Superman: Up, up and away!

Superman (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for fantasy violence and action, and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.16.25

It’s damn well about time.

 

I had begun to worry that the current Warner Bros. regime didn’t have the faintest idea how to properly handle Big Blue.

 

Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo, center) and Clark Kent
(David Corenswet) are disturbed by the misleading spin that media talking heads have
put on Superman's recent activities.

Director Zack Snyder’s previous cycle — Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League, all with Henry Cavill donning the cape — was a dour, dreary, dull and depressing slog, without the faintest trace of the noble Kryptonian who battled for truth, justice and a better tomorrow.

(Yes, it used to be “...and the American way,” but there’s nothing wrong with making Superman’s pledge more universal.)

 

Writer/director James Gunn has swooped to the rescue, granting this adventure the same blend of world-threatening thrills and snarky character dynamics that made his first two Guardians of the Galaxy entries so much fun. (We’ll pretend the third one never happened.)

 

Gunn also pays affectionate tribute to many key elements from the Christopher Reeve series, starting right out of the gate, when this film’s rousing David Fleming/John Murphy score hits us with a few bars of John Williams’ iconic Superman theme.

 

Sharp-eyed viewers also will spot several members of Gunn’s repertory actors, albeit in very fleeting roles.

 

All that said, this definitely is a “darkest before the dawn” story, and “dark” dominates the entire first hour. Gunn kicks things off as a defeated Superman (David Corenswet), punched halfway around the world, crashes hard into Antarctic snow near his Fortress of Solitude. He’s in agony, suffering from broken ribs, a ruptured bladder and — given his labored breathing — fluid in his lungs.

 

(What? I hear you cry. Superman can be damaged? Goodness, yes; he’s tough, but not wholly invulnerable.)

 

The situation then becomes almost farcical — not in a good way — when he desperately whistles to Krypto. The clearly insufficiently trained super-pooch arrives quickly ... but only wants to play, completely oblivious to Supe’s distress.

 

This is a cheeky way to start: a totally James Gunn maneuver.

 

Once Superman recovers — thanks to a sustained blast of our yellow sun’s healing rays (Gunn knows his Superman lore) — and returns to Metropolis, we discover how dire things have become. 

 

Juror #2: Motion to find this drama engaging!

Juror #2 (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and occasional profanity

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

Twisty courtroom thrillers have been scarce lately, and this one’s a corker.

 

Jonathan A. Abrams’ sharp script — an impressive screenwriting debut — is well matched with director Clint Eastwood’s capably measured approach. The first half hour sets up expectations of a feisty battle between prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette) and defense attorney Eric Resnick (Chris Messina), possibly moving into 12 Angry Men territory, involving a lone hold-out during jury deliberations.

 

Justin (Nicholas Hoult, second from left in the front row) soon realizes that he likely knows
more than the rest of his fellow jurors. They include Harold (J.K. Simmons, two seats to
Justin's left.)

But no. Abrams’ plot is more twisty ... and while he does include a nod to that famous 1954 Reginald Rose stage play-turned-film, things move in unexpected directions.

The setting is Savannah, Georgia. Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a recovering alcoholic four years sober, writes for a regional lifestyle magazine. He’s married to Allison (Zoey Deutch), nine months into a high-risk pregnancy, after previous efforts failed. She’s understandably anxious and clinging, and the last thing she wants is for Justin to get tagged after showing up for a jury summons.

 

Their initial dynamic feels brittle, which Hoult and Deutch handle persuasively. She’s a fragile mess, and he’s patient and solicitous to an exaggerated degree. It becomes clear that, just as Allison doesn’t want to do anything to screw up her pregnancy, Justin doesn’t want to betray the second chance that she gave him, four years earlier.

 

Justin does indeed get selected, after an amusing exchange with Judge Thelma Hollub (Amy Aquino, always solid). It’s a murder trial, with James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso) accused of killing his girlfriend, Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood), after a nasty spat at The Hideaway, their favorite bar. 

