Director and co-writer James Mangold takes another stab at the adamantium-clawed superhero (after 2013’s Japanese noir The Wolverine), this time turning him into an ailing Western hero tasked with transporting a very special youngster to safety, and winds up making the best superhero movie in years. It helps that the normally lone-wolf Logan also has an elderly father figure in tow: Charles Xavier, a super-psychic whose mind is going — a dangerous prospect. Xavier wants Logan to have a life before he dies, and sees the kid as a signpost pointing toward hope. Our hero knows better, knows that it’s all bullshit and bloodshed and bad guys stomping on good. The kid was grown in a lab! There is no promised land! And yet. It also helps that from the outset, we know that death is a real possibility, and that it takes a toll on the one who deals it. (When you deal with enemies by carving them up at close range, your life is nasty and brutish, no matter how long it’s made by your mutant healing factor.) Hugh Jackman stars alongside Patrick Stewart and newcomer Dafne Keen. (2017) — Matthew Lickona