Last night I finally saw James Mangold‘s Logan, having missed the all-media two weeks ago. A T2-like road movie that finally concludes the Wolverine saga, it’s Mangold’s most assured ilm since Walk The Line. It’s intelligently composed, engaging and even incisive from time to time. There’s never any question about Logan being a cut above — smart, well-produced and grade-A as far as the genre allows.

And no element lit me up more than little Dafne Keen, whose instantly riveting performance as a junior-sized mutant is one for the ages. She has great eyes and a haunting stillwater vibe. In less than five minutes I knew for sure that Keen is the new Natalie Portman. (Born in ’05, she was 11 when Logan was shot last year — Portman, born in ’81, was 12 or 13 when she made her screen debut in Leon the Professional.)

Breakout Logan star and future Oscar-winner Dafne Keen, who’s now 12.

I fell in love with Keen, wanted her protected and safe, and was seriously pissed at Hugh Jackman for taking so long to wake up to the bond between them. A natural talent, Keen will probably win an Oscar for something or other within 10 or 15 years, mark my words.

But Logan wore me down with its relentless brutality. I was engaged as far as it went for, oh, 90 or 100 minutes but then I quit. I was the angriest guy in theatre #12, not to mention the oldest. I was muttering “Goddammit, Mangold…what the fuck.”

I loved Patrick Stewart‘s final Charles Xavier performance (he has two great scenes), and I felt seriously touched by Stephen Merchant‘s carefully modulated performance as the albino Caliban. And I loved the bit about an X-Men comic book foretelling what’s happening in real time (or what has always happened or will happen in a continuous real-time stream) — I wish the script had made more of this.

I don’t know what there is to say or feel about Jackman at this stage. I began tiring of his gruff, scowling “fuck off, leave me alone!” routine a couple of Wolverine movies ago, and there’s no question that Logan’s refusal to engage or accept what’s obviously happening (plot-wise, Laura-wise) goes on for too long.

But I disengaged when Jackman’s younger twin (X24) showed up and the Godforsaken poundings, gougings and kickings just wouldn’t stop. I actually said out loud “oh, come on, man…Jesus.”

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The first half of this Deadpool 2 teaser, directed by David Leitch, isn’t half bad. Which isn’t to suggest that the feature, which will open in March ’18, will be anything close to tolerable. Leitch is an ex-stunt man, for Chrissake — a Marvel-centric Hal Needham.

A portion of my review — “What If The Antichrist Wasn’t A Person But A Movie?” — posted on 2.17.16: “I lasted a little more than 40 minutes with Deadpool — not bad considering. I decided I’d be leaving early on, or right after the opening kick-ass sequence on the highway overpass when this quip-happy, totally indestructible Daffy Duck wastes…what, 25 or 30 guys? If a superhero flick is smart and clever and well-measured enough (Ant-Man, both Captain America flicks, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) I’m more or less there along with everyone else, but this…this is smug, empty, super-annoying, surface-skimming cartoon-level dogshit. Yeah, asshole — I know that’s the point but the point is submental.”

How have I visited the Palm Springs area…what, ten or twelve times this century and not, until this afternoon, visited Indian Canyons, which is bursting right now with the most luscious greens and rocky sandy browns mine eyes hath seen the glory of since…I was going to say Morocco or southern Spain but this is better.

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As it was unseasonably warm in Los Angeles yesterday, I presumed the desert would follow suit. So without investing a great deal of thought and feeling the jazz in my veins (i.e., that smooth hepcat samurai vibe), the SRO and I drove out to Palm Springs last night and discovered temps in the high 40s. Fantastic! A two and a half hour drive for nothing.

The idea was to hunker down in one of my favorite ’50s-style hotels, but the place I reserved (the Skylark, which I thought I knew) turned me off when I pulled up, and all the other joints I like (i.e., have stayed at before) were booked. And in bone-chilling jacket weather to boot.

The Ace Hotel (for under-40 hipsters) turned out to be an offense against God and man, charging $270 for a shitty shoebox that smelled like stale booze and cigarettes. The Motel 6 next door was even worse — the leftover aroma of farting, sandal-wearing, cigarette-smoking asshats who’ve stayed there for years on end. 

We finally settled on the Caliente Tropics, which tried to charge me $210 before I pointed out that their iPhone price was $149 — dicks. And then the shower didn’t work. Plus I love staying right on Palm Canyon Drive, which is like staying next to the Santa Monica Freeway in terms of howling-demon traffic noise and the banshee screech of truck brakes.

I’m very, very sorry we did this. I feel like such a doofus. I guess I’ll catch Logan somewhere and then do some hiking. The Palm Springs area blows without the heat.

This is several days old and yesterday’s news, but a 2.28 Hollywood Reporter piece by Stephen Galloway that derided the echo chamber of Oscar punditry and the failure of the know-it-alls to foresee Moonlight‘s Best Picture win (“Why the Pundits Were Wrong With the La La Land Prediction“) was wrong in two respects.

