Logan (R)
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This came out in 2017, but I didn't see it until 2024. Many people would say it's the best X-Men movie ever, and I can certainly understand why, but I don't think it's quite my favorite. I say this because immediately after watching it, I didn't feel like rating it higher than one heart, whereas I previously rated X-Men: First Class two hearts. Whether I'd rate it that highly if I re-watched it, I have no idea, but that was how I felt about it at the time. And maybe if I re-watched this film, I'd rate it higher than one heart. So maybe that was my favorite X-Men movie, or maybe this one is. But there's a difference between "favorite" and "best", and this one is probably the best.

It's set in 2029, in what I guess is meant to be an alternate timeline from the other X-Men movies. Most mutants have been killed, and no new mutants have been born in a generation. Logan (aka Wolverine) is working as a chauffer for rent in Texas, while living in Mexico. There, with some help from a mutant named Caliban, he takes care of Charles Xavier, who has a degenerative brain condition that causes him to have seizures that can injure or kill people in the vicinity, and incapacitates them for the duration of the seizure. (Logan himself isn't quite as badly affected as other people or even mutants, but he's still affected enough to make it hard to move.) Logan does his best to obtain medicine to prevent Charles from having these seizures, by suppressing his mutant abilities. Despite that, Charles claims to be in telepathic communication with an unknown mutant. Meanwhile, Logan isn't in great physical condition, either. Something inside him is slowly poisoning him, apparently it's all the adamantium that was put into him many years ago. He's losing his ability to heal, and he spends a lot of his time drinking.

One day, Logan is approached by a desperate woman named Gabriela, who wants him to transport a young girl named Laura to North Dakota, where there's supposedly a refuge for mutants. (Laura is played by Dafne Keen, whom I already knew from His Dark Materials, a series she starred in a couple years after this.) At first Logan refuses, but when a group of Reavers led by a guy named Donald Pierce show up looking for Laura, Logan and Laura (who is a major badass) fight them off and go on the run, along with Charles. Pierce's group is eventually joined by Dr. Zander Rice, the head of a company called Transigen, which had created Laura and other mutants using DNA from various natural-born mutants, including Logan. They want to recapture all the young mutants who had escaped from Transigen awhile back.

And... lots of other stuff happens that I don't want to spoil. There are some very intense fight scenes peppered throughout the movie, but mostly it's a character-driven drama. And it is some damn good drama. But it's also quite somber, and tragic. So it's not a particularly fun movie to watch, but sometimes fun isn't the point of a movie. It's certainly never boring. And its story and characters are very engaging. The relationships between Logan and Charles, and between Logan and Laura, are both very compelling. I feel like I'm not saying nearly enough about the plot, whereas I often feel like I've said too much about a movie. But like I said, I really don't want to spoil anything. It's just a very good movie, and very different from other X-Men movies (or superhero movies in general). Which is, in my opinion, a good thing. Not that I don't love other superhero movies, many of them even more than this one, but this was a most welcome change of pace and tone.