'X Men:First Class'

'X Men: First Class' (PG-13) (2 stars)

Writers: Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, Joe Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, January Jones, Nicholas Hoult,
Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, Oliver Platt, Zoe Kravitz

I am getting sick and tired of these X Men movies and they are starting to over stay their welcome. "X Men:First Class" is a vast improvement over the headache inducing turkey Wolverine movie but that is not saying much. I like the cold style of First Class and what it tries to do with a story that plays out like a James Bond movie. I was with this movie the first hour until it did what every action and superhero movie has done lately. It becomes a movie that drops characters and style and becomes cluttered with explosions and action I couldn't follow. The action scenes here are the same old stuff with no originality. The movie becomes a waste of time because you know where the story is going and there are no surprises. This is a movie that becomes style over substance.

Now I do like a few things in this movie that don't have to do with the writing. I like the style of the movie and it's 60's setting and production design. I really like Kevin Bacon who is a wonderful and wickedly evil bad guy. There are also two stand out performances by two soon to be huge movie stars who can damn act. Michael Fassbender is solid and wonderful as Magneto, this actor is building quite a resume lately. He is an extremely good looking and sexy actor who can really act. Jennifer Lawrence has done amazing performances in movie after movie. She is an incredible actress who brings so much to her shallowly written character here. "Winter's Bone", "The Beaver", these are two of the best performances you will see by an actress today and she is the best thing here along with Fassbender. Then on the other end is the cold, stiff and bad performance by January Jones. I hate to say this but she alone pretty much kills this movie all by herself.