X-Men : First Class - Review

X-Men : First Class - "Slick, Fun, Definitely worth a watch. The best movie in the X-Men series by a mile"


Every movie, cartoon & comic with Professor Xavier & Magneto has always eluded a friendship. A long history between them, a fork in the the road where they went down different paths. What were they before they became the Professor and Magneto? Why did one turn against humanity & one decide to stand up for it?

After 4 movies from the franchise, there was a danger that this one would not really add much to it. The trailers did not leave me breathless to watch the movie. But nonetheless, I decided to watch it. And oh boy was it fun. It feels like a re-invention of sorts. Going back to where it all started. Charles Xavier, a boy who grows up in the lap of luxury, but has a secret & Erik Lensherr a polish boy in a Nazi concentration camps with a deadly power. The movie shows how their lives were molded by circumstance & choice.

The movie uses it's own artistic licence of course, it does not stick some of the known histories of the characters.  It introduces Sebastian Shaw as the main antagonist, a man bent on.... Oh well you'll find out in the movie. I'm not going to spoil it. The movie shows some of the classic X-Men characters like Mystique, Dr. Henry McCoy & Emma Frost in much more detail.

The movie was really brilliant. Of course the special effects were good. It's a superhero flick after all. But it's aided by a terrific cast. James McAvoy portrays a young Xavier so well that you can actually imagine him growing into Patrick Stewart's character over time. And the same can be said for Michael Fassbender's Magneto. The scenes involving the two of them are fantastic, especially when they go out into the world to find their team using Cerebro.

You walk away from the movie with a smile on your face, when you see the last few scenes. For a fan who has seen all the movies. It feels like full circle. And for the uninitiated it makes you want to watch the next 3 movies on DVD.

I'll say a definite 4 on 5 for X-Men First Class. The name says it all.

Rahul.

Club Vs. Country & The Tour to the Caribbean - My Two Cents

The World Champs on their First tour. 

A stand in Captain and Five heroes of the dream run are missing. 

Club versus Country is being shouted out from every website that cares about Cricket.

April 3rd 2011, just 2 months back I wrote one of my most emotional blogs about Indian Cricket. Pride oozed through my veins as Team India lifted the cup & brought joy to a nation.

But even before it could all sink in, the biggest T20 cricket league set in motion a cricket overdose. 90+ games played between 10 city teams. In the past anyone who enjoys cricket would have followed the IPL with a lot of passion. But this time around, fatigue set in. Even worse was the fact that a lot of the players were wearing different jerseys this time around, you lost touch with the teams. I guess another aspect of this is that I am writing about Indian cricket, sitting in another country. Away from the hungama & action back home. Am sure I'd be watching the matches in the evening if I was there, cheering the Super Kings to victory. Instead I was looking at the points table and hoping the Gayle force didn't knock the stuffing out of Chennai. (it was fun seeing him bowled for a duck)

But it was not that IPL caused the stir. It was players choosing to play the IPL instead of taking a break and coming back refreshed for the West Indies tour. Six big names, Dhoni, Tendulkar, Sehwag, Zaheer, Yuvraj & Ghambir had to sit out of the tour for different reasons. Injury & Fatigue.

Think back a few weeks before we realized that Ghambir and Yuvraj would not be playing either. Not everyone was upset at the entire team. Club vs. Country debates were not as heated. The tour was being looked at in a very different light. It was an opportunity for Ghambir to seal his spot as the next in line for captaincy. A chance for the world cup hero Yuvraj to make a permanent spot in the test side (something he has tried to do ever since Ganguly retired). But then they got injured while playing the IPL. That's when everyone posed their arguments on what mattered more. Club or Country?

Of course Country matters more. It matters more because of the pride involved. It matters more because of the affect it has on the team's ranking. It matters more because of the joy it provides an entire nation. And it matters because we don't think about all the money that's involved in the sport when someone represents the country. We don't think if they have alterer motives when they play for Team India. But when the same player comes out to bat for the Super Kings or  the Knight Riders, we smell the money. But there's the problem. That's what the IPL is about. A chance for the players to make a lot of money, while providing us entertainment in the evening. If in the process a player gets injured or chooses to play a few league games after a long world cup campaign, we shouldn't grudge the players that much.