 

As recounted in flashback — by several witnesses — a few details change, Rashomon-style. Even so, the core events seem solid: Sythe and Carter argued, and he broke a bottle; they continued to yell at each other outside, in the pouring rain; she left in a huff, walking down the darkened road; after a brief pause, he got into his car and followed her.

 

A hiker found Carter’s body the next morning, in a creek channel beneath a bridge along the same road.

 

Killebrew builds a solid case, based primarily on Sythe’s sketchy history and longtime aggressive behavior. But as Resnick subsequently points out, nobody saw his client kill Carter; the evidence is entirely circumstantial. As a sidebar, Killebrew has tied this case to her election campaign for district attorney; she can’t lose. This adds an unsavory note to Collette’s performance, as we wonder whether Killebrew’s judgment is compromised.

Nosferatu: It sucks

Nosferatu (2024) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, graphic nudity and sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Watching paint dry would be preferable to enduring this turgid, overcooked slog.

 

In fairness, writer/director Robert Eggers gets points for atmosphere. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke definitely maximizes the eerie settings concocted by production designer Craig Lathrop. (That said, much of the film is too damn dark.)

 

Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) and Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) eventually
realize that particularly drastic measures will be required, if they're to have any chance
of defeating the vampire in their midst.

Alas, these opulently sinister backdrops are ill-served by a somnambulant cast that appears to wade through thick glue at all times, delivering lines with breathy pauses in between each word ... particularly true in the case of the title monster, who wheezes through every labored syllable, like he’s battling the world’s worst chest cold.

That affectation undoubtedly was intended to sound scary, but Eggers misses “scary” by a Carpathian mile.

 

His film has an intriguing legacy. 1922’s Nosferatu was plagiarized from Bram Stoker’s Dracula; director F.W. Murnau and scripter Henrik Galeen stole the plot and characters, changing names and relocating the story to their native Germany, in order to evade copyright issues. The ploy didn’t work; Stoker’s heirs sued, and the court ruled that all copies of the film be destroyed.

 

They missed a few, and Murnau’s film now is deservedly hailed as an early silent masterpiece that birthed the horror genre; the appearance of star Max Schreck’s Count Orlok also established a template for vampire makeup. 

 

Aside from the numerous legitimate adaptations of Stoker’s novel during the subsequent century, Nosferatu was remade by director Werner Herzog in 1979, with Klaus Kinski as the title vampire. Francis Ford Coppola’s handling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in 1992, also tipped a fang to Murnau.

 

Eggers’ new film borrows from all of the above, while focusing mostly on Murnau’s setting and characters. Eggers also employs shadows, often of a menacing hand, just as Murnau did. And, as befits our modern era, this film more explicitly emphasizes the lurid sexual eroticism that fuels much of the vampire mythos.

The Garfield Movie: Frantic feline frolic

The Garfield Movie (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for action/peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.26.24

I had doubts.

 

A few years after its 1978 syndicated debut, the Garfield newspaper strip quickly devolved into a coldly calculated product, tediously recycling the same dozen bland gags for the next half-century. And still does so.

 

Otto, far right, goes over the precise details of an extremely improbable infiltration plan,
while (from left) Vic, Garfield and Odie listen with a blend of disbelief, fear and respect.

Creator Jim Davis even admitted that Garfield was intended as a “marketable character.”

Point being, very little on which to hang a full-length feature film.

 

This became blatantly obviously when 2004’s Garfield: The Movie and 2006’s Garfield: A Tale of Two Kittiesdeservedly bombed. Bill Murray’s signature laid-back smugness may have been perfect as the voice of Garfield, but the scripts and direction were strictly from hunger.

 

Expectations for this new Garfield Movie therefore weren’t high.

 

Happily, director Mark Dindal and his three writers — Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgrove and David Reynolds — have gone in an entirely different direction, by re-inventing the sarcastic orange feline’s tone and world. Granted, this Garfield still hates Mondays, is insufferably snide, and eats 75 times his body weight in lasagna, pizza and spaghetti. Every day. (And somehow doesn’t gain a pound.)

