Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

Sentinels, good, bad, future, past, who cares? This movie needs more Quicksilver!

The year is 2023 and the world is in ruins thanks to the mutant-hunting machines known as the Sentinels. You’d think Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Bishop (Omar Sy), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), Blink (Bingbing Fan), Warpath (Booboo Stewart) and Sunspot (Adan Canto) would make an unbeatable team, but back in 1973, Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) fit his Sentinels with Raven/Mystique’s (Jennifer Lawrence) DNA, so now they’re able to adapt to anything, essentially making them immune to mutant-powered attacks. With the Sentinels closing in fast, the only chance the surviving X-Men have is to send Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to stop Trask from ever getting his hands on Raven’s DNA in the first place.

“X-Men: Days of Future Past” opens exceptionally well with the aforementioned team of mutants going head-to-head with a group of Sentinels. Not only does the sequence have the benefit of rocking the thrill that comes with bringing back X-Men favorites and uniting them with a few new players, but the action itself is remarkable. The fire, ice and purple portals pop right off the bleak background, the combat is tense, exhilarating and also builds character through mid-fight decisions and reactions before ultimately culminating in a string of moments that proves that in just a few minutes, you’ve come to care about all of these characters. Unfortunately, we don’t get much of that last element through the rest of the film.

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Review: Jack the Giant Slayer

Tim Burton hit it big with “Alice in Wonderland,” but the fairy tale-to-film effort is still a horrifyingly expensive crapshoot.

As children, both Jack and Isabelle took a liking to the legend of the giants of Gantua. However, now young adults, neither is remotely close to achieving any degree of adventure, Jack (Nicholas Hoult) stuck working on his uncle’s farm and Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) forced to be a proper princess, staying within the walls of Cloisters. However, after a mix-up at the market, Jack accidently winds up with a sack full of magic beans. Coincidentally, later that evening, Isabelle opts to sneak out of the castle and winds up at Jack’s door seeking shelter from a storm. Little does Jack know, one of his beans slipped through the house’s floorboards, right along with the rainwater that triggers them to grow.

After a failed attempt at saving Isabelle, she’s lifted up into the land of the giants while Jack comes crashing back down to Earth. When King Brahmwell (Ian McShane) hears of what’s happened to his daughter, he commissions Elmont (Ewan McGregor), the leader of the king’s guard, and his men to scale the beanstalk with Jack in tow to bring Isabelle home.

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From the Set: Jack the Giant Slayer

We’ve already seen Alice in Wonderland and a double dose of Snow White, but with Maleficent, Pan,Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio and possibly more fairy tales-turned-big screen epics hitting theaters in the coming years, perhaps Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Slayer will actually wind up slipping in at just the opportune time.

The project is a long time coming for Singer. He first signed on to direct back in September of 2009, but didn’t get the green light until just over a year later after which he went through a lengthy pre-production process before finally bringing the project to set in the spring and summer of 2011. Even then, the film still wasn’t in the clear, getting ousted from its original Summer 2012 drop date, settling back in on March 22nd, only to be moved up to March 1, 2013.

Will the tale of Nicholas Hoult’s Jack, a lowly farm boy who scales a beanstalk to save Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) from a brigade of giants eager to destroy King Brahmwell’s (Ian McShane) kingdom, be worth the wait? With the latest release date locked in place and now just a month away, we’ll find out soon enough, but if the final product sucks you into the world with even a fraction of the force the experience standing on set during production did, Singer’s time will have been well spent.

Click here to read the full set visit and here for additional interview highlights.