With the amount of cricket Team India plays, it's about time a Player Rotation policy was instituted. How long can we depend on 6 to 10 players. Yes a Core is needed. But it should be a core of 20 if not 30 players. Barring the opening slot, each of the players replacing players is matched player for player.

West Indies is a team like India in the '90s. You never know what will happen. When playing against a team such as them, it does not matter if the Top 6 are there or not. The youngsters can win on their own. Or lose to a blinding spell of cricket by the Windes. We need to give them a chance to prove their mettle. Maybe Kholi will be the man to fill the gap when Sachin or Dravid finally say adieu. Raina may shoulder more responsibility with captaincy and become a mainstay in the team. And the new comers will provide the bench strength for the future challenges in England and Australia.

Other Views:


An Interesting Article was by Harsha Bhogle on the similar subject. He has a point. It's the players decision not the boards.

Tom Alter on the other hand, had nothing good to say about all the players taking rest. I'm not sure I agree with anything he said.


At the end of the day, if we really want the best team on the field all the time, we need to have some gap between the tours, or build a bench that's the best at all times.

Rahul.

The Conspirator - Review

The Conspirator - "A very delicately crafted movie about life at the end of the American civil war. A very educational, emotional and entertaining movie"


The movie tells the story of a young lawyer, Frederick Aiken who fought as a Captain for the Union on the civil war and was tasked with the job of defending a Southern woman, Mary Surratt, charged with conspiring to kill the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State.


The movie is not a fast paced thriller, but is like a slowly crafted story that takes you through the lives of the people who lived in that time. The chaos that the assassination caused and the aftermath is the center of the story. In a country that was literally split in half the movie goes on to show how clearly the lines were drawn between "us & them". It's this feeling that give the story so much of it's heart. Aiken, a northerner, a man who fought for the Union during the war, defending a Confederate woman accused of a heinous crime. As the movie goes through the first 30 minutes to an hour you see Aiken go from a man who shows contempt & disdain in defending a woman whom he feels is completely guilty to someone who is unsure of her innocence or guilt. He gets the feeling that she's being used as a scapegoat or as bait to catch her son John Surratt, who is known to have conspired with John Wilkes Booth and the rest in the assassination. The ambiguity of the characters, Mary Surratt, Anna Surratt & Frederick Aiken provide the story with a compelling story.


At the end of the movie, you want to know more about what happened 150 years ago. But the more you read about it, the more difficult it is to reach an opinion. That's not really the intent though. It's a well crafted movie & if you are a history buff (I am) then you should enjoy the movie.


A few stunning performances give this movie a rating of 3 on 5.


Rahul. 

Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides - Review

Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger tides - Glad I decided to watch it. Unlike what most reviews say, is actually a lot of fun.

When you decide to go watch a movie with Captain Jack Sparrow what are you expecting to see? A deep thrilling adventure with a convoluted story and swashbuckling adventures. Not really. You are going to watch the movie because you expect a bunch of crazy laughs with swashbuckling adventures & a funny story thrown in for good measure. And that's exactly what you get this time around as well.

If you are honest with yourself. The first time you saw The Curse of the Black Pearl, it was something new and you really loved it. And that made you go see The Dead man's chest. Whether or not you liked the second movie you really did not have an option. It left the story hanging and made you go back for At the World's End. To credit to the series they finished it off well. Jack where he started, on his own looking for his next loot, Turner becomes the captain of the Flying Dutchman & Barbossa is the captain of the Black Pearl.

So did we really need another one in the series? Especially considering most of the main characters were gone. One got the feeling that they were trying to milk one more out of the cash cow. It would be a movie that should not have happened. One that gave a forgettable end to the franchise.

Not if the writers of the latest movie have anything to say about it. The series is still awesome. Jack Sparrow is still really funny & you still love to hate Barbossa.  So what if Turner, Elizabeth Swan  and the rest of the English Navy is gone. Bring on Black-beard, Angelica & the mermaids.

So they are after the Fountain of Youth this time. Go join them in the adventure. I am quite sure you will enjoy it if you liked any of the last 3 movies. It's a bunch of stupid laughs but that's what we watch this movies for anyway.

