Tag Archives: James Mangold

“Ford v Ferrari”: The Little Best Picture Nominee That Could

January 25, 2020 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Ford v Ferrari!

Stars of the hot new motion picture White Men Can’t Brake.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in a personal record, I saw eight of this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Picture before they were announced on January 13th:

…which brings us to the ninth and final nominee, Ford v Ferrari — director James Mangold’s salute to auto racing pioneers and big middle finger to self-absorbed corporate executives who think they know best. Brought to you by Twentieth Century Fox, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company.

(Fox greenlit this on purpose as a parable of how their 2019 went, didn’t they?)

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“Logan”: The Old Man and the Series

March 26, 2017 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Logan!

“Wow, Cyclops is an even bigger jerk in the comics. Maybe I should give these a chance after all.”

Midlife Crisis Crossover calls Logan the Greatest Wolverine Solo Movie of All Time!

That’s not a hard claim to make after the soggy mishmash of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the mostly not-bad The Wolverine, a Japanese action-adventure yarn that held up well until the final boss battle pitted Our Hero against a vengeful geezer-mech. The latter’s director James Mangold reunites with The Hugh Jackman for one last assembly with Marvel’s once-merry mutants in what may be the X-Men film least likely to sell a single action figure.

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So There’s a Scene During “The Wolverine” End Credits

July 28, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Hugh Jackman, Rila Fukushima, The Wolverine

For the first 2½ acts, The Wolverine is an engrossing slow-burn psychological thriller about the crippling effects of grief, powerlessness, sin, rediscovering your life’s purpose, and stranger-in-a-strange-land culture clash, all nestled inside an outlandish but well-oiled martial-arts flick that easily outclasses the previous Wolverine solo film. That being said, this is a rare instance of a Marvel film that would’ve functioned more cohesively if super-villains had been kept out of it altogether.

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