The box office success of Bohemian Rhapsody is something I couldn't have foreseen. Can you blame me? First, most music biopics don't do that well; they are designed not as blockbusters but as awards fodder for movie stars. Next, Bohemian Rhapsody spent years in turnaround, with various actors – including Sacha Baron Cohen and Ben Whishaw – poised to play… read more!

While watching Superman Returns the other day, I felt guilty for allowing that Brett Ratner didn't muck up the X-Men movie franchise after Bryan Singer left to make this film. Since Ratner proved to be only mediocre instead of godawful, I had basically tolerated his work, forgetting how good Singer's direction in the first two X-Men films really was. While… read more!

What can I say about X-Men that hasn't already been said? I agree with most critics: fine special effects, fairly intelligent story, good casting (Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is hands-down the Discovery of the Year), and a comic book adaptation that manages to do justice to its source material. Singer can't direct action very well; there's plenty of it, but… read more!

The latest installment in the X-Men movie franchise is loosely based on the January 1981 X-Men comic book of the same title, which takes place in a dystopian future (2013!) where most mutants have been killed by the terrifying Sentinel robots and the rest of the world has gone to pot. It's determined that Kitty Pryde, the teenage X-Man who… read more!

A friend told me an interesting bit of trivia about the name of this film. Originally meant to be titled just plain X2 (as if X-Men 2 was too difficult to remember), studio executives at Fox requested it be retitled, for promotional purposes, as X-Men United because it's now passe to add a "2" onto your sequel's title. After all,… read more!