X-Men: Days of Future Past

Nobody worries about the space-time continuum in X-Men: Days of Future Past, in which Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) goes back to the ’70s to stop Raven (Jennifer Lawrence, playing one awful note) from killing a scientist (Peter Dinklage), thus creating super-robots who roll up in coffins to kill everyone now. Kitty (Ellen Page) does some reiki business to send him to unite Magneto (Michael Fassbender, damn) and Xavier (James McAvoy), stop Raven and change the course of the future. The current-day timeline is a dirgey bore, with no one having anything to do except stare into the middle distance and wait for death to come, probably. But 1973 is a waterbed-stabbing good time, featuring a wonderful stop-motion sequence starring Evan Peters (Quicksilver), Wolverine’s naked butt for no reason, some cool leather jackets and Magneto throwing a stadium around. Director Bryan Singer infuses some actual humour up in this piece, and even though the whole thing is a sprawling, stupid mess (JFK?), it’s entertaining, which is the best you can hope for in a series on track to outpace Nightmare on Elm Street. —Tara Thorne