MOVIES: It's simply eXcellent

Now over a decade old, the ongoing movie-mutant saga of the X-Men has provided us with a range of comic book adaptations of varying degrees of quality.

Bryan Singer kick-started the franchise in solid fashion before going on to the high watermark of X2 and stepping aside for the somewhat anti-climactic Last Stand and the thudding futility of Wolverine, a failure because it existed only to cover already well-trodden ground.

There's also the lingering whiff of Episodes I-III of Star Wars to provide a warning note that 'prequelising' a beloved franchise is fraught with peril, and can be, at best, pointless, and at worst guilty of tainting the memory of the very thing it is trying to revive.

Praise the summer movie gods though, because X-Men: First Class manages, near as dammit, to avoid the obvious pitfalls inherent in trying to shoehorn a reverse engineered myth-ology to emerge as an immensely satisfying movie event that's both rollicking fantasy blockbuster and deeply compelling character drama.

This prequel begins, as the very first film did, in a concentration camp in Poland in 1944. This is where young Erik Lehnsherr (Bill Milner) discovers that he has the power to move and control metal objects, which brings him to the attention of a Nazi scientist (Kevin Bacon) intent on harnessing this ability.

Zipping forward to 1962, the adult Erik (now played by Michael Fassbender) is still on the hunt for Bacon, who has reinvented himself as an arms dealer named Sebastian Shaw.

Meanwhile, telepathic Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) has just become a professor of genetics at Oxford and is recruited to help CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne), with mutants having only just come to the attention of the authorities.

This is a lot to get chucked at us in the early stages, but it is done in a controlled manner that is all about getting us to the first meeting of Charles and Erik, two of the most powerful mutants around, but with diametrically opposed philosophies.

Setting it during the Cuban missile crisis yields fertile ground, with Shaw intent on starting World War III so that humanity destroys itself and mutants can become the dominant species.

The analogies of this are endless; the rise of Fascism, ethnic cleansing and homo-phobia – it is all in there, without being sledge-hammered.

But the beating heart of the film is the relationship between Charles and Erik, referenced to noteworthy effect in the first film, where Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Professor X and Magneto shared poignant scenes that hinted at the tragedy of their fractured friendship.

It needed a pair of tremendous actors following in the footsteps of Stewart and McKellen to make this work, and McAvoy and Fassbender prove themselves unerringly capable.

McAvoy begins as smooth and charming but grows in gravitas as the film progress while Fassbender is simply mesmerising, seemingly getting better with each role and once again demonstrating that he was born to play James Bond.

With Charles driven by his belief in the goodness of mankind and his longing to help Erik, who is fuelled by anger and hatred from the start, it is a powerful underpinning to several scenes of astonishing emotional impact.

So rich is the characterisation that it is almost a shame to point out that probably the only thing preventing the movie soaring to a five star triumph is the feeling that just one key scene cementing Charles and Erik's relationship is missing, that their eventual schism would be all the more heartbreaking if we were more fully able to believe in their friendship.

But that's a minor niggle, and though Charles is recruiting young mutants in the fight against Shaw, it is far more than just a teen spin on the X-Men world, which it only occasionally slips into when we're with the youngsters for slightly too long a spell in the middle.

There's a sensational cameo that shouldn't be spoiled for you, a few nice in-jokes, and while it is not all action there's very little down-time.

When the action does come it's colossal and the result may well be the finest visit yet to the X-Men universe.

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Running time: 131 mins

MAMMUTH (15) Depardieu may always be worth a look, but this film is not

On reaching 60, Serge (Gerard Depardieu) is retiring from his job at a slaughterhouse with nothing but a cheerio and a jigsaw puzzle for his years of service.

Bored and with nothing to fill his days, he discovers he has a hole in his pension and needs to visit ten of his previous employers to get proof of his earnings.

This is hardly the stuff of riveting drama, but Serge doing his trip on his classic Mammuth motorbike means he is haunted by the memories of a girlfriend (Isabelle Adjani) who died in a crash 40 years earlier.

Though this adds a certain poignancy, everyone he meets is thoroughly objectionable or just plain weird and he's hardly a compelling character himself, so for all that Depardieu is always worth a look, the film itself is not.

Directors:

Gustave de Kervern, Benoît Delépine

Running time: 92mins

SENNA (12A) Glorious celebration of a remarkable man

Whether you are an aficionado or a more sensible type who realises Formula 1 is as exciting as watching traffic on a roundabout, this riveting documentary biography of Brazilian racing superstar Ayrton Senna, widely regarded as one of the greatest drivers ever, is a must-see.

Made up entirely of archive footage, much of it giving rarified glimpses into the sport's inner workings, it is essentially a season by season account of his Formula One career from the mid 80s up to his tragic death at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994.

It's the personalities that keep it compelling, from Senna's ongoing rivalry with Alain Prost to his distaste at the politics and manoeuvrings within the sport, and though the sense of foreboding as we reach Imola for the fatal race is palpable, the director has the good taste not to linger on the crash, preferring to leave us with a glorious celebration of a remarkable man.

Director: Asif Kapadia

Running time: 106 mins

PROM (U) Harmless family comedy

During the run-up to the prom in the world's shiniest and friendliest high school, clever and clean-cut Nova (Aimee Teegarden) is forced to work with bad boy rebel type Jesse (Thomas McDonell) to make sure all the preparation for the event goes smoothly.

Elsewhere, a whole bunch of bland couples and those trying to find dates go through various levels of light angst in a pleasantly harmless family comedy that at least mercifully isn't a musical.

Real teens wouldn't be caught dead near it, and it is nowhere near peppy enough for the eight- year -olds that are most likely to turn up, but for all that it looks like a movie without an audience it actually ends up being really kinda sweet.

Director: Joe Nussbaum

Running time: 103 mins