It's a 4 on 5.

Rahul.

PS.: So that means, at least according to me, it's another one that RT got wrong. Come on this movie deserves a lot more than 34%. But the audience rating on this movie is about right

Movie Reviews - Can you really trust them?

Talking about Movie Reviews on a Blog that has become mostly a review portal is kind of ridiculous, especially considering my take on a movie may not be the same as the rest of the planet. But what the heck, let's give this a shot.

There was also the time when I used to purposely stay away from reviews of movies I wanted to watch, for fear that it would sway my opinion one way or the other. What did that do? Make me waste a lot of time at movies that were painful to get through.

Up until a year ago, I used to go completely by the reviews of a certain few movie critics & Rotten tomatoes. But as I've started to watch more movies, my tastes seem to have evolved & I find myself unable to trust any of the reviews, Good or Bad.

I'll agree that more often than not when a  movie is really bad, the tomato-meter is not way off. And for that matter when a movie is actually really good, like "The King's Speech" or "Inception" there are very few people who get it wrong. But it's the movies that fall between the 3.5 to 4.5 star categories that are the problem.

So here I am, disappointed with the reviews that I've trusted off late, too-good to be true, or really off the mark on a fantastic movie.

When I decide to watch a Hollywood movie, I don't shop around for reviews, I go straight to Rotten Tomatoes. Why? Well, it's the way they get their ratings. It's a average of what all the critics think of a movie. When you put a whole bunch of opinions into a hat you should get a reasonable estimation of the movie right? Wrong!

When I realized that  the best example of this I guess is the last 2 movies I saw, Source Code and Thor had really good ratings on RT. 86% and 78% at the time when I saw the movie. Those are really good ratings for movies. You would go in expecting the movie to expecting something really cool. Both the movies were average at best (keep in mind movies like The King's Speech, The Fighter & Inception have ratings in the 90 to 95% range).

And then there's the other side of the story, going by the review of one single person. At one point in time, I liked Rajeev Masand's reviews they seemed to match mine and I skipped a lot of bad movies thanks to him. But then over time I guess tastes changed & I find that his reviews don't really match mine in any way (of course other than the really bad ones). This situation is way worse than RT. Going by one person's opinion of a movie (esp. when you are not sure if your taste in movies is the same) is not the best way to do it.

Did I just say that? You can't trust one person's opinion of a movie? Damn, am alienating my target audience.
Oh Well, not like I had a huge target audience anyway. If you do decide to come back & you find that you can trust my reviews, there are new movies coming out every week. You should see something or the other new on this blog.

In the meantime, I continue to look for a Movie Critic with my tastes. One that can give me a "Useful" opinion on new movies.

Rahul.

THOR - 3D - Review

THOR 3D - "Blah!! Not like I was expecting a story anyway. Good Special effects, a fun way to spend an hour and half."

First off - if you want to watch the movie. Don't watch it in 3D. There's hardly any 3D scenes to talk about. A couple of weeks ago, when I saw the trailers, I had made up my mind to watch it on DVD. But then the tomato-meter was at 78% for 2 weeks. That's  quite good for a super-hero movie. And then a couple of long weeks at work. THOR seemed like a pretty good way to relax. But my first instinct was correct.

I'll give MARVEL this much. They are trying to build up to the Avengers movies with all their stories. And if you are a super hero geek like me, that may be one of the only reasons to watch the movie. But really, is he really a super hero? He's a Norse God.  Not a super hero.

The action sequences are quite cool. But some of the scenes with Natalie Portman could have been cut and replaced with a few more action sequences.

Conceptually, the idea of 9 realms and a worm hold bridge connecting them is cool. Stargate like concept. Any hey, if someone has seen SG-1, you are going to think of the small grey alien when you think of THOR or the Asgard.

What's next for the Avengers franchise? Captain America. There was a trailer at the movie yesterday. It looks like one I'd actually want to watch. Here's hoping it's better than THOR - God of Thunder.

My Rating: 3 on 5 (hey and that's being generous - just because I'm a sci-fi geek.)

Rahul..