When Bryan Singer brought Marvel's X-Men to the big screen, Magneto and Professor X were elder statesmen, but Matthew Vaughn (<em>Kick-Ass</em>) travels back in time to present an origin story--and an alternate version of history. While Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher) grows up privileged in New York, Erik Lehnsherr (Bill Milner) grows up underprivileged in Poland. As children, the mind-reading Charles finds a friend in the shape-shifting Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) and Erik finds an enemy in Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), an energy-absorbing Nazi scientist who treats the metal-bending lad like a lab rat. By 1962, Charles (James McAvoy) has become a swaggering genetics professor and Erik (Michael Fassbender, McAvoy's <em>Band of Brothers</em> costar) has become a brooding agent of revenge. CIA agent Moira (Rose Byrne) brings the two together to work for Division X. With the help of MIB (Oliver Platt) and Hank (<em>A Single Man's</em> Nicholas Hoult), they seek out other mutants, while fending off Shaw and Emma Frost (<em>Mad Men's</em> January Jones), who try to recruit them for more nefarious ends, leading to a showdown in Cuba between the United States and the Soviet Union, the good and bad mutants, and Charles and Erik, whose goals have begun to diverge. Throughout, Vaughn crisscrosses the globe, piles on the visual effects, and juices the action with a rousing score, but it's the actors who make the biggest impression as McAvoy and Fassbender prove themselves worthy successors to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. The movie comes alive whenever they take centre stage, and dies a little when they don't. For the most part, though, Vaughn does right by playing up the James Bond parallels and acknowledging the debt to producer Bryan Singer through a couple of clever cameos. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

David Lean's handsome adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel captures the warm humour and richness of character that so many film-makers miss in their reverent recreations of Victorian England. From the nightmarish opening sequence on the windswept graveyard where young orphan Pip (Anthony Wager) meets the desperate escaped criminal Magwitch (Finlay Currie) to the shadowy, musty mansion of the widow Miss Haversham (Martita Hunt) where he first meets the impertinent young beauty Estella (Jean Simmons), Lean captures a child-like exaggeration of reality with his elegant expressionism. When Pip's sudden change in fortune sends him to London as a burgeoning gentleman in high society, Lean sketches a beautiful, bustling city.

John Mills's performance as the adult Pip charts his change from the wide-eyed wonder and generous spirit of the child he was to the class snob transformed by money and social standing, an ugly flaw that Pip confronts when his mysterious benefactor is finally revealed. The outstanding cast also features Valerie Hobson as the grown-up Estella, now a beguiling enchantress, a bright young Alec Guinness in his film debut as Pip's jovial London roommate Herbert Pocket, and the imposing Francis L. Sullivan as the decidedly humourless lawyer Jaggers. Exquisitely photographed by Guy Green (who won an Oscar for his work). Lean and his collaborators effectively maintain the heart of Dickens's epic drama while cutting it to its essentials in this vivid, compelling film. -- Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

No one would confuse the desperate dad Bryan Cranston plays in this character-driven drama with the fun-loving Hal from Malcolm in the Middle. In <em>Breaking Bad</em>, Walter White lives in the suburbs with his wife--and wears tighty-whiteys--but the similarities end there. During the pilot, the cash-strapped chemistry teacher finds out he has inoperable lung cancer. He and Skyler (Deadwood's Anna Gunn) have one son, Walter Jr. (R.J. Mitte), and a daughter on the way. With two years to get his affairs in order, Walter comes up with a wild plan: he and former student Jesse (Aaron Paul), a drug dealer, will open a meth lab. <br /><br />In the hands of creator Vince Gilligan (<em>The X-Files</em>), Bad's first season plays like the improbable offspring of <em>Weeds </em>and <em>The Shield</em>. With nothing left to lose, the Albuquerque 50-year-old uses his death sentence as a catalyst to break every rule he's ever followed while keeping his family--including Skyler's radiologist sister, Marie (Betsy Brandt), and her DEA agent husband, Hank (Dean Norris)--out of the loop. Throughout these seven episodes, Walt takes on a hostage, a dead body, and a partner who likes to sample his own product. Based on the description alone, it shouldn't work as well as it does, except Gilligan and company keep the situations psychologically believable and Emmy winner Cranston makes Walt surprisingly sympathetic as he swings between compassion and self-interest. As he tells his students,"Chemistry is the study of change", a statement that applies equally well to the show, since Walt ends up in a very different place than where he began. --<em>Kathleen C. Fennessy</em>

