Temperament wise, Hugh Jackman doesn’t have much in common with his most famous screen role.
As the embodiment of Wolverine — a mutant blessed with miraculous healing powers but cursed with a bad hairstyle and existential angst — Jackman is the face of the character. But off screen he is as gracious as his cigar-smoking X-Men alter ego is testy.
His Prisoners co-star Terence Howard told me Jackman was, “a sweet man,” while director Josh Rothstein said the actor “leads with smiles and warmth.”
Doesn’t sound much like Wolverine to me.
When he isn’t playing Wolverine he devotes his time to charitable causes like World Vision and Laughing Man, a coffee company he established that sells fair trade coffee and tea, products farmed using ecologically friendly methods and sold for the benefit of the farmer and consumer.
This weekend he stars in Logan, the third solo Wolverine film. In the new movie the X-Men antihero makes tracks to the Mexican border to set up a hide-out for ailing mentor Professor X, played by Patrick Stewart.
This installment marks the ninth time Jackman has slipped on the adamantium claws, and will be his swansong in the role.
Having played the character for almost 18 years Jackman owns the part, bringing real humanity to the mutant in a powerful and accomplished performance.
But, as he told me in a friendly, wide-ranging and informative interview, he wasn’t always as self-assured.
“When I started acting I was the dunce of the class,” he reveals. Success in school, he says, came because of his work ethic, a trait he picked up from his father.
“He never took one day off in his life,” he remembers. “He had five kids he was bringing up on his own. If anyone deserved a day off it was my old man, but he never did. I learned that from him.
“There’s always that feeling of, ‘I have to work harder than everybody else. I’m not born Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I’ve got to just work harder and I’m prepared to do it.”
Being the youngest of five children also contributed to his outlook.
“I always wanted to do stuff and not be left out,” he says, but adds, “I was quite a fearful kid, which I hated.
“I’ve always had a fear of fear. It’s weird to think back now but drama school is a pressure cooker situation. People get kicked out of drama school. You are constantly being judged on how you are doing; are you progressing, are you not?
“Almost everyday you had to get up and do a monologue. Sing a song. Do it in front of everybody. I noticed I was always first. I never wanted to sit there waiting. I’m not saying that out of courage. It was too uncomfortable to sit, stewing. I don’t think I’ve told anyone else that.”
Later, fear of unemployment pushed him to expand his talents.
“When I came out of drama school I was like, ‘I’m going to do anything I can just to keep working.’ In drama school you do Shakespeare to movement to circus skills to singing all in one morning. I know a lot of people hated it but I revelled in it. I loved it.”
Seems hard work and confidence is the X-factor that made Jackman the most famous — and friendly — of all the X-Men.
“Logan” takes a Canadian superhero played by an Australian actor and places him smack dab in the middle of the great American movie genre, the Western. The third solo Wolverine film stars Hugh Jackman in his ninth and final incarnation of the cigar-smoking X-Man but this one is different from the others.
Set in the near future, when “Logan” begins the mutant world seen in the other “X-Men” movies has changed. Mutants are almost extinct, their greatest champion, 90-year-old Charles Xavier (Sir Patrick Stewart) is senile and his school, the Xavier Institute, shuttered. Wolverine, a mutant blessed with healing powers but cursed with a bad hairstyle and existential angst, tends to Xavier, but age and a lessening of his powers have reduced the superhero to working as a chauffeur in Texas near the Mexican boarder. “Charles, the world is not as it was,” he says ruefully.
He is drawn back into his old life when he takes a job driving an 11-year-old girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) to a mysterious safe haven in North Dakota called Eden. Turns out the youngster is a chip off the old block, a clone-daughter of Wolverine. Like her old man the silent but deadly kid—she barely speaks a word until the last half of the film—has regenerative healing powers and retractable adamantium-coated bone claws; like most adolescents she’s volatile, with mood swings and the potential for violence.
They are on the run from the Reavers, a team dedicated to the destruction of the X-Men. Led by part cyborg head of security Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant), a surgeon whose father was killed by Wolverine, the Reavers are ruthless and possibly unstoppable.