 

But Dindal and his writers have adjusted the character dynamics — a vast improvement — while delivering a hilariously frantic adventure paced more like a 101-minute Road Runner cartoon, complete with clever animation, snarky one-liners, well-timed reaction shots and all manner of droll pop-culture references and inside jokes.

 

The best transformation: Garfield’s yellow canine buddy Odie, no longer the dumb and hapless victim of the cat’s nasty pranks, has morphed into a wise, resourceful and impressively ingenious sidekick. And, unlike all the other characters in this wild romp, Odie remains Buster Keaton-style silent, often with a tolerantly stoic gaze that screams, “See what I have to put up with?!?”

 

After a prologue that introduces Garfield (enthusiastically voiced by Chris Pratt), Odie and their hapless owner, Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult), the saga gets underway with the unexpected appearance of Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), our feline hero’s long-estranged father.

 

This prompts a flashback sequence that reveals how Garfield, as an adorably cute kitten — who could resist those saucer-size eyes? — is adopted by Jon, after being abandoned by Vic.

 

Renfield: It'll take a bite outta you!

Renfield (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for appallingly bloody violence, gore, relentless profanity and brief drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.14.23

“Tasteless” isn’t nearly strong enough to describe this deranged little flick.

 

Deplorably, gratuitously tasteless comes closer. 

 

But — forgive me — it’s also hilarious. And quite entertaining.

 

Every time Renfield (Nicholas Hoult, right) tries to show a bit of independence, his
master, Dracula (Nicolas Cage), reminds him — quite painfully — that his fate has
been sealed for a long, long time.

Nicolas Cage has again revived his moribund career, this time by making the extremely risky decision to lampoon himself: a choice that merely accelerated the decline of lesser film stars. But Cage actually has a talent for self-ridicule, as demonstrated by last year’s unexpectedly droll The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

And, let’s face it: Who better to sink his baroquely overacting teeth into a modern-day incarnation of Count Dracula?

 

Director Chris McKay, teamed here with writers Ryan Ridley and Robert Kirkman — the latter primarily responsible for the Walking Dead franchise — have orchestrated a cheeky, relentlessly profane and gory take on everybody’s favorite vampire.

 

That said, the infamous Count isn’t really the focus of this tale. That honor belongs to the title character: Dracula’s loyal lackey and aide-de-camp, better known as a “Familiar,” and played to British stiff-upper-lip perfection by Nicholas Hoult.

 

And ya gotta love the premise: Robert Montague Renfield is introduced as a member of a support group for victims of abusive partners, friends and work associates.

 

His presence is twofold. Ostensibly, but without going into detail, he admits to being hyper-controlled by an impressively “toxic boss” (as glaring an understatement as one could imagine). But he’s also on the prowl for fresh victims for ol’ Drac, reasoning that the best way to prevent human monsters from abusing their prey, is to, ah, “introduce” them to his own monster.

 

Since such two-legged blood bags rarely come to Dracula’s lair of their own accord, Renfield is able to, ah, “persuade” them via his own impressively agile and hyper-strong talents, courtesy of just a “touch” of Drac’s powers, which the count bestowed eons ago.

 

These talents kick into gear whenever Renfield eats a bug. (Bram Stolker’s Renfield notoriously ate flies and death’s-head moths. But wasn’t granted super-powers.)

 

Unfortunately, this particularly section of New Orleans — where Dracula and Renfield have set up headquarters in the basement of a long-abandoned hospital — is in thrall to a drug-running crime family run by the ruthless Bellafrancesca Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her feckless son, Teddy (Ben Schwartz). When Renfield’s newest, um, “acquisitions” happen to be in the Lobo syndicate’s cross-hairs, all hell breaks loose.

Those Who Wish Me Dead: Smolders fitfully

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) • View trailer

Three stars. Rated R, for strong violence and considerable profanity

By Derrick Bang

Too soon, too soon.

