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As long as X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a success this weekend (and despite all its “bad luck,” it should do very well), Fox will follow it with another X-Men spin-off, this one detailing the back story of Magneto. Outside of that project, which has been in the works just as long as the Wolverine film, there’s interest in solo movies for Gambit, Deadpool and Emma Frost (White Queen), as well as a spin-off about the original X-Men team as students.

Recently, in another list, we called for an Origins film focused on the shape-shifting villain Mystique, for which we even suggested Brian DePalma to direct. That spin-off is still our first choice, but since there are so many great mutant characters in the Marvel Universe, we’d like to pitch ten more X-Men origin movies to Hollywood (not just to Fox). To go along with the studio’s idea of hiring an unqualified filmmaker (Gavin Hood) for the job, we also recommend a barely appropriate director for each film.

Professor X

If Magneto gets his own film, it’s only fair to give one to Charles Xavier, too. While it’s true that he’s enough of a centerpiece in the first three films of the franchise, and he will certainly be prominent in the planned X-Men: First Class movie, we’d love to see the genius telepath’s pre-X-Men days. The film should deal with Xavier’s early encounters with characters who exemplify the negative aspects of the mutant evolution, beginning with his jealous non-mutant half-brother, Marko (Juggernaut), continuing with the evil Shadow King, at least slightly touching on the birth of his insane mutant son, Legion, and ending with his failed relationship with Amelia Voght, who believes that mutants should remain underground and anonymous, when he decides to found the X-Men. Zapped! Director Robert J. Rosenthal should return to the director’s chair to helm this, at least as a nod to Patrick Stewart’s Extras appearance, if not also to have a young Xavier using his psychic powers to render girls topless.

Storm

A spin-off of both the X-Men trilogy and the Professor X movie, in which a young pickpocket Ororo Munroe should make a cameo, Storm’s origin film could also lead-in to, or at least link up with, the Black Panther adaptation Marvel Studios is planning. The story would begin with her childhood in Egypt, when a jet crashes into her home, killing her parents and burying her beneath rubble. For a while, she’s a thieving orphan on the streets of Cairo before she ventures south and meets and falls in love with a young T’Challa (Black Panther) in the Serengeti. They part ways, her weather-controlling powers manifest and she ends up living among an African tribe who worships her as a rain goddess before she’s recruited to join the X-Men. The film could be bookended with a post-X-Men trilogy-set wedding between Storm and T’Challa. Continuing the trend of documentarians becoming narrative filmmakers, Rob Fricke (Baraka) should direct.

Nightcrawler

Alan Cumming’s portrayal of Nightcrawler was one of the best parts of X2: X-Men United, and it was unfortunate that the character did not return for the third X-Men movie. To make amends for the exclusion, Fox should give the blue mutant his own film, which could also be linked to a Mystique film, whether or not the connection is made that she is Nightcrawler’s mother. Set first in a Bavarian circus, where the young, demonic-looking Kurt Wagner stars as an acrobat, then in a Florida freak show, where his agility is wasted, the movie would conclude after the teleporting character returns to Germany and battles his child-killing foster brother, Stefan, and then an angry mob who accuse Wagner of being the murderer. Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) should direct.

Callisto

The outcast group known in the comics as the Morlocks, which includes Callisto, briefly shows up in X-Men: The Last Stand (as The Omegas), but they deserve an entire movie of their own, which would place them in the tunnels of Manhattan and further examine the plight of these ugly mutants who aren’t as able to assimilate into society as are the X-Men. The plot could potentially include Callisto’s kidnapping of Angel (who also shows up in the third X-Men film) to make him her mate, as well as her battle with Storm for leadership of the subterranean group. The film should be directed by Marc Singer, who made the documentary Dark Days. Or by Marc Singer, the Beastmaster actor who is also the cousin of X-Men director Bryan Singer.

Angel/Archangel

Angel’s solo outing should directly follow the Callisto/Morlocks movie, in which his wings could be accidentally amputated during the struggle for his freedom. Therefore, this movie would get right into his transformation by the villain Apocalypse into his new incarnation as “Death,” and subsequently “Archangel.” To make it an actual solo film and not just another X-Men sequel, his and the other Horsemen’s attack on New York City should not be stopped by the entire team. Maybe he should only battle Iceman, or no X-Men at all. It could be a more internal struggle for him to break from the control of Apocalypse and then turn on and defeat his master. Nick Castle (The Boy Who Could Fly) should get the gig as director.

