This Week at the Movies

James Mangold’s “The Wolverine” is a step above 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and a pretty decent summer comic book movie extravaganza if not exactly a raison d’etre for future installments.

Thankfully, this new Wolverine movie places most of its action outside the mythmaking of other “X-Men” films. In other words, it’s not yet another origin story, but rather a stand-alone adventure that just so happens to involve the titular character.

At the film’s beginning, Logan/AKA Wolverine – who I must remind you has lived for centuries – is a prisoner of war during World War II. During the bombing of Nagasaki, he saves a soldier, who seeks him out years later (in the present) and beckons his presence to Japan.

Once there, Logan gets mixed up in the family drama of the man he once saved. The aging – and rapidly declining man – intends to leave his technological empire to his granddaughter, rather than his own son. The clan has also become entangled with the yakuza, whose members Wolverine battles on top of a bullet train.

Mangold has incorporated martial arts and snowy, scenic backdrops into this latest “Wolverine” picture, giving it a moodier tone than its predecessors. And the film explores darker themes that put it more in line with Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy than your typical comic book picture.

So, it’s a decent movie – better than the recent “Iron Man 3” and just about on par with “Man of Steel.” I’d argue that, perhaps, it’s time to give this series a rest, but I see that “X-Men: Days of Future Past” is already scheduled for next summer. Alas.

Woody Allen’s latest finds the prolific director also treading on darker ground than usual – at least, for one of his comedies.

Taking a page from Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” "Blue Jasmine" is Allen’s most dour – and I mean this in a good way - comedy since the hilarious “Deconstructing Harry.”

Cate Blanchett – in one of her finest recent performances – plays Jasmine, a New York City-based Blanche Dubois, who has fallen on hard times after her philandering crook of a husband (Alec Baldwin as a Bernie Madoff type) has been imprisoned.

Broke and seemingly without purpose, Jasmine moves to San Francisco to crash at her sister Ginger’s (the always reliable Sally Hawkins) apartment.

Jasmine clashes with Ginger’s affably dopey boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale), although not quite on Stanley Kowalski levels.

The superb cast is rounded out by Peter Sarsgaard as a new suitor for Jasmine, Michael Stuhlbarg as a lusty dentist and a surprisingly restrained Andrew Dice Clay as Ginger’s ex-husband who lost all of his savings thanks to Baldwin’s pyramid scheme.

Most of Allen’s films are self-contained in that they tend to cover themes that the director has been exploring off and on throughout his career. So, it’s interesting to see him tackle the economic downturn and the age of Occupy Wall Street with his latest effort.

To place it within the spectrum of Allen’s work since the turn of the century, “Blue Jasmine” ranks just slightly behind “Match Point” and “Midnight in Paris” and just ahead of “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

And while Jasmine is a sort-of tragic figure that is often difficult to like, Blanchett’s performance is never anything less than riveting.

“Blue Jasmine” is Allen’s 43rd theatrical film as a director. Many great filmmakers lose their touch as their careers wind down, so it’s great to see that Woody not only still has it in him, but also that he is branching out with new ideas and themes.

“The Wolverine” is playing at Douglaston’s Movie World, while “Blue Jasmine” is screening at the Angelika Film Center. Allen’s film opens at Kew Gardens Cinemas on Aug. 16.