 

With two horrific fire seasons still fresh in everybody’s memory — and the uneasy potential of a pending third — it’s ill-advised and extremely tasteless to set a survival thriller against the backdrop of deliberately torched forest land.

 

Hannah (Angelina Jolie) and Connor (Finn Little) discover, to their horror, that the most
direct route to town — and safety — has been blocked by an expanding forest fire.

Particularly one as sloppy as Those Who Wish Me Dead, available via HBO Max and movie theaters.

I’m not sure who to blame. Director Taylor Sheridan gave us 2017’s terrific Wind River — which he also wrote — but he’s also the prime mover behind television’s mean-spirited and unrelentingly trashy Yellowstone. 

 

This new film’s primary flaw is its impressively inept screenplay, adapted from Michael Koryta’s well-received 2014 novel. Sheridan co-scripted this adaptation — along with Charles Leavittt and Koryta — so they collectively are at fault.

 

It’s other flaws notwithstanding, this is yet another recent film — following Minari and Together Together — that stops before properly concluding. I can’t figure it out; are these production companies running out of money?

 

In this case, there’s no resolution involving a key villain: ergo, any perceived success our heroes achieve is temporary at best, and therefore pointless. That’s completely unsatisfying … and, I’ll wager, not the way Koryta’s novel ends.

 

It’s also obvious that Koryta’s story has been tweaked and shaped to better showcase the character played by star Angelina Jolie, undoubtedly at her insistence, as a means of demonstrating that she still has bad-ass chops. To her credit, she gets to prove it.

 

She plays Hannah, an elite firefighter — a smokejumper — based amidst a massive swath of Montana forest land. Alas, she’s seriously damaged goods, due a recent fire catastrophe during which she was unable to save three children. Badly traumatized and unable to move beyond her “failure,” she indulges in self-destructive stunts and minor physical mutilation.

 

She spends most of her time in self-imposed isolation, in the solitary confinement of a forest watchtower high above verdant greenery below.

 

Hannah has friends, who care about her deeply: Ethan (Jon Bernthal), a local deputy, who with his wife Allison (Medina Senghore), runs a wilderness survival school.

Dark Phoenix: Better than average

Dark Phoenix (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for considerable sci-fi violence, disturbing images and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Comic book writers are notorious for adjusting, revising, reworking or even completely undoing the mythic back-stories and details of long-established characters. 

The spooky, otherworldly Vuk (Jessica Chastain, right) insists that she can help the
confused and increasingly overwhelmed Jean (Sophie Turner) control cosmic powers
that are literally off the chart. Naturally, Vuk's motivations are far less than pure...

Nothing is sacrosanct: not even death. If so-and-so perished nobly while saving the universe, s/he can be resurrected five years later via some previously undisclosed loophole. (If all else fails, rely on time travel.)

Putting up with this is difficult enough with comic books, but at least such contrived and manipulative nonsense can be “justified” during multiple issues over the course of many months.

It’s a lot more disconcerting when the newest X-Men entry — Dark Phoenix — makes absolute hash of the continuity established in previous films … or so it seems. Apoplectic fans sputtering “But … but … but!” are advised to pay closer attention to what went down in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Which is how writer/direct Simon Kinberg gets away with the jaw-dropper that hits during this new film’s second act.

It also kinda/sorta justifies — albeit with an eyebrow lift — this film’s more-or-less replication of events already covered in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Both are based on the iconic Chris Claremont/Dave Cockrum/John Byrne “Dark Phoenix Saga,” which played out in comic book form from 1976 to ’80 (back when only one X-Men comic book hit the stands each month, and boy, those were simpler times).

At its core, this is a common superhero plot device: What happens when a good hero turns bad?

Having proven themselves heroic after events in 2016’s (thoroughly unsatisfying) X-Men: Apocalypse, Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his mutant students happily bask in the unaccustomed glow of public acclaim. Charles has a direct line to the U.S. president; children eagerly purchase dolls and other ephemera related to their favorite X-Man … or X-Woman, as the shape-shifting Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) tartly suggests should be the team’s actual designation, given how frequently the gals save the day.