There are male viewers who will enjoy <em>The Help</em>, but Mississippi native Tate Taylor aims his adaptation squarely at the female readers who made Kathryn Stockett's novel a bestseller. If the multi-character narrative revolves around race relations in the Kennedy-era South, the perspective belongs to the women. Veteran maid Aibileen (<em>Doubt</em>'s Viola Davis in an Oscar-worthy performance) provides the heartfelt narration that brackets the story. A widow devastated by the death of her son, she takes pride in the 17 children she has helped to raise, but she's hardly fulfilled. That changes when Skeeter (<em>Easy A</em>'s Emma Stone) returns home after college. Unlike her peers, Skeeter wants to work, so she gets a job as a newspaper columnist. But she really longs to write about Jackson's domestics, so she meets with Aibileen in secret--after much cajoling and the promise of anonymity. When Aibileen's smart-mouthed friend Minny (breakout star Octavia Spencer) breaches her uptight employer's protocol, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) gives her the boot, and she ends up in the employ of local outcast Celia (Jessica Chastain, hilarious and heartbreaking), who can't catch a break due to her dirt-poor origins. After the murder of Medgar Evers, even more maids, Minny among them, bring their stories to Skeeter, leading to a book that scandalizes the town--in a good way. Not since <em>Steel Magnolias</em> has Hollywood produced a Southern woman's picture more likely to produce buckets of tears (and almost as many laughs). <em>--Kathleen C. Fennessy</em>

As Breaking Bad 's first year concluded, chemistry teacher Walt (two-time Emmy-winner Bryan Cranston) and his meth-making partner, Jesse (Emmy-nominee Aaron Paul), hooked up with drug kingpin Tuco (Raymond Cruz), and the money started to roll in. They expected some degree of danger--but not a homicidal maniac. When DEA agent Hank (Dean Norris) starts to close in on Tuco, he kidnaps the duo, who eventually escape, but the experience creates a host of new complications, leaving Jesse temporarily homeless and driving a wedge between Walt and his pregnant wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), and their 15-year-old son, Walt Jr. (R. J. Mitte). In his commentary, creator Vince Gilligan explains that the"chickens come home to roost" in season 2 as Walt's criminal activity catches up with him. In effect, he lives out the psychological version of The Fly , with his double life merging into one, such that he starts to become as ruthless as Tuco. Hank, meanwhile, gets a promotion that expands his jurisdiction to El Paso, while Skyler takes an accounting job that could cause her to"break bad" in season 3.

