A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THE NEXT STEP IN FILM EVOLUTION: It's been a while since we talked about what's out at the cineplex, and I have some things to say about X-Men: First Class. (Thoughts here are relatively spoiler-free, but comments may contain spoilage, so beware.)

• I hadn't seen Jennifer Lawrence in anything substantive before this (didn't see Winter's Bone or The Beaver), but this performance absolutely sold me on her playing Katniss Everdeen. Indeed, her arc here as Mystique has an awful lot of similarities to Katniss' arc in The Hunger Games, though I think her character's motivation in this film is underwritten.
• I've rarely seen a film with a more complicated relationship with continuity. The opening scene is either lifted from or pretty slavishly recreated from the first film, and by casting much younger actors and using some internal reset buttons (at one point, a scientist notes that Mystique ages much more slowly than a normal human or even most other mutants because of her DNA), pretty well deals with continuity issues for many of the principal characters who've appeared in previous films. That said, I'm not sure how the character of Beast fits into continuity at all, and the relationship established between Mystique and Xavier in this film doesn't really square at all with how they deal with each other in the earlier films.
• Vaughn's developed a lot as a filmmaker. Layer Cake was a very gritty and dark film pulled along largely by the charisma of the then-unknown Daniel Craig, and Kick-Ass wasn't exactly epic in scope, but Vaughn here synchronizes action on multiple fronts, in multiple languages, gives pretty much everyone in the cast a chance to shine, and pulls off some neat directorial flourishes (in particular, in a 60s-ish training montage).
• Really dug the script's conception of a young Charles Xavier--glad they recognize that if you were the world's most powerful telepath and a good looking 20-something, not all of your pursuits would necessarily be high-minded.
• So nice not to see a film with unnecessary 3-D effects tacked in. There would have been a few moments where 3-D would have been cool, but it wasn't necessary or organic to the story, and because this is a relatively CGI-light film (most locations are practical, rather than green-screen), it wouldn't have worked that well anyway.