That’s no mere idle comment. Female characters are front and center in this film, and it’s darn well about time.

Tolkien: Not entirely Hobbit-forming

Tolkien (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.10.19

Aside from outliers such as Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King, most writers lead rather ordinary lives.

And what they do — crafting humble words into mesmerizing stories, generally in isolation — is hardly the stuff of engaging cinema.

Surrounded by the notes and illutrations that he feverishly sketches while playfully
creating entirely new languages, John Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) nonetheless cannot shake
the feeling of not really belonging in his highbrow Oxford surroundings.

That said, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s back-story is more provocative than most.

Director Dome Karukoski’s Tolkien hits the myriad heartbreaking high points of Tolkien’s youth and young adulthood, and star Nicholas Hoult persuasively conveys the curiosity, intelligence, facility with languages, and almost magical gift for storytelling that later would inform his literary career.

David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford’s sensitive script clearly is well-intentioned, and Karukoski’s touch is sincere.

And yet…

The pace is dreadfully slow, and the decision to employ Tolkien’s horrific World War I experiences as a framing device is questionable, to say the least. We’re apparently expected to recognize that this is the devastating Battle of the Somme; context for this portion of the film is utterly absent. Every so often, Karukoski drags us back for another grim interlude, as Tolkien wanders through the body-strewn trenches in a daze, under the watchful gaze of a young private (Craig Roberts) who worries that his companion is about to drop dead.

The apparent point of these sequences is that the disoriented Tolkien — suffering from an acute case of debilitating trench fever — hallucinates the battle carnage into symbolic smoke- and shadow-laden warriors and monsters that later will inform the mythic creatures he concocts for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Well … no.

It’s a clumsy, contrived device that simply becomes tedious as the film proceeds. It’s also superfluous; we’ve already seen that young Tolkien was inspired by his mother, Mabel (Laura Donnelly), who — as a means of distracting her two young sons from their “impecunious” existence — excels at spinning fantastical narrative adventures with the aid of a slowly spinning shadow lamp festooned with magical patterns. This sequence is far more magical — and persuasively credible — than the repeated bounces back to the trenches.

The Favourite: Far from it

The Favourite (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R for strong sexual content, profanity and nudity
By Derrick Bang

Director Yorgos Lanthimos relishes his outré sensibilities, as survivors of Dogtooth, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and — most particularly — The Lobster can attest.

Having no desire to return to her formerly penniless existence, Abigail (Emma Stone, left)
does her best to become a valuable part of Queen Anne's entourage ... and, after hours,
an equally essential part of the queen's bed chamber.

The Favourite is cut from the same cloth. While the (more or less) historically accurate setting lends bite to a script laced with delicious bile, snark, betrayal and Machiavellian palace intrigue, the laborious execution quickly becomes tedious. Rarely have 119 minutes passed so agonizingly slowly.

Lanthimos also delights in overwrought directorial self-indulgence, which — through excessive repetition — becomes insufferably annoying. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s fondness for panning “around corners” with a fish-eyed lens is one such affectation; the assortment of thumps, twangs and screeches that passes for a score is even worse. An extended presentation of two plucked notes on guitar (?) persists for what feels like forever, linking several lengthy scenes; one cannot help wanting to dash into the projection booth and eviscerate the audio track.

Tellingly, no composer is credited for anything that approaches actual music. No kidding.

A director who delights in calling so much attention to his tics, hiccups, quirks, whims and eccentricities does his film no favors. Lanthimos’ approach distracts and rips us out of the story; he’s like a little kid who, vying for attention, repeatedly screams, “Don’t pay attention to them; look at me! Look at me!”

Rubbish.

Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara’s script has its basis in fact, with events set during the first decade of the 18th century, midway through the reign of Great Britain’s Queen Anne. She was not a happy or healthy ruler, and was ill-suited to the throne; timidity and chronic ailments made her miserable. Despite 17 (!) pregnancies, she failed to produce a surviving heir, and became the final monarch from the House of Stuart.