Like the superhero at the heart of the movie, “Logan” is angsty and dark, a film that drips with sweat and regret. Director James Mangold tosses away the pop psychology of earlier “X-Men” outings, replacing it with something usually lacking in comic book movies, humanity. Wolverine may have super powers, but he’s never been more human than he is in “Logan.” A lion in winter, he’s a mentor, a friend, a warrior nearing the end of his run. “You are dying,” says Laura. “You want to die. Charles told me.” Sure, he can slice your head off with a flourish of his claws but this time around psychological vulnerability is front and centre, not his physical prowess.
Mangold has also done away with much of the computer-generated clutter that have become a de rigour in superhero flicks. He’s turned Wolverine’s valediction into a traditional drama. Think “Unforgiven” with claws. The character is wounded, wracked with regret for a legacy of bloodshed, a life he never asked for. It’s the kind of existential reckoning that fuelled Westerns like “Winchester 73,” “The Shootist,” “Shane” and “Ride the High Country” and while there are no cowboy hats on display, make no mistake, “Logan” is a call back to the days when antiheroes wore their wounds on their sleeves.
The movie works because Jackman digs deep. His portrayal of Wolverine has grown over the years from cartoon cut out to fully realized character. It would have been easy and probably commercially prudent to allow Wolverine to downplay his anguish and simply have him slice and dice his way through the “X-Men” franchise but Jackman rides the line. This is a violent movie that should satisfy fans hungry for action but his remorse, his regret is palpable and the character is more interesting for it.
There are echoes of other comic book tropes in “Logan.” There’s an evil Logan and an “Iron Man 3-esque” child sidekick, but it still feels like the evolution of the superhero movie. A hybrid of brains and brawn it is unafraid to call “X-Men” comic books “ice cream for bedwetters” while at the same time paying respect to one of it character cornerstones.
“Eddie the Eagle” is not a feel-good movie. Like Eddie, the English skier whose ambitions to compete in the Olympics made him a star, the film sets its sights high. It’s not content to simply be a feel good film, it’s aspiring to be a feel GREAT movie.
When we first meet Eddie it’s 1973 and he’s a cute English kid with leg braces and a dream of entering the Olympics. Unfortunately his bad knees prevent him from taking part in most of the tradition sports so he wants to use his skill at holding his breath to win the gold.
Cut to his teen years. The braces are gone and he home trains himself in pole-vault and (not-so) long jumps in hopes of taking a shot at the Summer Olympics. His father (Tim McInnerny) isn’t as hopeful. “You’ll never be Olympic material,” he says. Bloodied but unbowed, the now twenty-two year old Eddie (Taron Egerton) switches his focus to winter sports, specifically ski jumping. With no facilities available in England he heads to Germany to train. Trouble is, while he has spirit, he has no trainer or knowledge of the sport. “How do you land?’ he wonders after one disastrous jump.
After a rough start—cue the wipe out montage—he meets Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman), once an Olympic champion, now a drunk who maintains the jumps. Peary doesn’t think Eddie has a shot, but the young man’s enthusiasm wears him down and soon he is training Eddie for the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary. Ski jumping, he says, “is not just a sport, it’s an art. It’s spiritual.”
What Eddie lacks in technical skill he makes up for in determination. Because the Olympic rules hadn’t changed in 52 years since the last British ski jumper competed in the games, all Eddie has to do, basically, is show up and he’ll be guaranteed a spot in Calgary. First, however, he has to learn to jump without breaking every bone in his body.
Like Kendall Jenner or a YouTube cat video “Eddie the Eagle” is unashamed to flaunt its cuteness to appeal to viewers. Egerton, best known for his swaggerific role in “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” hands in a performance that makes Benny Hill look nuanced. With thick, ill-fitting glasses, he’s all doe eyes and determination, a stiff-upper-lipper who wants to be part of the Olympics to prove everyone who told him he wasn’t good enough wrong. It’s an underdog story of such epic proportions it makes “The Bad News Bears” and all other underdogs look jaded by comparison.
The movie’s tagline is, “Two underdogs, one dream,” so be assured, it doubles down on the long shot vibe. Jackman’s Peary is a man who once had it all, lost it and knows what it is like to be written off by everyone. He and Eddie are two peas in a pod and their dual ‘doing your best is the greatest reward’ message is the movie’s lesson. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Eddie the Eagle” is not an ambitious movie. It sets out to do one thing—make Eddie an underdog for the ages—but I couldn’t help but think of the words of the founder of the International Olympic Committee, Pierre de Coubertin. “It’s not the triumph,” he said, “it’s the struggle.” The film may triumph in that its modest goals are achieved but the struggle to tell a truly interesting story devoid of manipulation was too much for director Dexter Fletcher. “Eddie The Eagle” lands with a bit of a thud.
