"X-Men" (2000)

Starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan
Written by David Hayter
Directed by Bryan Singer
Rated PG-13 - Violence, language
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Trailer

Having so thoroughly enjoyed 2011's "First Class" prequel, I was eager to revisit the earlier films in the "X-Men" franchise.  2000's "X-Men" was the first film I ever saw in theatres four times, still a record to be broken (though I did match it with 2007's "Transformers").  It's a wonder that "X-Men" turned out as good and as popular as it did; films languishing so long in development hell usually fall flat on their faces when they finally hit screens, if at all.

The film opens in Poland, 1944 as a young boy is separated from his parents at a Nazi concentration camp.  (Sound familiar?)  The boy, Erik Lehnsherr, becomes distressed, and displays strange powers: the ability to control metals.  Decades later, a young girl named Marie (Anna Paquin) kisses her boyfriend, putting the poor sod in a coma.  She takes off, eventually making her way into Canada and coming across a bar in the middle of nowhere.  In this bar she meets Logan (Hugh Jackman), an amnesiac mutant who has razor sharp claws that can extend from his hands and the ability to heal almost any wound.  Soon enough, the two are attacked by a mutant named Sabretooth (Tyler Mane).

After being rescued, the two find themselves at the home of Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) who explains that Logan (aka Wolverine) is the target of Erik Lehnsherr, now called Magneto (Ian McKellan), for reasons unknown.  Logan meets the rest of the team: telekinetic Dr. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), team leader Scott Summers/Cyclops (James Marsden) who can shoot energy from his eyes, and Ororo Monro/Storm (Halle Berry) who can control the weather. 

'Stargate Universe' Season Two (2010)

Starring Robert Carlyle, Louis Ferreira and Brian J. Smith
Created by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper

Television shows have to walk a certain razor's edge - A show with serialized storytelling and longrunning storylines runs the risk of getting canceled before it has the chance to tell the entire story.  'Stargate Universe' joins the sad pantheon of shows that won't get a proper resolution.

After the events of Season One, the crew of the Destiny finds their vessel hijacked by members of the Lucian Alliance.  Colonel Young (Louis Ferreira) and the rest of the Destiny crew are abandoned on a hostile planet, except for a few that managed to hide aboard Destiny.  After they manage to retake the ship, they find that they've landed smack dab in the middle of a new problem: The new galaxy Destiny has entered is populated by a fleet of alien drone ships programmed to seek out and destroy any technology not their own.  It seems that, ages ago, an alien race constructed these drones in a war against a vicious enemy.  When the war was over, the drones turned on their creators and have lain dormant ever since.

Now, with their ancient vessel slowly falling apart and supplies dwindling, the crew of Destiny must figure out a way to get past the legions of automated drones that stand between them and safe haven on the other side of the galaxy.  But at each turn, the drones prove a difficult and increasingly dangerous enemy, cutting off the Destiny from the supplies it most desperately needs.

"X-Men: First Class" (2011)

Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Kevin Bacon
Written by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stantz, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Rated PG-13 - Language, violence, sexual themes
Running Time: 132 Minutes
Trailer

Going into "X-Men: First Class" I was, understandably, quite worried. "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" was a flat-out terrible movie, and "X-Men: The Last Stand" was just about as terrible.  There were four "X-Men" movies, and only a 50% success rate.

Imagine the smile on my face, then, when "X-Men: First Class" turned out to be one of the best of the bunch, rivaling "X2: X-Men United" as champ of the franchise.

The film begins in Poland, 1944, as young Erik Lehnsherr and his family are being led into a Nazi concentration camp.  Erik is separated from his family and lashes out, his mutant powers manifesting - Erik can control metals and magnetic fields.  This garners the attention of Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who demands that Erik demonstrate his powers once more.  When Erik fails to do so, Shaw murders Erik's mother, causing an outburst from Erik that destroys Shaw's laboratory.

Elsewhere, in New York, young Charles Xavier awakes and finds his mother in the kitchen - but it's not his mother.  Instead, it's a young shapeshifter named Raven who has broken into Xavier's home in search of food.  Xavier takes in the young girl, and years later the two have developed a loving brother-sister relationship.

Flash forward to the 1960s: Charles (James McAvoy) is now in England studying genetics.  His sister Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) has tagged along, frustrated by having to hide her true appearance while her brother uses his gifts to score women at local bars.  Erik (Michael Fassbender), meanwhile, has grown into a vengeful man, tracking down Nazi war criminals and assassinating them wherever he finds them.  Elsewhere, Sebastian Shaw has begun maneuvering the military forces of the United States and the Soviet Union toward war, using his influence to convince the United States to place nuclear missiles in Turkey, and the Soviet Union to put their missiles on the island of Cuba, mere miles from Florida.

Charles is recruited by CIA agent Moira McTaggert (Rose Byrne) to help her understand genetic mutation after she witnesses the special abilities of Shaw's cohorts Emma Frost (January Jones), 'Riptide' (Alex Gonzalez) and Azazel (Jason Flemng).  McTaggert and Charles join forces with a CIA paranormal division headed by 'The Man in Black' (Oliver Platt) to locate and recruit mutants to help stop Shaw's plans for worldwide destruction.  First among this group is, of course, Erik, who has finally located Shaw after decades of searching and is bent on revenge for the murder of his mother.  Soon enough, Charles and Erik are traveling the world recruiting mutants like Alex Summers (Lucas Till), Sean Cassidy (Caleb Landry), Angel Salvadore (Zoe Kravitz), Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) and Armando Muniz (Edi Gathegi), who all have special gifts and abilities that make them feared and hated.