If this AMC hit lacked a sense of humor, it just might be too hard to take. Aside from Walt's incurable illness and Hank's post-traumatic stress disorder, there's a head crushing, a shooting, an explosion, and an overdose. Though Walt and Skyler get few humorous moments, Jesse, Hank, and ambulance-chasing attorney Saul ( Mr. Show 's Bob Odenkirk, an inspired addition) make the most of theirs. Jesse even gets a girlfriend (Krysten Ritter), who comes with a wary father (John de Lancie)--but there's still more shadow than light (not counting those panoramic desert shots). Strong stuff, but it's impossible to look away. Extensive extras include commentaries, deleted scenes, and featurettes on every episode. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Depending on your take-away of the visual inventiveness and jam-packed plot that drives <em>Limitless</em> to peaks and valleys of preposterous fun, drugs are either a terrible scourge or the fundamental solution to all of life's problems. <em>Limitless</em> isn't exactly a morality tale, but the made-up drug that turns Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) from a scuzzy loser into a master of the universe does become a metaphor for ambition, menace, devastation, and ultimate success. Eddie is a writer who can't write, his girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) just dumped him, and his squalid lifestyle has driven him to the breaking point. After a chance meeting with his mysterious ex-brother-in-law, he's offered change in the form of a little transparent button, a pill code-named NZT that allows the user to access 100 percent of their brain. After he pops it, Eddie is transformed. Everything he's ever heard, seen, glanced at, or passed by becomes neatly ordered in his mind. He has total recall, total access to knowledge both known and unknown, and he understands exactly what to do. Without the ingenious visual effects that frequently push the bounds of innovation, our view of the alteration of Eddie's drug-induced reality would fail utterly. When his synapses snap from every new hit, the sparkling blue of Bradley Cooper's eyes pops off of the screen, the colours and textures of his reality ripple and zoom with his every move. Of course he needs more of the drug to maintain his progression, not to mention his very life--remember, kids, drugs are addictive! <br /><br />The movie throws tangled clumps of plot threads against each other in a whizzing mass that incorporates Russian gangsters, shadowy surveillance figures, cops, lawyers, and a couple of murder mysteries. It's a hurtling progression of narrative tangents that often echo the physical and mental extremes Eddie experiences when he's either on or off the drug. Sex, society, and money are big parts of Eddie's newfound brainpower, and he exploits them all. The money element leads Eddie to a big-shot investor, played with twinkling irony by Robert De Niro. The sparring matches between Cooper and De Niro are some of the best parts of the convoluted and manic pace that drives <em>Limitless</em> inexorably onward. Abbie Cornish is relegated to the sidelines far too much, and the suspension of disbelief required to simply maintain stride with the movie's frenzied velocity is often exhausting. But there are some bigger themes that director Neil Burger and writer Leslie Dixon try to sustain in spite of repeated absurdities meant to be accepted at face value. Eddie's actions are both vile and redemptive, and Cooper gives a rousing performance as he bounces from being contemptible to irresistible, sometimes all at once. Fortunately, <em>Limitless</em> is itself redeemed by the nifty visuals that often do evoke the effects of a drug that promises perfect clarity. It's best to just forget the ludicrous lack of coherence and enjoy it as a wildly entertaining trip on a perfect drug that offers the potential for payback and infinite salvation. --Ted Fry

Given the jaw-dropping highs of season four of Dexter , which ended with one of the best finales of a TV show in recent memories, it’s somewhat inevitable that expectations would be set unreasonably high for season five of the show. And certainly, if you’re looking for the kind of rug pulls and sheer tension of season four, then you might conclude that season five falls just a teeny bit short.

But only just. For the creative team behind Dexter are no fools, and with season five, they’ve taken their show about a serial killer who just happens to be on the police payroll to some continually interesting places.

The masterstroke with regards season five of the show is the introduction of a new character. In this case, it’s Lumen Pierce, playing by the terrific Julia Stiles. Unsurprisingly, Stiles attracted awards-attention for her work here, and it’s her character who witnesses the actions of Dexter, and the ramifications unfold from there.

It’s still Michael C Hall’s amazing portrayal of Dexter Morgan that grounds the show, though, and he combines likeability and menace with worrying skill. It’s this combination that makes Dexter such a wonderfully tricky show to watch at times, and also adds an unpredictability that helps make this one of the best dramas on television.

Dexter season five wisely tries not to be better than season four, rather different, and it’s a strategic choice that pays off handsomely. It also leaves things in an interesting place for season six, and for the further adventures of television’s most compelling serial killer. In this case, that has to be a good thing. -- Jon Foster

The good news is, Dr. Watson does get married. The bad news is, Sherlock Holmes throws his bride off a moving train. Actually, there's even worse news than that--but all will be explained in <em>Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows</em>, the sequel to Guy Ritchie's 2009 hit. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law return to their roles as Holmes and Watson, as the duo take on the world's greatest criminal mind, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), a man whose latest scheme has global implications. Sherlockians who prefer their consulting detective to remain in a traditional mode had best look the other way, for the sequel continues Ritchie's vision of Holmes as a hard-punching action hero hurtling through a barrage of special effects sequences. If you can go with that, <em>A Game of Shadows</em> actually improves on the first film: the story makes a little more sense (or possibly the whole thing moves so smoothly you don't notice the illogic), Harris is a delicious villain, and new cast members Noomi Rapace (from the Swedish <em>Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</em> series) and Stephen Fry (playing Sherlock's brother Mycroft, who calls his sibling"Sherlie") add appeal. It's all frivolous and superficial, but the film's playful attitude and breathless forward motion are skillfully managed--and the final note adds just the right punctuation. <em>--Robert Horton</em>