X-Men: First Class - Brilliant; sets the standard for X-Men films

X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class is the thrilling, eye-opening chapter you’ve been waiting for...Witness the beginning of the X-Men Universe. Before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their superhuman powers for the first time, working together in a desperate attempt to stop the Hellfire Club and a global nuclear war.

Expected good, was better than I thought

X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Kevin Bacon, Nicholas Hoult, Jennifer Lawrence, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Till, Edi Gathegi, Jason Flemyng, Oliver Platt, Morgan Lily, Zoe Kravitz, Bill Bilner

X-Men: First Class charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga, and reveals a secret history of famous global events. Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other Mutants to prevent nuclear Armageddon. In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-Men.

Knowing

Knowing: Nicolas Cage

Knowing

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne, Chandler Canterbury, Terry Camilleri, Ben Mendelsohn, Adrienne Pickering, Angie Diaz, Liam Hemsworth

Nicolas Cage stars in Knowing, an action-thriller about a professor who stumbles on terrifying predictions about the future and sets out to prevent them from coming true. In 1958, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time capsule. But one mysterious girl fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead.

Fifty years later, a new generation of students examines the capsule’s contents and the girl’s cryptic message ends up in the hands of young Caleb Koestler. But it is Caleb’s father, professor John Koestler who makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years.

As Ted further unravels the document’s chilling secrets, he realizes the document foretells three additional events-the last of which hints at destruction on a global scale and seems to somehow involve Ted and his son. When Ted’s attempts to alert the authorities fall on deaf ears, he takes it upon himself to try to prevent more destruction from taking place. With the reluctant help of Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne) and Abby Wayland, the daughter and granddaughter of the now-deceased author of the prophecies, Ted’s increasingly desperate efforts take him on a heart-pounding race against time until he finds himself facing the ultimate disaster-and the ultimate sacrifice.

Wicker Park

Wicker Park: Diane Kruger

Wicker Park

Cast: Josh Hartnett, Matthew Lillard, Rose Byrne, Diane Kruger, Christopher Cousins, Molly Parker

Intricately moving back and forth in time and revealing the story from each character's perspective, Wicker Park is an intense psychological drama about a man (Hartnett) caught in an obsessive search for a woman he fell deeply in love with - a woman who then vanished without a trace. Two years after her disappearance, he catches a fleeting glimpse of her in a local bar and begins a twisting search to find her and discover what really happened.

Troy

Troy: Diane Kruger

Troy

Cast: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Sean Bean, Diane Kruger, Peter O'Toole, Brendan Gleeson, Rose Byrne, Brian Cox, Julie Christie, Saffron Burrows, Garrett Hedlund

Homer's sprawling tale of love and war in ancient Greece comes to the screen in all its grandeur in this epic-scale adventure. In 1193 B.C., Paris, Prince of Troy (Orlando Bloom), has fallen in love; however, the beautiful woman who has beguiled him is Helen, Queen of Sparta (Diane Kruger), who is wed to King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson). While Helen is hardly immune to Paris' charms, this doesn't blunt Menelaus' fury when Paris steals her away from him. Menelaus' brother Agamemnon (Brian Cox), the power-hungry king of the Mycenaeans, is eager to expand his empire through Troy to the lands of the Aegean Sea, and he uses Paris' romantic slight against Menelaus as an excuse to wage an all-out war against the great walled city.

Priam, King of Troy (Peter O'Toole), summons his armies, led by Prince Hector (Eric Bana), to meet the onslaught of Agamemnon's forces, but while the great city has yet to yield in a battle, Agamemnon has a formidable ally -- Achilles (Brad Pitt), a mighty and seemingly unstoppable warrior whose presence could tip the scales in Agamemnon's favor. Sean Bean, Julie Christie, Saffron Burrows, and Rose Byrne highlight the film's supporting cast.