Tag: James Mangold

Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny : It’s been a bumpy fun ride, Indy, So long.

This is a very quick take. Like that masala dosa that you order every time from an Indian Coffee House though you know exactly how it’s going to taste like, this farewell to the Harrison Ford Indiana Jones is exactly what it’s supposed to be, just another Indiana Jones movie. ( Masala dosa is a pan cake that’s fried crisp and stuffed with potatoes cooked with spicy masala and Indian Coffee Houses are a chain of restaurants across run by a cooperative of workers and they serve the very same menu with the very same taste all over.) There’s a de-aged Ford for that extra dose of nostalgia and some decent action sequences. I liked the one with the horse, though Schwarzenneger has been there and done it too. Ford still throws a very hefty punch.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is no Angelina Jolie when it comes to raiding tombs. She has little to do here and for some reason you expect her to break the fourth wall any moment when she’s on the screen. After 2020’s Another Round, it’s hard to see Mads Mikkelsen as a bad guy. Nazis in Hollywood movies these days are more practical and they apparently serve their own purposes rather than that of you know who. The regular Indiana Jones entourage shows up too, given it’s a farewell. I watched it for Ford. That’s just me, though.

Logan : The Review.

Logan is to the X-Men film franchise, what the “The Dark Knight” is to the Batman films. James Mangold has an impressive resume already and he has delivered a Marvel movie which doesn’t look or feel like a Marvel movie and this film without doubt would definitely be counted amongst his best works. I would go so far as to say that this has to be the best X-Men movie to ever hit the screens, in fact it is one of the best superhero movies ever made, indeed.
It’s a welcome change from the mind numbing CGI action mayhem that has been fed to us of late by Marvel and DC. Of course this movie features some of the bloodiest and most gruesome action sequences I have ever seen in any superhero film but it plays out like a gritty action drama and not once do you feel that it’s an X-Men franchise film that you’re watching, well I may have exaggerated a bit there, but you’ll know what I meant when you go watch the film, yourself.

Logan is disturbing, dark and brooding not just for the sake of it and is a classic example of what good writing and visionary filmmaking can do to the most exhausted of themes. Mangold engages the viewer successfully and has managed to connect to an audience outside the cult fan base for the X-Men franchise here, I felt. There are quite a few lighter moments too which doesn’t feel forced at all and here again the credit goes to the writing.
Hugh Jackman plays “Old Man Logan” to the T while Patrick Stewart gets to play a Professor X who’s quite out of character, pun intended. The film does feature child artists in some extremely violent scenes and I wouldn’t be surprised if it does raise a few eyebrows, but why should movies be any different in a world where children are bombed in their homes and wash up ashore lifeless. I couldn’t help wondering if Mangold was silently delivering a message too with this film, presenting a “dystopian” future not too far ahead of our times, telling us where we are headed. The self driving trucks were the most obvious of indicators of how close we are to Logan’s world, at least to me.#logan