Refreshing the franchise by returning to its ‘60s genesis, X-Men: First Class details the formation of Marvel’s mutant superhero team, created under the auspices of benevolent telepath Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and militaristic metal-controlling Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) dully rehashes Magneto’s concentration camp origins from the first X-Men in…

A hodgepodge of hallucinatory symbolic nonsensicality, El Topo has lost little of the maddening, bewildering weirdness that made it a seminal midnight-movie phenomenon. A cult reputation seems fitting for a film made by a mind seemingly warped by religious nuttiness, with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s saga operating as a Christianity-infatuated spaghetti Western spoof that gleefully frustrates literal,…

An Exorcist-style redux about belief in the face of Satanic possession, The Rite (supposedly based on true events) parades about with a self-seriousness at odds with a second-half dominated by veiny-faced, limb-contorting special effects and screaming, screaming, screaming. Determined not to follow in the footsteps of his mortician father (Rutger Hauer), Michael (Colin O’Donoghue) flees…

John Carpenter’s track record may not be unblemished, but that still doesn’t account for the rampant cheesiness of Vampires, a suspense-free snark-fest desperate to turn its protagonist – vampire slayer Jack Crow (James Woods) – into a Snake Plisskin-style icon of supernatural-badass cool. That goal is a futile one, however, in large part because Crow’s…

Joe Johnston accurately replicates the look and feel of ‘30s serials with The Rocketeer – too accurately, in fact, for his film’s own good. Fidelity to period details is matched by a faithful spirit of pre-WWII aw-shucks superhero blandness in this comic book-y saga (based on Dave Stevens’ graphic novel), which finds flyboy Cliff (Bill…

A competently helmed piece of genre derivation that substitutes a zombie plague for an airborne-viral-pandemic plague, Carriers brings absolutely nothing new to the table. In an undefined future America, once-Yale-bound Danny (Lou Taylor Pucci) and his macho brother Brian (Chris Pine) traverse the Western highways – with Brian’s girlfriend Bobby (Piper Perabo) and young Kate…

That The Green Hornet is an action-comedy devoid of excitement or laughs is depressing; that it’s a Michel Gondry film with only faint traces of idiosyncratic style, however, is just about unforgiveable. The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep auteur helms this modernized take on the masked crime fighter with…

Though brimming with overripe sexuality and photographed with an eye toward operatic horror-cinema iconography, Bram Stoker’s Dracula remains a feast for the senses that fails to satisfy the heart, libido or mind. Working from his source material’s general narrative template, Francis Ford Coppola shoots for gothic grandeur via a variety of formally sumptuous tableaus. Many…

Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest saga of primal masculine rage, Valhalla Rising sets itself in 1000 A.D. in the Scandinavian mountains, where a mute warrior slave dubbed One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) is held captive in a cage, only allowed out to battle for sport while tethered at the neck to a wooden post. Desperate to return…

A figurative little red riding hood searches for self, family and truth while pursued by big bad wolves in Hanna. Joe Wright’s film shares with the recent Sucker Punch a fascination with young ass-kicking girls on the hunt for empowerment and actualization, but whereas Zack Snyder’s pop-culture upchuck fetishisized via videogame and blockbuster cinema clichés,…