Director Joe Wright’s newest film is an origin story for Peter Pan and Captain Hook. A prequel to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, it stars Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard, Garrett Hedlund as James Hook, Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily and Levi Miller as the title character.
It’s a new take on an old tale, something Wright specializes in.
His versions of Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina are classic yet modern takes on their source materials, as sumptuously theatrical as they are emotionally fulfilling.
Perhaps growing up with puppet theatre proprietor parents can be credited for his dramatic bent, but wherever it came from, his work is unique and eye-catching and Pan promises more of the same.
Here’s a look at the Wright Stuff from his past films:
Set in pre-Second World War England, Atonement begins as an idyll. A rich family with two daughters, the fetching and flirty Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan), are vacationing at their rural country home. The handsome son of the family’s housekeeper Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) is the object of affection for both girls, but he only has eyes for Cecilia. When Briony catches the two in a passionate embrace she is overcome by jealousy. To keep the lovers apart she impulsively comes up with a childish, but devastating plan to accuse him of a crime he didn’t commit.
Best eye candy moment: An astonishing continuous fiveminute shot of the nightmarish Dunkirk evacuation, complete with 1,000 extras, livestock, and a beached boat all captured in one steady cam shot. “Basically, I just like showing off,” he jokes.
The Soloist is based on the true story of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a musical prodigy who developed schizophrenia during his second year at Juilliard School, and wound up living on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Robert Downey Jr. plays Steve Lopez, a disenchanted Los Angeles Times columnist who discovers Ayers and bases a series of columns on Ayers and his life. Over time they form a friendship based on the liberating power of music.
Best eye candy moment: Wright loads the screen with artful pictures such as a symphony of colour that fills the screen whenever Nathaniel listens to a live symphony orchestra.
Anna Karenina, Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s classic story of love, honour and deceit in 1974 Imperialist Russia begins with a family in tatters because of marital transgression. St. Petersburg aristocrat and socialite Anna Karenina (Keira Knightley) travels to Moscow to visit her womanizing brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) and his wife Dolly (Kelly Macdonald). Her counsel saves their marriage but the trip proves to be the undoing of hers.
Best eye candy moment: Every frame drips with beauty, from sets to clothes to Keira Knightley’s cheekbones, but the opening is a stunner, presenting what appears to be a stage production of Anna Karenina.
“Pan,” the origin story of Peter Pan from the fertile imagination of director Joe Wright, is an action-adventure movie featuring “Harry Potter” level darkness tempered with humour, slapstick and Wright’s incredible visuals.
“Sometimes to know how things end,” says the opening narration, “we have to learn how they begin.” That means taking us back to London, circa World War II when Peter (Levi Miller) was a baby, abandoned by his mother at an orphanage. Turns out the high-spirited boy was born of a fairy prince and a human girl, and when he is kidnapped by the evil pirate Blackbeard (an almost unrecognizable Hugh Jackman)—“ He’s the pirate all other pirates fear,” they say. “The original nightmare!”—he soon learns his fate is to go to Neverland—a colourful kingdom that looks like it would have pretty good tiki bars—and lead an uprising against the tyrannical pirate. With the help of Indiana Jones wannabe James Hook (Garrett Hedlund) and Princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) Peter learns of his mother (Amanda Seyfried), his powers and his place in this magical world as the leader of the lost boys.
“Pan” is a high-tech, old-fashioned adventure that doesn’t handle kids with kid gloves. From the evil looking clowns that snatch orphans from their beds to Peter’s longing for his absent mother, the movie is unafraid to mine the nightmares and emotions that keep children up at night. It’s all in service of the story, however, and never feels gratuitous. Instead Wright fills the screen with wonder and imagination, from giant floating oceans and a chicken who lays an egg mid air to Smee’s rows of tiny teeth to the skeletal Neverbirds, all dreamlike images that should fire imaginations rather than inspire bad dreams.
Wright sneaks in a few treats for the ears as well. The Ramones’s “Blitzkrieg Bob” makes a remarkably effective pirate chant—“Hey ho, Let’s go!”—and “Smells Like Teen Spirit’s” refrain, “Here we are now, Entertain us,” becomes a catchy work song for pixie dust miners.
