The movie opens with a thrilling, kinetic sequence that revs you up nearly as well as the opening of Gangs of New York and introduces a new character, Nightcrawler, who looks extremely cool and has an extremely cool power (which is shown in an extremely cool way). And he's played by Alan Cumming, who is not really extremely cool in my book, but he's terrific fun.
The real star of this episode is the marvelous Ian McKellen. He's beyond cool, and he gets to make lordly, commanding gestures and clever witticisms. Another improvement over the first movie is that Anna Paquin is much less annoying. This is because she has much less screen time. I heartily applaud this trend and wish that all filmmakers employing her would follow this model. Also, she's mostly seen in the company of a cute boy, and this is not a bad trend, either.
Anyway, it was a relief to see a big-budget Hollywood
movie that was entertaining, gave more than lip service to a script and
a story, and kept my interest right up to the (regrettably rather stupid)
ending.
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