Logan: Beneath contempt

Logan (2017) • View trailer 
No stars (turkey). Rated R, and generously, for relentless profanity and strong, brutal violence
By Derrick Bang

Discussing the big-screen adaptation of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, back in late 2014, gave me the excuse to indict Suzanne Collins’ reprehensible source novel as a complete betrayal of her characters, and of her readers: a needlessly nasty finale that cruelly (and pointlessly) killed major supporting characters while turning resourceful Katniss Everdeen into a sniveling victim.

When their attempt to enjoy one restful night is interrupted by a squadron of gun-toting
killers, Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Laura (Dafne Keen) do their best to survive.

It was the most senseless, deliberately mean-spirited betrayal of a heroic franchise — by its original author, no less — that I’d ever encountered.

Until now. This film is even worse.

Logan doesn’t merely trash the long-beloved character of Wolverine, played here (for the ninth time!) by Hugh Jackman; director James Mangold and his gaggle of co-writers defecate all over the entire X-Men franchise and, by extension, the broader Marvel superhero universe. All this, with the apparent blessing of the parent company, given the familiar pre-credits Marvel Entertainment logo.

Shame on everybody involved.

Whereas 2014’s exciting X-Men: Days of Future Past cleverly employed backwards time travel as a means of re-booting the franchise — with smiles all around during the unexpectedly happy ending — Logan takes the opposite approach, moving the action forward to 2029. The tidings are grim: All of Logan’s X-Men comrades are dead, via some horrific event that apparently involved both Charles Xavier/Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and an evil scientific genius named Dr. Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant).

I say “apparently,” because while the film repeatedly references this ghastly occurrence, we never get details.

A despondent Logan, his once-invulnerable body being poisoned by the adamantium enhancements to his skeletal frame, is drinking his days away while earning chump change as a limo driver. His lair, across the border in Mexico, also serves as a hideout for Xavier, stricken with Alzheimer’s, senile dementia or some other brain disorder. Their sole companion is the albino mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant), who fears that he’s doing little but watching his two friends die. Slowly.

Unlike the rival DC universe, which occasionally indulges in such canonical mischief by branding the results “imaginary stories” or “elseworlds tales,” Mangold makes no such reassurances here. This is the way things are ... and they’re about to get worse.

Table 19: Book elsewhere

Table 19 (2017) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity, drug use, sexual candor and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang

Wedding guests often receive inconsequential little favors: tchotchkes that may draw a smile or two in the moment, but are quickly forgotten.

This movie is just such an item.

The misfits at Table 19 wonder what they've done, to be abandoned in the wedding
reception's far corner: clockwise from left, Bina and Jerry Kemp (Lisa Kudrow and Craig
Robinson), "Nanny Jo" (June Squibb), Walter Thimple (Stephen Merchant), Rezno
Eckberg (Tony Revolori) and Eloise McGarry (Anna Kendrick).

Filmmaking brothers Jay and Mark Duplass are known for modest, character-driven comedies — such as Baghead and Jeff, Who Lives at Home — that feature eccentric folks who don’t quite inhabit the real world. They’re somewhat familiar, in a that-quiet-guy-next-door manner, but you’d probably avoid them in a social situation.

Table 19, alas, is so insubstantial that it would blow away during a soft breeze. The premise is droll but cramped, barely able to drag its way through a mercifully short 85 minutes. Indeed, the film pretty much runs out of gas after the first act, leaving its cast adrift in uncharted waters.

Maybe that’s why the Duplass boys, who generally helm their own material, farmed this one off to director Jeffrey Blitz. Who, to be fair, does the best with what he’s got. Individual moments of Table 19 are quite funny — co-star Stephen Merchant is hilarious throughout — and the core plotline builds to a an unexpectedly poignant conclusion.

But the film too frequently struggles and flounders through awkward silences, much like the half-dozen strangers thrust together at the “misfit table” during a wedding reception that pretty much ignores them.

Until the last moment, Eloise (Anna Kendrick) was the maid of honor for best friend Francie (Rya Meyers), eagerly helping with all wedding and reception details. Eloise also was in a steady relationship with Francie’s brother, Teddy (Wyatt Russell), serving as best man. But that was then; after being dumped by Teddy — via text, no less — Eloise was relieved of her duties and transformed into an instant persona non grata.

(Which, just in passing, seems shallow on Francie’s part ... just as it seems weird that the best man would be her brother. But I digress.)

Defiantly determined to attend the blessed event anyway, Eloise duly arrives to find herself consigned to the Siberia of reception regions: the dread, distant corner Table 19.