In every scene is newcomer Miller. As Peter he puts you in the mind of Daniel Radcliffe, a self-possessed performer who does a good job at battling the special effects and Jackman’s scene chewing. Jackman hands in a highly theatrical, but very amusing performance as the dandy but dangerous pirate.
The casting of Mara as the indigenous tribal princess Tiger Lily has been a lightening rod for controversy. She handles herself well, but it would have been nice to see an actor of Native American background take on the role.
Near the end of the movie Neverland is described as, “a dream from which you never wake up,” but by the time “Pan” gets to the climax, shot in a pixie dust vault that resembles Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, the film becomes less dreamlike. A noisy conclusion to the story allows the special effects to take over and “Pan” becomes a little less magical and a bit more mundane.
The new Hugh Jackman movie could have been called Wolverine Goes to Ethiopia.
Instead, the documentary of Jackman’s trip to the African country to raise awareness about the benefits of fair trade coffee and ethical consumption is called Dukale’s Dream and debuted on iTunes yesterday.
The story began six years ago when Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness teamed with World Vision as ambassadors. On their first trip to Ethiopia they met a coffee farmer named Dukale, a man who would inspire them personally and professionally.
“When we met Dukale there was definitely a sense that he and Hugh had a great and immediate connection,” says the film’s director Josh Rothstein.
“There is just something about his personality and Hugh’s personality. By default they both lead with smiles and warmth. There is something amazing about watching these two people from such different cultures just having this immediate connection. They both got a kick out of each other.”
The connection made with this Ethiopian farmer deepened Jackman’s commitment to using his fame to raise awareness for fair trade coffee. “He’s well aware he has that profile and that’s part of what we document,” says Rothstein, “his sense of a responsibility. Of saying, ‘I have this profile, what do I want to do with it?’”
Dukale’s Dream is part of the mission but, as the film shows us, Jackman also put his money where his mouth is with the establishment of Laughing Man, a coffee company that only sells fair trade coffee and tea — products farmed using ecologically friendly methods and sold for the benefit of the farmer and consumer, including coffee that comes directly from Dukale’s farm.
All Jackman’s profits are donated to the Laughing Man Foundation, which supports educational programs, community development and entrepreneurs around the world.
Laughing Man demonstrates how consumers can be directly linked to the coffee chain to create jobs and better lives for people the world over, but Rothstein hopes the film opens eyes as well.
“I’d love to be able to look back and say the film really helped to move the needle in the space of making coffee a one hundred per cent sustainable commodity,” he says.
“It has such a profound impact on global poverty and the environment. (We) can impact various industries with (our) purchase choices. That is the larger agenda. I think it is possible and I think there is something contagious about the idea that in our everyday lives we have power.”
Unless the movie is called “Planet of the Apes” its faint praise to say the monkey is the best thing about a picture. Such is the case with “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb,” the third outing in the popular Ben Stiller kid’s franchise. Crystal the Monkey as Dexter a Capuchin monkey, gets the most laughs and is the only member of the top-of-the-line cast who doesn’t feel like they’re only in it for the big holiday movie paycheque.
On the third visit to the New York Natural History Museum we discover the Tablet of Ahkmenrah, the magical Egyptian plaque that gives its life force to the museum’s statues, allowing them to come to life after the sun goes down, is losing its power. Soon the tablet will die and so will animated exhibits Theodore Roosevelt (Robin Williams in one of his last movies), miniature men Jedediah and Octavius (Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan), and a Neanderthal named Laa (Ben Stiller). To save them night guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller again) travels to the British Museum to find the secret to restoring the artifact’s power.
“Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb” beats the original premise into submission, blowing up the idea of a secret nightlife at the museum into the best example this year of how franchise filmmaking can go horribly wrong. Like the dimming tablet that slows down the wax exhibits, this movie sucks the life out of once interesting characters, placing them in a plot that is essentially an excuse to showcase more characters (like Dan Stevens as Sir Lancelot and a surprising and rather charming cameo from a very big star) and bigger special effects than in parts one and two.
There’s plenty of kid friendly slapstick and computer generated effects but a short action scene inside M. C. Escher’s topsy turvy staircase painting shows more imagination than the rest of the movie’s big set pieces put together.