Anne was quite pliable, and had the misfortune to rule just as Great Britain was embracing an acrimonious two-party political system, with the Whigs and Tories squabbling over how best to handle an ongoing war with France. It’s perhaps fortunate that Anne’s most trusted confidante was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, who — it has been strongly suggested — essentially ruled from behind the scenes. Although clearly governed by her own agenda, and inclined toward decisions and acts that favored her husband — John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough — Lady Sarah was intelligent, astute and decisive.

She also may have been Anne’s lover, and this is the film’s jumping-off point; Davis and McNamara boldly run with that sexual element. 

X-Men: Apocalypse — Thud and blunder

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and quite generously, for gratuitously fleeting profanity and distasteful, soul-crushing violence
By Derrick Bang

Enough, already.

Things were bad enough last summer, when Avengers: Age of Ultron gave us characters capable of re-shaping reality, along with a celestial scheme to return Earth to its Ice Age. Hollywood’s apparent need for superhero movies that forever increase the sense of scale — like a junkie craving ever-stronger fixes — was plain outta control.

When Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, center) is alerted to the presence of an ultra-
powerful mutant, he and his comrades — from left, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), Moira
Mactaggert (Rose Byrne), Alex Summers (Lucas Till) and Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) —
try to determine how best to find this entity.

This newest X-Men entry is even worse, with a villain who literally can re-shape the planet according to whim: a level of power so off the chart that the very notion of this guy being stopped by anybody, let alone young and largely untested mutant heroes, is simply ludicrous.

What, I wonder, could be next? A baddie who’ll pull the Moon out of its orbit? Destroy Saturn and her rings? Extinguish our sun? Annihilate entire galaxies?

It’s impossible to care about any of this film’s sturm und drang, because its screenplay — credited to Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris and director Bryan Singer — doesn’t spend enough time with character development. Worse yet, the little we do get is needlessly grim and mean-spirited: the same problem of tone that infected Batman V Superman a few months back.

The early X-Men films were entertaining by virtue of the wary ensemble dynamic that united such radically different characters into a team, and for the way that everybody’s strange and weird powers were blended into a cohesive fighting unit. That camaraderie is all but lost in this smash-fest, which instead revels in an arrogantly callous level of civilization-snuffing carnage that I’ve not seen since the distasteful 2012, which depicted mass death with all the gravitas of a pinball machine.

Singer’s tone is about the same here, with John Ottman’s bombastic score adding even more portentous fury. And just to seal that atmospheric deal, Ottman’s original themes are augmented, at (ahem) apocalyptic moments, by the equally dour second movement (“Allegretto”) of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

Not much fun to be had, all told, in this 143-minute endurance test.

X-Men: Days of Future Past — One for the ages

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for nonstop action violence, considerable grim content and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.23.14

This one cooks.

The X-Men film series has earned high marks from its debut back in 2000, notwithstanding the frustrating rival studio issues that prevent these characters from operating within the larger tapestry of the “Marvel Universe” project that includes Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the Avengers.

After learning that black-ops types plan to conduct dangerous — even lethal — medical
experiments on some helpless mutants, a furious Raven (Jennifer Lawrence, second
from right) gets quite irate with the goons responsible, while helping the others escape.

Director Bryan Singer got Marvel’s “merry mutants” off to an excellent start with the first two films, and he returns here, batteries fully charged, for a rip-snortin’ adventure that satisfies on every level.

Longtime comic book fans, who’ve followed these characters since their debut back in September 1963, can point to three periods of writer/artist genius during the series’ half-century history. Old-timers still cite the Roy Thomas/Neal Adams run, despite its brevity, as the highlight of 1969 and early ’70. The subsequent generation scoffs at that choice, pointing instead to the bravura Chris Claremont/Jim Lee run from 1989 through ’91.

