It's going to be tough to top this.

Rating: 9/10 (25 May 2014)

X-Men: Days of Future Past sort of blew me away. And here's the kicker - you don't need to have seen the previous movies in the series to understand what's going on. There's an unerring blend of past and present characters, real heart-in-your-throat tension, and stunning effects. Yeah, so I sort of liked it a little bit.
I don't mean to fawn, but sometimes it's appropriate. This is a great movie. In a nutshell, here's your story. It's sometime in the future (2029? not sure). The Sentinels, robots built with the sole purpose of eradicating all mutants, are on the rampage, tracking said mutants down and slaughtering them, full stop. In fact, they've become so advanced that when a mutant defends against/attacks a Sentinel, that mutant's powers are absorbed by that Sentinel. Get it? It's a bad scene.
Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellan), Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), and other assorted X people have holed up in the middle of nowhere, awaiting their doom. Xavier believes that the only way to stop the war on mutants (and on sympathetic humans, by the way, in case you missed the analogy) is to travel back in time to prevent the creation of the Sentinels in 1973. Now, Professor X wants to be sent back (don't worry, Kitty Pryde is on the job), but because of the long time period between '73 and the present, Pryde thinks the journey would snap even the Professor's mind. Instead, they opt to send Wolverine back, because he's essentially unchanged from 1973 (more-or- less ageless, really) and would therefore adjust better to the trip. And so back he goes.
A solo, rogue mission by Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), in an effort to destroy Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), the creator of the Sentinels, merely gave the public and the government cause to turn on the mutants, thus sparking the war. So: Wolverine is to locate Mystique and persuade her to give up her cause, and he won't be able to do so without the help of...the younger Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Aye, there's the rub, huh? Older, wiser Magneto regrets fighting Charles Xavier all those years, but younger, angrier Magneto isn't so shrewd. (They're just like people!)
So there's your setup. Young Magneto is being held secretly about 100 stories below the Pentagon in a super-ultra-mega-maximum security cell for the murder of...well, never mind. Young Xavier, on the other hand, is hiding out at his School for Gifted Youngsters, which no longer is a school nor houses youngsters, except for Beast, who helps his mentor faithfully. Thus the movie unites not only good mutants and bad mutants but younger and older versions of themselves, more or less. And because of the trippy time shenanigans, you could possibly see familiar mutants, from movies other than the First Class one. Sounds like this would make for a crowded cast, but the action centers around the younger Magneto and Xavier, Mystique, Wolverine, and the younger Beast (Nicholas Hoult).
It feels so good to have Bryan Singer back behind the wheel. The story flows in sync with the dazzling, but not distracting, effects, as if a steady-handed auteur was in charge. This feels like the most authentic and personal X-Men film to date, and I (yeah, yeah) liked each of the others. And heaven forfend if I bust out a spoiler, but you know what they say about time-travel movies: they can change things, man.