Psylocke

The character kind of appears in X-Men: The Last Stand, but we can forget that minor detail since she’s not that recognizable. In her own movie, Psylocke would begin as English telepath Betsy Braddock, twin-sister of UK superhero Captain Britain. Without acknowledging her early membership in the X-Men nor most of her other comic book chronology, by some newly written circumstance she is kidnapped by the Hand’s Matsu’o Tsurayaba, her mind is swapped with the man’s lover, Kwannon, and she becomes a deadly assassin. Mark Waters, who has experience with mind-swap movies (Freaky Friday) should direct.

Cannonball

Most of Cannonball’s origin film would just be about him growing up on a Kentucky farm and later working in a coal mine. We’ll get to meet his younger sister, Paige, who is also a mutant, but of course we never see her revealed as such. This won’t be that packed with action, but it will have some neat special effects as Sam Guthrie discovers and develops his flying abilities after they manifest in an accident at the mine. Towards the end of the film, he’s found out and recruited to join the Hellfire Club, which would link this to the White Queen film that David O. Russell wants to make. David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls) would helm this beautiful-looking and poetic comic book adaptation.

Tabitha Smith

The explosive teenage mutant who has gone by the names Timebomb, Boom Boom, Boomer and other aliases, should get her own film over similar candidates like Rogue, Kitty Pryde and Jubilee, because her bomb-creating powers make her more blockbuster-friendly. Especially if the movie involves her early bond with fellow suicidal teen Rictor, who causes earthquakes. Her story begins after she escapes from her abusive father, and the film is set mostly on the streets, where she encounters other runaways (possibly even Jubilee, who she famously clashed with in the comics for being so similar). Michael Bay would be appropriate as director, but he should merely produce while Martin Bell (Streetwise) takes the helm.

Dazzler

There aren’t enough musical action films, but that could all change after someone makes a Dazzler movie and the thing becomes a huge hit. Put Miley Cyrus in the lead, and the success is guaranteed. But the appeal of a rock-opera superhero movie isn’t the only reason Dazzler should get her own spin-off. There’s also the likelihood that such a movie would include scenes set in the Mojoverse and costar Dazzler’s lucky (in more ways than one) boyfriend, Longshot. Ideally, a fantastically visionary filmmaker like Terry Gilliam or Jean-Pierre Jeunet should be hired for this thing, but it’s more probable that Kenny Ortega (High School Musical) would get it.

Northstar

It’s about time we get an openly gay superhero movie, and there’s no better character to star in such a thing than the former Alpha Flight member whose homosexuality was a major news story in the early 90s, when Marvel officially outed him. Like most of the characters on this list, Northstar too would be shown first as a bad guy, joining a terrorist group fighting for the independence of Quebec. By the film’s end, though, he would join the Canadian team Alpha Flight, through which he reunites with his twin sister, Aurora, and they would go into battle against Wolverine, for any narrative reason at all (the real reason is that a Wolverine appearance will guarantee a bigger audience, anyway). Bryan Singer, who did a great job directing the first two X-Men films, and who deserves a gay-themed movie now that there’s no need for him to make his planned Harvey Milk biopic, would be a great pick to helm this, but we’re going to suggest Brett Ratner (X-Men: The Last Stand), just because.

indieWIRE reports that Cinema Guild will distribute Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax. The film, which I reviewed at SXSW, is Bulajski’s third feature; its predecesors, Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation, were self-released after the former won an Independent Spirit Award and the later completed a successful festival run. Word on the street is that the new film will open in New York later this summer, after its run at BAMcinemaFEST.

Cinema Guild has been quite busy of late, actvely acquiring old fashioned art films in danger of falling through the ever-widening gap between festival acclaim and traditional theatrical release. A couple of weeks ago, they announced a deal on Clair Denis‘ 35 Shots of Rhum; a few weeks before that, they launched a home video label through which they plan to release a number of titles formerly owned by the shuttered New Yorker Films.

