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X-Men: Days of Future Past doesn't feel like a superhero movie, at least not in a traditional sense. There are action scenes but many are suffused with a sense of futility. Battles turn into massacres with the "good guys" on the wrong side of the c...

The easiest way to summarize my reaction to X-Men: First Class is with a shrug. The movie is competently made (and not in 3-D, thankfully), has some nice action sequences, tells its story with workmanlike efficiency, and will probably please fans o...

For X-Men viewers, this is probably as straightforward as it gets: if you liked the first two, you're likely to appreciate the third. X-Men: The Last Stand isn't as taut or satisfying as X-Men 2, but it's better constructed and better paced than t...

The problem with X2 is essentially the same one that plagued X-Men: too many characters, resulting in too little screen time for each one. X2 may be the most ambitious superhero motion picture to date, but it doesn't work quite as well as Spider-...

How, one might ask, does one begin to defend Xanadu? To start with, by looking at it without any pretensions and seeing it for what it is. Conventional wisdom decrees that Xanadu is a horrible film. In a sense, conventional wisdom may be correct...

Certain historical periods provide rich and varied soil for the cultivation of motion picture storylines. The twilight of the Roman Empire is one. The American Civil War is another. World War II marks a third. And a fourth is the Chinese "Cultu...

For Vin Diesel, starring in XXX is a wonderfully smart career move. Too bad neither "wonderful" nor "smart" are applicable adjectives to describe this film. XXX is proof positive that it's easier to fail than succeed with the James Bond formula, ...

When the original xXx was released 15 years ago, it was designed as one of several potential franchise properties for a new hot-shot action star named Vin Diesel. In its August 2002 run, the film did respectably at the box office but fell short of th...

Where's the Kryptonite? What many movie producers fail to realize is that one of the keys to making a superhero interesting is to give him an Achilles heel - Kryptonite, so to speak. And one of the big problems with XXX: State of the Union is t...

How’s this for an alternate history scenario: What if tech companies had failed to identify or address the Y2K bug prior to 12:01 on January 1, 2000? I have always thought this concept might make for a fascinating movie. Sadly, that movie is...