One, whoda thunk it? Even now I find it perplexing that Moonlight won. A finely rendered, movingly captured story of small-scale hurt and healing, it’s just not drillbitty or spellbinding enough. I wasn’t the least bit jarred, much less lifted out of my seat, when I first saw it at Telluride. It’s simply a tale of emotional isolation, bruising and outreach and a world-shattering handjob on the beach…Jesus, calm down.

As I was shuffling out of the Chuck Jones I kept saying to myself “That‘s a masterpiece?” (Peter Sellars, sitting in front of me, had insisted it was before the screening started.) If there was ever a Best Picture contender that screamed “affection and accolades but no cigar,” it was Moonlight. And the Oscar pundits knew that. Everyone did. So I don’t know what happened — I really don’t get it. I’ve already made my point about Moonlight in the Ozarks. It’s just a head-scratcher.

And two, Galloway’s contention that only pipsqueaks with zero followings were predicting or calling for a Moonlight win is wrong. As I noted just after the Oscars, esteemed Toronto Star critic Pete Howell and Rotten Tomatoes‘ Matt Atchity were predicting a Moonlight win on the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby charts. As I also noted, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone hopped aboard the Moonlight train at the very last millisecond, although she stuck to La La Land for her Gurus of Gold ballot. These are facts, and Galloway’s dismissing Howell and Atchity was an unfair oversight.

During the 2015 Spirit Awards ceremony I asked director Ira Sachs, whose Love Is Strange (’14) had been nominated for Best Feature and Best Screenplay, about his plans for a Montgomery Clift HBO biopic that he had begun to write with Mauricio Zacharias. He said it was a bit too early to discuss but I saw something in his eyes as we chatted — Clift’s saga was somehow too big for him.

(l.) Matt Bomer; (r.) the late Montgomery Clift.

Sachs has alway struck me as a somber internalist, a low-key indie guy, a dweeby explorer of quiet intimate material. He could never be mistaken for a director who feeds off the glare of the marquee, and Clift was and is “big” — a tragic brooding hunk (at least before the car accident), a famously closeted icon after his death and easily the charismatic equal of Marlon Brando and James Dean in the ’50s. Call me crazy but I heard a voice that said “Clift might be beyond Sachs’ grasp…they just don’t seem like a match.”

Well, here it is two years later and I haven’t heard zip about the Clift project, which was going to be a big score for Normal Heart costar and Clift look-alike Matt Bomer, and not a word about Sachs and Zacharias’ screenplay. But maybe I’m out of the loop so I’m openly asking the producers — Anonymous Content’s Tony Lipp and Alix Madigan, Pier 3 Pictures’ Michael Din and Larry Moss — what’s up. It just seems a shame that they might — I say “might” — have dropped the ball on this.

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The verb “tap”, as in (a) tap dancing, (b) tapping a person on their shoulder or (c) tapping their Trump Tower phone lines, isn’t spelled with two pees. Remember Hollywood Wiretap? It was founded by former Variety guy Tom Tapp. Maybe he has something to do with this.

Without trashing PwC’s Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz (who have been banished to Hollywood hell for the rest of their lives) and without stating again what a twisted kerfuffle it was or announcing measures that will prevent last Sunday’s debacle from ever happening again or anything along those lines, let’s try to appreciate what a truly great TV moment this was — a live, nutty calamity that allowed everyone concerned to behave like persons of honor and dignity (except for Cullinan and Ruiz, of course) and show what they were made of, especially La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz — he will probably never experience a prouder public moment in his life. Only 36 years old and the man is a living legend.

“I’ve just gotten back from a Sunday evening screening of King Kong, and the second and third acts of this monkey movie are pretty damned exciting in an emotional, giddily absurd, logic-free adrenalized way, and so I have a limited apology to offer to Peter Jackson.

“You aren’t that bad, bro. You got a few things right this time. The movie is going to lift audiences out of their seats. And I need to say ‘I’m sorry’ for bashing you so much because you’ve almost whacked the ball out of the park this time.

“King Kong is too lumpy and oddball during the first hour to be called exquisite or masterful, but there’s no denying it pretty much wails from the 70-minute mark until the grand bittersweet finale at the three-hour mark.”

I apologize for not trashing this bloated, over-cranked mess of a film. I should have manned up and called it what it was, but I caved to some extent. I could apologize for the rest of my life for this, and who would care? I fucked up and I’ll never be forgiven, and I shouldn’t be.

Similar-type hat, same blue coat and spinster shoes, same kit bag…safe and sound. The question is “did Saving Mr. Banks screw the mystique?” Julie Andrews was 27 or 28 when she performed the title role in Disney’s Mary Poppins 53 or 54 years ago. Emily Blunt, the star of Rob Marshall‘s currently-shooting sequel Mary Poppins Returns, is a bit older (34) but no matter. The ’64 film was set in 1910, but the sequel takes place 25 years later as the now grown-up Jane and Michael Banks (Emily Mortimer, Ben Whishaw) are visited by their former nanny and spiritual guide following a family tragedy of some kind. The script is by David Magee (Life of Pi, Finding Neverland); the costars are Lin-Manuel Miranda, Julie Walters, Meryl Streep and Colin Firth. Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury are in for cameos.

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