/2017)

Everything has a price - Singer knew it at first. And Mangold is now paying her interest on all the excesses, cardboard, digital cotton wool and unfinished work. Brutal, explicit, socially dystopian, yet very nostalgic and sensitive to the characters that the film undresses from leotards and impales them with deadly diseases, coughs and doubts. No, Mangold is not an elite director. Sometimes the dark tone is on the brink of exaggeration, sometimes you can really see inside of it, but in the last shot it hit me as deeply as any other X-Men movie. It is in a way an e-Revolution. Logan uses it not only for vulgarisms and unusual anatomical clarity, but also for opening up a very unhappy vision of the future, in which heroism is just a dull memory from scuffed comic books. America in 2029 built from hints, but very current hints. Children of Men in a superhero version. Logan hurts. And that is good. A film for pessimists who can't stop believing. (01/03/2017)

What they promised us, that's what we got. Logan is more than a dignified farewell for Hugh Jackman and his most famous role, and finally a film that fans have been calling for for years. The rough action scenes, without much emphasis on nice choreography, and where extreme physicality and animal fierceness prevail, are very cool, but it is more of a drama than an action film. And a damn good one at that. The people behind this film understood that the announced "maturity" is not achieved through headshots and severed legs, but through characters and their behavior. Logan has never been this broken and interesting, and what happens to Professor Xavier is something you won't find it amusing at all, and the young Dafne Keen is an acting discovery on par with Haley Joel Osment. Add to that the excellent music, the western atmosphere, and the extremely intense finale, and you get one of the most interesting comic book movies ever made, which deserves to stand alongside The Dark Knight. A few years ago, we wouldn't even dare to hope for a film like this. (15/05/2017)

Definitely the most brutal, raw and darkest comic-book movie ever made. The desert to western vibe is absolutely fantastic, the bad guys are cool, and Wolverine and X23 pair up and tear apart anything that comes to hand. The action is perfect in every way and the quality of the gore is top notch. The scene with the black men in the building is one of the most atmospheric scenes in recent memory and the finale is literally breathtaking. It's a bit of a shame that it's not a very adrenaline-fuelled ride, in places the pace is really more sedate, especially before the finale the director had his foot on the brake, and the humour is also in short supply for a comic-book movie, but the atmosphere and the hard R-rating make up for it perfectly. This year I really don't want to compile a top list, since it's only March and there are already three contenders for the top spot. 90% (01/03/2017)