X-Men: First Class

The "X-Men" franchise has been the silver standard of the modern multiplex comic book era. Not the "Dark Knight"/"Iron Man"/"Incredibles" pinnacle, but up there with the first few "Spider-Man" movies and arguably more of a class act, with its double team of Great British Thespians (Patrick Stewart as the benevolent telepath Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellan as the eeevil Magneto) and secondary characters that are themselves state-of-the-art special effects. That misunderstood-freaks theme can carry as much allegorical weight as you want to pile on to it, too. When a character in the new origins story, "X-Men: First Class," is outed as a mutant, he mumbles with some embarrassment, "You didn’t ask, I didn’t tell."