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It was X-Men that more or less triggered our obsession with superheroes a decade ago. And if the first four X-Men outings, each a comic book-inspired superheroes thriller, weren’t quite first-class movies, they were close, especially the first two. They may have been about outsiders with gifts who were second-class citizens, but none of the films would be mistaken for second-class citizens of the movie marketplace.
The involving and visually arresting X-Men (2000) and X-Men United (2003), both directed by Bryan Singer, had plenty of X appeal. And while we weren’t as X-static about X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) or the stand-alone W-Man spinoff, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), they were still solid if unexceptional. X-Men: First Class,a prequel to the others, is absolutely exceptional, the fifth and best of the bunch.

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As the old joke says, nostalgia just ain’t what it used to be. And here’s Woody Allen’s latest comedy to prove it. It wouldn’t be fair or accurate to call Midnight in Paris a comeback for prolific and accomplished Allen, even though his last outing, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, was certainly subpar. That’s because the two films of Allen’s that preceded that one — Vicki Christina Barcelona and Whatever Works — were strong and memorable. So we shouldn’t be surprised that Midnight in Paris, the writer-director’s 44th film, is a delightful and witty wish-fulfillment fantasy, a tightrope act that impresses us all the way across. Like Clint Eastwood, Allen keeps delivering, going strong in the twilight of his directorial career. And no longer anchored in New York, he has now concocted cinematic chronicles in London, Barcelona, and Paris as well.

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The deserving 2008 blockbuster, Kung Fu Panda, was a real kung fu movie that just happened to be animated. It was a splendidly designed and executed ‘toon about martial-arts mavens called the Furious Five, was fast, fierce, and funny, and didn’t panda to the kids. The sequel may not quite ascend to the same heights of humor, charm, action, and drama as the original, which set the bar impressively high. But it still proves to be an entertaining and worthwhile second helping. Jack Black returns as the voice of Po, the kung fu master who has become the new Dragon Warrior, living out his dream by swearing to protect the Valley of Peace and fighting alongside his former martial-arts idols.

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There’s sitting through root canal surgery. There’s sitting through a tax audit. And there’s sitting through Hobo with a Shotgun. Take your pick. This execrable exploitation flick is a crash seminar in torture, tastelessness, and literal overkill. Starring Rutger Hauer as a vagrant vigilante in a hellhole of a town, it’s so off-puttingly one-note, so repelling and objectionable, so miserable and appalling a viewing experience, such contemptible pond scum, it defies description. Not that that’ll stop me.

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As if the big summer movie season doesn’t kick off early enough, Fast Five had the year’s biggest opening — and the splashiest April debut in movie history — to get things started a week earlier than expected.
Thor’s thunderous opening and Bridesmaids’ brisk stroll down the aisle make it official: regardless of what the calendar or the school board or the thermometer says, it’s summertime at movie theaters across the land. So between now and late August, what will moviegoers be looking forward to, flocking to, then fleeing from or returning to, on theater screens, many of them offering 3-D visuals and a few even offering three-dimensional characters? As the year’s early box office slump disappears in the rear-view mirror, here are the summer’s shiniest and most promising attractions, in the order of their release, each a presumed masterpiece until we actually see it, with the lineup exhibiting more than a touch of sequelitis.

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This faith-based comedy-drama focuses on two African-American families from different rungs of the socioeconomic ladder who gather for a weekend on Martha’s Vineyard for a wedding celebration. The Taylors are from this side of the tracks, the Watsons from that side. So look out: class warfare is on the menu. Paula Patton and Laz Alonzo play the bride and groom, while Angela Bassett and Loretta Devine portray the respective matriarchs, the antipathetic mothers of the soon-to-be spouses. And the audience-friendly movie belongs to Bassett and Devine.

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When you call your movie Prom, it’s not characters or stars or relationships beckoning an audience. It’s that audience’s shared experience, whether present, past, or future. And all of Prom’s viewers will or will not go, or did or did not go, to that titular, nearly unavoidable spring ritual, which also, you might notice, happens to be a unique four-letter word. Ah, prom. Short for promenade. Short for promise. Short for promotion into adulthood. Short for "just get me through this." And Prom allows its target audience — primarily youngsters with proms ahead of them, secondarily folks of age still carrying around the nostalgic memories — to bring their projections and fantasies and memories with them while the cast and crew apply respectable production values to THE spring gathering without trying to reinvent the big wheel.

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Everybody loved Everybody Loves Raymond. At least, that’s the way it seemed when the Ray Romano-starring CBS situation comedy about that other f-word — family — was thriving on American television between 1996 and 2005. So when series creater, producer, and writer Phil Rosenthal accepted the opportunity to adapt his Emmy-winning, reality-based comedy about a husband/father, his family, and his overbearing parents living across the street for Russian television, he figured: How could it miss? What’s funny is funny. Well, not so fast, Yankee. The labor pains involved in translating this entertaining entity for Russian TV is the focus of this delightful and insightful culture-clash documentary written and directed by Rosenthal.

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This is the first movie about product placement and sponsorship deals to be funded entirely by product placement and sponsorship deals. Hey, you take your distinctions where you can get them and create your brand in any way you can. Which is exactly what documentarian Morgan Spurlock has done. The official full title is POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. After all, why shouldn’t a nonfiction movie about branding, co-promotion, and product placement brand itself by placing a product reference in its title?
It’s an exploration of the troubling world of sponsorship and cross-promotional marketing, and stealth and subliminal advertising in movies and television.

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I scream, you scream, we all scream for more Scream. Or, at least, Scream-agers do. That’s the apparent assumption of the folks in charge of the commercially successful horror/humor franchise that once again gives us the relentless killer, Ghostface, as he’s called, the black-hooded, white-masked homicidal maniac who now returns after an eleven-year hiatus. He’s been the rotating boogeyman in the trio of popular horror thrillers that were, in the final analysis, merely which-teen-dies-next slasher flicks. This is the third sequel in the franchise, and because nobody wanted to change horses in mid-Scream, it is once again part suspenseful slasher-fest, part parlor-game mystery, and part campy parody. And, although this might seem damning with faint praise, as fourth installments go, this one goes in the books as a very pleasant surprise.

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