Logan

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. (2017-03-02)

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. (2017-03-01)

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. (2017-03-01)

I can't resist any part of the mutant universe, including Wolverine's solo movies or the much-derided X-Men: Apocalypse, and even where I'm on the fence about a given film (X-Men: The Last Stand), I can still enjoy it over and over. And yet now, half a day after seeing this film, I cannot imagine that stories from this world will continue to be told. Logan, in a hundred and one ways, serves as the final chapter, the most human and believable one. It is a bloody, uncompromising, and depressing chapter, but precisely because of that, the clear message of the entire X-Men saga resonates much louder than I dared expect. Remembering almost any scene tightens my heart and I nostalgically immerse myself in the times when seventeen years ago, as a teenager unfamiliar with comics, I went to the local cinema for something called X-Men and in an empty cinema first discovered what adamantium is. Hugh Jackman made it happen, and has done so now more responsibly than ever. Except that back then, it was for the first time; this time it's definitely the last. (2017-03-04)

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% (2017-03-01)