Dark Phoenix (2019)

All we want from these X-men movies are some scenes in which the mutants pool their resources and unleash their powers in imaginative combination and this 2019 episode, one of the "Muppet babies" ones of late, delivers lots of that - we especially liked the  train carriage scene - and we also get some more of poor Jean Grey's backstory, though after some new details about how she came into Professior Xavier's care as a child, her story becomes the same old same old one about her reckoning with her awesome powers - it seems the only new thing that can be done with this character is adding different adjectives to her name.

★★★☆☆

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Glass (2019)

** SPOILER WARNING **

Having in the last unexpected scene of 2016's Split created a connection between that film and his Unbreakable film from sixteen years earlier, M Night Shyamalan continues the unlikely series in this third film by having a new character, Dr Ellie Staple, assemble the old characters in a psychiatric ward for sessions of psychoanalysis designed to break the patients' shared delusion that they are superheroes, which, as a plot, raises interesting ideas about human potential, shared experience and the limits people place on themselves, and with the glut of superhero blockbusters in cinemas, this plot provides a welcome spin on a tired genre, but the movie errs in the end when it seems to choose a side but abandons viewers on the other side of the movie's central question: is anything extraordinary happening on the screen?

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Split (2016)

I went into this horror thriller about three girls kidnapped by a man with 23 or perhaps 24 distinct personalities confident I had worked out in advance director M Night Shyamalan's trademark twist and I am pleased to say the always fascinating Split is not one of Shyamalan's bad films like Lady In The Water but a good one like Unbreakable in that it delivers a delicious curveball in the end that is as unexpected as it is dismaying (because my ending was less surprising but better and certainly what was intended, I think, before the marketing team's endscene got tacked-on instead).

★★★★☆

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X-men: Apocalypse (2016)

Nothing will ever compare to the school invasion scene in X2: X-men United in which audiences are treated to a fast-paced showcase of weird and wonderful mutant powers — here, in X-men number 9 (counting Deadpool), things are decidedly less artful: the mutant "gifts" are presented mostly in slow-mo and further laboured by exposition of the sort, "You're in my head!? How are you doing that!?" "It's my gift..." (an exchange between students at a mutant school), and in fact, aside from a strong whiff of a political agenda (there is a near decapitation performed by the villain whose prisoner is on his knees on a sandy desert floor) nothing actually happens — for inordinate amounts of time, the mutants pose smugly, chests out, arms akimbo against cgi backgrounds, frequently not doing anything at all while the villain, a hideous, mouldy Marlon Brando-lookalike with displeased downturned lips, grumbles and performs haircuts.

★★☆☆☆

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Wanted (2008)

Absurd and utterly fun-free genre-mashing exercise about a Hogwarts-style fraternity of Neos and La Femme Nikitas bad at their jobs, one with a very dull Terminator/Darth Vader family history.

★☆☆☆☆

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X-men: First Class (2011)

This episode of the X-men franchise goes back to 1962 to explain Professor Xavier's love-hate relationship with Magneto (they used to be buddies) and calms down the fever-pitch energy attained over the course of the original three X-men movies while still delivering the themes and set-pieces expected of the series.

★★★★☆

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