It’s hard to know how to go about using words to do justice to Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control, a film seemingly designed to reveal the folly of associating language with meaning, so concerned it is with the rhythm and atmosphere of code over courting traditional satisfaction by suggesting conceivable systems for breaking it. In talking about a picture in which everything is surface (or else nothing is), and the relationship between all signs and their meanings are scrambled (or none are), is everything a spoiler? (Or, perhaps nothing is?)

It’s possible that you’re frustrated already, and you wouldn’t be the only one; Jarmusch’s film is the first to be released this calendar year to truly polarize critics to the point where some of my colleagues have suggested that it’s one of the filmmaker’s worst efforts, while others champion it as one of his best. As such, it seems necessary to be more transparently subjective than usual: I like it. The Limits of Control seems to work best for those who can roll with the fact that Jarmusch is trafficking in vague genre promises that he only barely cashes in on, and that the story’s perceived mystery is a MacGuffin to pave the way for a rumination on creative idealism as a code that crosses transnational lines, bridging gaps of language and ethnic difference to unite dreamers/travelers (signified here as one and the same) in a common fight against those who seek to destroy their philosophy in the name of global capitalist homogeneity.

Jarmsuch regular Isaach De Bankole stars as a wandering operative known only as Lone Man, who is on some kind of mission involving handovers of matchboxes, sometimes containing diamonds, sometimes containing small bits of paper with inscrutable writing which the man appears to memorize before ritually swallowing and washing down with a gulp from one of the two espressos he always orders simultaneously. The codes seem to lead him to new locations, where he picks up more codes through cafe conversations about culture and art with charismatic strangers (the film features meaty cameo-sized roles for a variety of international indie bold faced names, including a bewigged Tilda Swinton, a be-bearded Gael Garcia Bernal, a bespectacled and mostly naked Paz De La Huerta, and a bewigged Bill Murray). Characters are never named on screen, but in the credits are refered to by their reductive defining characteristics: American (Murray), Mexican (Bernal), Nude (de la Huerta), Blonde (Swinton). Each person the Lone Man meets uses the same words to confirm that he doesn’t speak Spanish.

Clearly, it’s a film of pattern and repetition, increasingly forcing the viewer to question the nature of what we’re looking at and what it means every time the cycle repeats. He travels, he orders two espresso, he does tai chi, he wears a version of the same sharkskin suit, he reclines in his clothes but never seems to sleep. Perhaps because he’s ALWAYS asleep, because it’s all a dream? How would we know –– how would he know ––  how to determine if he were sleeping or awake? As Tilda Swinton’s operative reminds him, “The best films are like dreams you’re never sure you really had.” In the already much-discussed climactic scene between De Bankole and a Cheney-esque Bill Murray, the latter growlingly demands to know how the former penetrated his ultra-high security lair. The answer: “I used my imagination.” It’s the one scene in the film in which something undeniably happens and yet, it’s debatable whether the scene itself is actually happening in real time and space at all.

The magic of Limits is that Jarmusch has used rigorous formalism (both within the narrative, and guiding it) to construct what feels like a loose, dreamy continuum of ideas. An inscrutable protagonist who literally feeds on encryption. A grafitied landscape of Spanish streets echoing the Cubist of paintings he visits at a museum, paintings themselves offering clues, delivering information in stylized form — art as its own kind of code, delivering sensitive information by disguising it in style. His contacts give him information, the building blocks of a crime, in the language of art appreciation. Or perhaps they merely appreciate the arts, and that’s their crime. The film’s climax implicitly suggests that if it is, the criminals will have their revenge against their oppressors.

Perhaps the key to what Jarmusch is up to is offered in a scene very early in the film, in which the Lone Man recieves instructions in an airport from a man referred to in the credits as Creole, whose Spanish is translated into English by a companion who makes it known that he thinks he should be decoding the crypto-philosophy he’s been charged with transmitting from one man to another. “Reality is arbitrary,” says the Spanish speaker. “You want me to translate that?” asks the translator. “I don’t fucking get it.” The Spanish simply speaker nods at the Lone Man, and says, “He gets it.”

Does he get it? Is he playing as though he gets it? Does it matter if he gets it? Do we have to get it? Is there a thing to get? The Limits of Control resists creating a discreet desire for the express purpose of satisfying it between credit sequences. If it satisfies you at all, it’s likely because of a desire you brought with you into the theater, one which the film doesn’t try to eliminate or even literally articulate as much as it sings of it. In code.