It all feels old hat and despite the nostalgic rush of seeing the late Mickey Rooney and Robin Williams on the big screen, it’s less exciting to see Sir Ben Kingsley as Ahkmenrah’s father delivering bad double entendres like, “I am a pharaoh. Kiss my staff.” Andrea Martin has a fun blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo and the above mentioned cameo will raise a laugh, but as I left the theatre I couldn’t help but think my feelings about the film were best summed up by a line Octavius speaks just after a monkey urinates on him. “We must never speak of what happened here.”
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” offers up two for the price of one.
Merging the young versions of Magneto and Professor X with their older counterparts is a cool idea, and certainly gives the movie a boost in the marquee department, but I felt the old timers were left with their own heightened sense of drama and not much else. It seems a shame to have McKellen and Stewart, the Martin and Lewis of mutants, on screen together and not give them much to do.
Based on a 1981 two-issue special of the X-Men comic series the new film begins in a post-apocalyptic future. “A dark and desolate world,” according to the narration. “A world of war, suffering and loss on both sides—mutants and the humans who tried to help them.”
The causing all the trouble are indestructible robot warriors called Sentinels. Able to adapt to any mutant power they’ve created chaos for the mutant race, bringing them to the edge of extinction.
In an effort to “change their fate” long time enemies Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) team up with Storm (Halle Berry), Blink (Fan Bingbing), Bishop (Omar Sy) and use Kitty Pryde’s (Ellen Page) teleportation ability to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to change history and prevent the creation of the murderous automations. His first task is to convince the 1973 versions of Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and young Professor X (James McAvoy) that they are stronger together than apart.
The only things larger than the movie’s lengthy list of stars are the big ideas contained within. Wrapped around a simple time travel story—the kind of thing “Family Guy” does once or twice a season—are timeless ideas about racism, tolerance, war and rebellion. Not usually the stuff of summer blockbusters, but the X-Men franchise has always been a bit brainier than most. At times it’s a bit too ponderous, but I’ll take that over the flash-and-trash of most CGI epics.
Not that it’s a total head trip. It’s a movie about time travel, mutants and serious actors like Michael Fassbender saying lines like, “We received a message from the future,” so, of course, it’s a little preposterous. That’s part of the fun. It plays with the conventions of big time summer entertainment—check out the spectacular time-shredding sequence featuring the lightening-fast mutant Quicksilver (Evan Peters) that’s both eye-popping and cheeky—but tempers the bombastic stuff with thought provoking notions.
In fact, it could be argued that the ideas are the stars of the film. Jennifer Lawrence is the a-listiest actress in Hollywood right now, but in her second outing as Mystique she almost gets cut adrift in a sea of characters. Ditto Peter Dinklage as the closest thing the film has to a villain.
They’re all good, but Magneto, Professor and Wolverine are complex, cool characters that bring the film’s themes to life; all the rest is set dressing, except for the Quicksilver scene. That was like The Matrix without Keanu’s hangdog expression.
“Death Wish,” the Charles Bronson revenge drama, painted its main character as a vigilante hero, someone who evened the score when the police couldn’t.
“Prisoners,” a new child abduction drama starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Terrence Howard, isn’t as cut and dried. It asks the question, How far would you go to get the information you need to protect your family?
The story is fairly simple. Best friends Keller and Grace Dover (Jackman and Maria Bello), Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) and their kids spend Thanksgiving together. After dinner the youngest members of the family, Anna Dover (Erin Gerasimovich) and Joy Birch (Kyla Drew Simmons) go for a walk and never return.
Panicked, the family search the neighborhood and when they come up empty the police are called with a description of the girls and a suspicious RV that was seen in the area. The camper is racked down and Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal) arrests a suspect, Alex Jones (Paul Dano).
Keller is convinced the police have the right man and when Alex is released, he takes matters into his own hands. Kidnapping Jones, he tries to beat a confession out of him. When that doesn’t work his methods escalate.
There is a serial killer subplot woven into “Prisoners,” but it detracts from the core element that makes the movie interesting. Jackman brings the full weight of Keller’s anguish to the screen, and his performance carries with it the moral dilemma of the movie. The serial killer element feels tacked on, as though screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski felt he needed to up the tension with a “Criminal Minds” style plot twist.
It’s too bad, because the last hour—the movie clocks in at 150 minutes—feels unnecessary. The procedural elements is interesting until the red herrings start and the movie moves away from the ethical question that propelled the first half.
“Prisoners” is compelling stuff. At its heart it is a family drama with a twist. But as is, it almost feels like two movies.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
