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I finally got around to watching 2017's Logan a few days ago. I'm glad I did--I have my complaints but in the main I think it's the first X-Men film to live up to the potential of the first two Bryan Singer films--mind you, I haven't seen the Brett Ratner movie or the first two solo Wolverine movies but I feel relatively comfortable making that claim. It's pretty common now for films and television series to draw inspiration from classic Westerns but Logan nails the Western feel better than most.

The film's middle portion, where Logan (Hugh Jackman), Charles (Patrick Stewart), and Laura (Dafne Keen) briefly stay with a family of farmers is the best part of the film. It brings in a surprising sense of credibility with the corporate corn farm muscling in on the family--I really liked how the trouble starts because there's no water to clean the dinner dishes. But it's also very Spaghetti western--it's not unlike the McBanes getting slaughtered at the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West after Logan and patriarch of the farm, Will (Eriq La Salle), are met by a gang when they try to repair the sabotaged water pipes.

This is nicely paralleled by and tied to Richard E. Grant's character trying to turn mutants into a profit industry.

I only wish James Mangold had made the film a bit slower. My main complaint is that shots tend not to linger nearly as long as they should, nothing feels like it has time to settle in. But the film does work in spite of this.

Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart are both really good and the relationship between the two characters feels like a real evolution from the two as we saw in the Singer films. Where once Professor X was gently encouraging a cynical and world weary Wolverine to accept the hope promised by the mutant school we now see a world that's become much more like one that matches Logan's worldview. This is made so much more effectively painful by Stewart's performance as his Charles insists on treating young Laura and Logan with patience and gentleness even as his manner clearly shows he knows just how hopeless things have become. And he bears the weight of his own horrible mistakes.

The climax is good and it's great seeing Wolverine finally able to use his claws in a rated R film. Still, I don't blame Hugh Jackman for deciding to retire from the role after this, I can't imagine a better note to go out on.

Twitter Sonnet #1068

The trees absconded with the golden stars.
Atop the growing ornament was light.
Abeam the racing hooves a row of bars.
And all the walking fish were bade g'night.
The passing hand revealed a waiting ghost.
The hours hemmed in red and gold repair.
Mechanic routes ordained the normal toast.
The river webs announced the strange affair.
We saw the sun behind the skinny tree.
Reminders posted paint a shadow face.
The watch is running past the cup of tea.
A tablecloth askew, the only trace.
At lunch a cart ascends a thorny hill.
The garden turns for time's lethargic bill.

The subject of the Burke and Hare murders even attracted, of all people, the poet Dylan Thomas who published a screenplay adaptation in 1953. It wasn't until 1985 it was actually turned into a film, The Doctor and the Devils, though Thomas' screenplay was given a new polish by Sir Ronald Harwood. Directed by Freddie Francis and produced by Mel Brooks, the film has some truly stunning production design but lacks the courage of The Flesh and the Fiends, unfortunately modifying Thomas' screenplay in the hopes of attracting a wider audience.

Timothy Dalton plays what is likely the most dashing incarnation of Robert Knox, here renamed Thomas Rock. The action's also moved from Edinburgh to what is apparently London for some reason, most of the characters have been made English. Burke and Hare, renamed Broom and Fallon, are still Irish though you wouldn't know it from the accent put on by Jonathan Pryce, who plays Fallon.

Otherwise such a fine actor, I don't think I've ever heard such a colossal failure to achieve an accent. He sounds Russian. He sounds even worse when contrasted with Broom, played by Stephen Rea, who of course sounds perfect.

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That's Julian Sands as the romantic lead, basically the same character as the student in Flesh and the Fiends, both men have difficulty adjusting to their love for the prostitute, played by Twiggy in The Doctor and the Devils and renamed Jennie.

Twiggy doesn't seem nearly as hardened by life as Billie Whitelaw's version of the character and her reluctance to have a relationship with Sands' character comes from less clear motives. The movie splits the prostitute into two characters, giving Jennie a best friend named Alice (Nichola McAuliffe) who has a nice scene with Dalton where she thanks him for saving her brother's leg. This is a subplot resembling one from The Body Snatcher and is nice because it shows the Knox character actually putting his study to use in helping people rather than arguing on less tangible philosophical grounds.

The primary reason for the splitting of the characters is so one of them doesn't have to die. This results in a very lame, Hollywood climactic fight scene between Sands and Pryce that makes absolutely no sense.

Patrick Stewart, who himself played Knox for a BBC radio play a few years prior, is in the movie as one of the medical board in conflict with Dalton's character. The two have a very nice scene where they both present arguments over a pair of human kidneys in a jar.

The score by John Morris is nice but the best thing about the movie is by far production design. The dirty London streets are marvellously detailed with vegetable and egg stalls, colourful extras playing beggars, tinkers, prostitutes, and etcetera.