Twentieth Century Fox has just released all 3 X-Men films on Blu-ray. The best way to enjoy them is the spiffy boxed set (you can get your own here, but only if you have a Blu-ray player; otherwise you may want to use them as coasters), and I watched all 3 films (X-Men, X-2: X-Men United, and X-Men: The Last Stand) over the past few days.
Fox tends to make the crappiest of superhero films--witness both Fantastic 4 films, Daredevil, Elektra, and the very sad League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), mainly, I think, because they're such a cheap-ass studio. I really think the first 2 X-Men films were made by the sheer force of will of director Bryan Singer. The first one is good, the second one wonderful. Singer left the third one to go do the blah Superman Returns, but I think it has its moments, even though Mr. Rush Hour, Brett Ratner, directed it.
A lot of things work in the X-Men films, a lot of things don't. Hugh Jackman nails Wolverine from the first moment we see him. Anna Paquin as Rogue, not so much. Sir Ian McKellen is excellent as Magneto, and Patrick Stewart is obvious dream casting as Professor X. I'm indifferent to James Marsden and Famke Janssen as Cyclops and Jean Grey (although the latter is much better in the third film). And then, of course, there's Halle Berry, who went into the second film coming off a Best Actress Oscar for Monsters Ball. Berry had very little to do as Storm in the first film, and her role enlarged in the second and third. But the movie version of Storm is incredibly unimpressive. When Storm's powers come into play, Berry's eyes glaze over and she gets this vacuous, blank look on her face. In other words, her normal acting style. She also occasionally levitates.
But Jackman is the real star of all 3 films, and it was a star-making turn for him, something he readily acknowledged at Comic-Con last year. I'm a bit on the fence about X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which debuts this Friday. It looks exceedingly lame, like once again a movie studio has crammed 10 pounds of horse manure into a 5-pound sack, what with all the other mutants hanging out in the previews alone. Still, Jackman is always worth watching (even in the forgettable Swordfish, the film in which Ms. Berry augmented her usual acting style by flashing her breasts for an extra $500,000; for the record, they were blank, but not so vacuous). I suppose I'll go see Wolverine--the unofficial fourth X-Men film--next weekend, but I'm just going out of respect for Jackman. Let's just say I might be doing him a Hugh-ge favor.
One of my favorite movies is coming back all spruced up in a new 2-disc set, and on Blu-Ray to boot. 