"Fast and Furious" (2009)

Starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster
Written by Chris Morgan
Directed by Justin Lin
Rated PG-13 - Violence, language
Running Time: 107 minutes
Trailer

"New model.  Original parts."  That's the tagline that pretty perfectly sums up this fourth "Fast and Furious" movie. 

Several years after they started it all with the 'Point Break' knockoff, 'The Fast and the Furious', Paul Walker and Vin Diesel return for... well... 'Fast and Furious'. In the fourth flick in the hot-rodding franchise, Brian (Walker) is still on shaky ground after letting Dom (Diesel) escape at the end of the first film. Now he's part of an FBI task force attempting to take down a mysterious drug runner named Braga, and is making little progress. Meanwhile, Dom spends his days running heists in the Dominican Republic, trying to stay one step ahead of the law with his trusty gang of thieves, and his girlfriend, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez).

After hearing that the cops may be closer than he thinks, Dom leaves Letty and the gang, thinking that they'd be safer without him. Unfortunately, this proves a mistake - Letty is murdered, and Dom returns to the US looking for vengeance. Conveniently, it turns out that Letty was murdered by the same group of drug runners that Brian is trying to bust.

Begrudgingly, Dom and Brian team up once more, their old resentment flaring up more than a little bit, but both of them have their reasons for wanting to take down Braga.

"The Fast and the Furious" (2001)

Starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Michelle Rodriguez
Written by Gary Scott Thompson
Directed by Rob Cohen
Rated PG-13 - Language, violence
Running Time: 106 minutes
Trailer

There was a time, back in 2001, when I flat-out hated this movie.  Walking out of the theatre, I expressed my disappointment, to which my friend Brendan replied, "But the carrrrrrs, man!"  It's true; "The Fast and the Furious" is not a film with deep characterization or even a complex plot.  But on multiple viewings, what it does end up having is a lot of fun.

Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) is an undercover cop investigating a series of tractor trailer truck heists.  To do so, he's infiltrated the world of illegal street racing, hooking up with a crew run by Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel).  While his handlers are convinced that Dom's the man behind the heists, Brian isn't sure.  He thinks the thefts are the work of an Asian gang led by Johnny Tran (Rick Yune), who have a past beef with Dom. 

Brina also begins to fall for Dom's sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), causing problems with Dom's jealous friend Vince (Matt Schulze).  As Brian gets deeper and deeper into Dom's world, he begins to question his loyalties - is it to the police, and his mission, or to Dom and his friends?

"All-Star Superman" (2011)

Starring James Denton, Christina Hendricks and Anthony LaPaglia
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Directed by Sam Liu
Rated PG - Animated violence, language
Running Time: 76 minutes
Trailer

There are two kinds of Superman stories that I really enjoy: His origins and his death.  Typically these are the two Superman stories that require the least amount of baggage.  That is, I don't have to have read the last 36 issues of any particular run of the comics in order to truly get what's going on.  With the big "Doomsday" arc of the mid-1990s, there was some of that, but for the most part it was actually quite a good place for new readers to jump on board, despite the fact that it was the death of Superman.

"All-Star Superman," by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, was one of my favorite Superman stories to hit the funny books in a long while.  Now Warner Animation and DC have seen fit to adapt it to their series of direct-to-DVD "DC Universe" movies.

Superman (James Denton) thwarts Lex Luthor's (Anthony LaPaglia) attempt to sabotage the first manned trip to the sun.  In the process, he's exposed to an overdose of the sun's yellow radiation that gives him his powers.  This, of course, was all part of Luthor's plan, as Superman learns that the overdose has increased his powers triple-fold, but is also slowly killing him.  With his end looming, Superman decides to get his affairs in order, which include revealing his secret identity to Lois Lane (Christina Hendricks) and visiting his father's grave one last time. 

All the while, Luthor is plotting for a future without Superman.  But his plan could have disastrous consequences for the world when his ally, a living computer called Solaris, double crosses hi and plans to destroy the sun.  Will Superman have enough time to stop Luthor's plan and save the world from Solaris before he dies?

'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' - Season One (1999)

Starring Christopher Meloni, Mariska Hargitay and Richard Belzer
Created by Dick Wolf

Some TV shows go down easy, a kind of simple junk food, empty calories for the brain.  Some shows are incredibly complex, requiring you to watch every episode in order to grasp everything coming at you or that feature intense subject matter.  And then there are some shows that are a bizarre mixture of both. 

"Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" is an episodic police procedural, meaning that the stories are mostly based around showing the solving of individual cases and don't feature much in the way of ongoing storylines or excessive character development.  The show focuses on the detectives of New York City's Special Victims Unit, which investigates sex crimes.  The primaries on most of the cases are Detectives Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), a veteran and family man, and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), the daughter of a rape victim who joined up to get justice.  Other members of the team include Detective John Munch (Richard Belzer), a former Baltimore Homicide detective, Munch's young partner Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters) and Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd).  The team is led by Captain Don Cragen (Dann Florek), a man who must struggle with the politics of the New York Police Department, as well as his own status as a recovering alcoholic.

The SVU detectives tackle the worst and most depraved crimes in the city: rapes, molestations, slavery, child pornography and sex-related murders.  This often takes an intense toll on the personal lives of the detectives; sometimes it becomes too much for them to bear.