X-Men Details

Directed and co-written by Bryan Singer, this is the darkest superhero movie since Batman and features the coolest special effects this side of The Matrix. The story, set in the not-too-distant future, follows the power struggle between two factions of a new breed of humans with assorted strange powers — the good led by disabled professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the bad led by Magneto (Ian McKellen). The Marvel Comics characters — including metal-boned Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), climate controller Storm (Halle Berry) and telekinetic Dr Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) — are well realised and Singer mixes the classic values of good storytelling with liberal amounts of digital magic. On the down side, this plays a little too much like the beginning of a franchise and — outside of the theatrically trained Stewart and McKellen — star quality is in rather short supply.

Stylish comicbook action movie that is one of the few to suggest that some intelligence is involved, though its attempt to find a connection between its mutants and the Jewish victims of the concentration camps is ill-judged.