X-Men: Days of Future Past

Director Bryan Singer returns to the X-Men franchise with this ingenious chapter that includes both the main X-Men casts, time travel and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine holding everything together. The movie starts in the future, where robotic monsters called the Sentinels are giving the Mutants a truly hard time in a post apocalyptic world. All hope seems to be lost until Charles Xavier/Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and his crew figure out a way to time travel. The hope is to cease the production of the Sentinels, which were created by Dr. Bolivar Trask (the always excellent Peter Dinklage) and take Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) off a dangerous destructive path. Jackman’s Logan makes the trip to the ’70s, where he wears a cool leather coat and still has bone claws. The action is terrific, especially in a sequence where Peter/Quicksilver foils a gun attack, and another where young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) uses an entire baseball stadium for nefarious purposes. The cast’s true standout would be James McAvoy as young Charles, still messed up after the events of X-Men: First Class. He adds a truly dramatic dimension to the proceedings. Having Singer back proves to be a good thing. The franchise surely suits his talents.