In between, though, we enjoyed four years of greatness from late 1977 through early ’81, thanks to Claremont’s imaginative stories and artist/co-author John Byrne’s artwork. And that run produced a two-parter, “Days of Future Past,” which remains one of the all-time best comic book stories, anywhere ... not to mention one of the most ingenious time-travel narratives ever concocted (and cited as such in a recent issue of the British pop culture magazine SFX).

Fan reaction was guarded, when word broke that this new X-Men film would adapt that classic tale. Doing it justice would be difficult enough; carefully sliding it into the big-screen mythos already established by the first three films and 2011’s X-Men: First Class, even harder. Screenwriters Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn therefore deserve considerable credit, because they pulled it off. And then some.

Failing to give Claremont and Byrne a “story by” acknowledgment, however, is utterly indefensible. And I rather doubt that Claremont was mollified by his eyeblink cameo.

To a degree, this film also has been shaped by the wattage of its primary stars, most notably Jennifer Lawrence, who has become huge since first playing the shape-shifting Raven/Mystique in First Class. Hugh Jackman’s ultra-cool Wolverine also is front and center, as are James McAvoy’s angst-ridden Charlie Xavier and Michael Fassbender’s smoothly malevolent Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto.

But wait, I hear you cry. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen also appear in this adventure ... and aren’t they also Xavier and Magneto?

Well, yes ... and that’s the nature of time-travel stories. Done properly, we get to eat our cake, and have it, too. And this is one tasty treat.

Jack the Giant Slayer: A massive disappointment

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, for intense fantasy action violence, frightening images and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

We’ve recently had two rounds of Snow White, not to mention re-imagined takes on Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, and now Warner Bros. has taken a crack at Jack and his beanstalk.

What’s next ... Clever Hans? The Fox and the Geese?

After Jack (Nicholas Hoult, right) comes up with a clever plan to distract a giant that is
blocking their escape, the stalwart lad and his companions — Elmont (Ewan McGregor)
and Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) wait to see if the scheme will work.

Hollywood’s current fascination with fairy tales seems a logical next step after spinning so much box-office gold from comic book superheroes, but one does wish for material that’s more mature, rather than less. Aside from its marvelous CGI giants — and one helluva weed — Jack the Giant Slayer is a curiously clumsy and vacuous affair.

The screenplay — a patchwork affair credited to Darren Lemke, David Dobkin, Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney — has no moral whatsoever, which seems an odd way to approach this venerable English folktale. The characters, both good and evil, are handled haphazardly, with little regard for satisfying plot structure. Good guys get dispatched hastily and pointlessly, not even granted a chance to perish in an act of noble self-sacrifice; villains also check out too quickly, at unsatisfying junctures in this protracted narrative.

The whole film feels like a committee affair, as if the four writers squabbled and then grudgingly allowed each contributor’s favorite bit to get stitched into the final result.

The first-act build-up isn’t bad, with farm lad Jack (Nicholas Hoult) chafing over his dull life, as he works the land outside the 12th century fortified English city of Cloister. He seeks escape in the books once read aloud by his father, now dead: particularly the grim legend about the massive creatures who exist in a fearsome realm hovering between Heaven and Earth.

Elsewhere in the kingdom, headstrong Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson, perhaps remembered from 2010’s Alice in Wonderland) feels equally confined, thanks to an overly protective father — Ian McShane, as King Brahmwell — who refuses to let her mingle with the common folk. Worse yet, she has been betrothed to the smarmy Roderick (Stanley Tucci), whose frequent sneers suggest far less than a noble heart.

Roderick has come into possession of the magic beans that are capable of growing a massive beanstalk to Gantua, the giants’ realm of lore, these days regarded as little more than a myth. Roderick intends to control said giants and rule the land, but a guardian monk manages to steal back the beans, which in turn are passed along to Jack. He and Isabelle “meet cute” — the second time, actually — during a stormy night when, clandestinely out and about, and seeking shelter from the rain, she happens upon Jack’s rustic house. (Such a coincidence!)