Prometheus - Movie Review IMAX

PROMETHEUS - "A powerful Sci-Fi concept that has been used to great effect in the past, but falls flat in this case. It's slow movie with lacklustre acting and storyline"

The movie is set in some 75 years in the future, with a pair of archeologists looking at a 35,000 year old cave painting which depicts ancient humans pointing to a celestial systems light years away. They find that this same system has been noticed in many different civilizations across the globe. They set out on an expedition with a team of scientists, explorers and a very life like robot.The movie then basically surrounds their experience on the planet, looking for the aliens they called "The Engineers" the people who they believed brought humaity to earth.

As you'd expect from the trailer, things don't go as planned and some strange things happen that cause people to start dying. The action continues throughout the movie with the story culiminating in the team realizing that they were not on the home of their ancestors but rather at a place of death.

The movie really does not explain a lot of the topics that it picks up on, Who are these Engineers? How did our ancestors know about them? What's with the alien in the last scene? It centers too much on the action then on the actual story and is a real let down. On the whole I would not really recommend going to the movies to watch this movie. Wait for the movie on TV, it's fine for a bored sunday afternoon when you don't have anything else to watch.

What would I rate this movie? Well, it would be 2 on 5.

Rahul

Avengers - IMAX 3D Movie Review

Avengers IMAX 3D - "Action packed super hero movie with all the characters putting in stellar performaces mixed in with brilliant special effects and 3D sequences. Definately worth a watch in IMAX"

 It's been a long time since I posted a movie review. I have seen quite a few movies since then but none of them have been momorable enough to review. So after a gap of 5 months, reviews are back due to popular demand (you know who you are!!!).

I had been waiting to watch this movie for a long time, but I was not expecting too much from the movie, because I thought that a movie with so many big names and big superhero characters in their own right may not be able to co-exist in one movie. It was a really plesant surprise that all the characters bounced each others characters off the others and made the entire movie look really coheisve and cool. In the lead up to the movie the standalone movies introducing each of the characters had a combination of hits and misses. The Iron Man franchise has been strong, Captain America was good & Thor was dissapointing. The Hulk has had 2 incarnations in the last decade with Edward Norton's incarnation being far and away the better one. But this movie introduced a new actor for the Hullk in Mark Ruffalo, who played an incarnation quite similar to the one Edward Norton had played in The Incredible Hulk (2008) and brought Bruce Banner and Hulk much closer to each other.

The movie picks up right where the Captain America & Thor movies left off, with S.H.E.I.L.D trying to analyze and build power source and weapons from the Tesseract, the blue cube that Hydra used in the Captain America movie to build all those weapons. Loki arrives and steals the Tesseract as it can be used to create wormholes to other dimensions and Chintauri promise him the Earth in exchange for it. After this most of the movie is basically self explanatory, Nick Fury brings these characters together to save the world from this threat.

The movie combines very witty dialogue with brilliant action sequences keeping you hooked throughout. The last 30 minutes of the movie has a lot of 3D scenes which makes the experience even more interesting. If you have not yet seen  the movie, go watch it. What are you waiting for?

The bottom line, this movie is a 4 on 5 for any superhero movie fan.

Rahul

The Adventures of TINTIN - Review

The Adventures of TINTIN - "Seeing the comic come to life in with such amazing graphics is good, but not great. The movie disappoints with it's changes from the original and a poor finish"


I must admit it's been almost 15 years since I last saw a TINTIN comic. But some of the most fun I had as a kid was reading these comics by Herge. This Steven Spielberg movie tries to take 3  books that introduce of Captain Haddock and the Unicorn's legacy.



The Crab with the Golden Claws
The Secret of the Unicorn
Red Rackham's Treasure


But to really have done justice to the books in this one movie, there was real artistic licence needed where elements from the 3 books were borrowed and tried to mesh into one book. The movie concentrates on Tintin meeting Haddock and their adventures in finding the secrets of the Unicorn. But Haddock did not meet Tintin while trying to uncover the Unicorn's secrets, he met him 2 books earlier, so they had to take part from the earlier book (Carb with the Golden Claw). All the way through the movie all you can do is make comparisons to the books and that's it's pitfall unfortunately. Too many changes to the story and an effort to combine 80% of Red Rackham's treasure into 10 minutes, created a very disappointing ending to the movie.

When you leave the movie theater, if you think about the movie in isolation, I'll say it was an average movie with really good graphics. In terms of the Tintin comics, the movie was a disappointment.

My Rating. 2.5/5.

happy new year,
Rahul.

Don 2 - Review

DON 2 - "Traditional Action, Music & Bollywood Masala, with a incredibly slow first half and a good second half. Nothing to write home about, but fun at the movies nevertheless."

The Return of the King, That's the tag line the movie set out with and it's also the legend it had to live up to. I don't think anyone ever claimed that the first Don movie or it's subsequent remakes were classic movies with fantastic plots twists. But the first movie was an Amitabh Bachchan, angry young man classic with song and dance and fight sequences and Shah Rukh Kahn's re-interpretation was a stylized movie with a brilliant plot twist at the end at left most of us really thrilled that we saw something other than just a re-make. But what the movie did more than anything was left the door open for this one. Don 2.

For those that have not seen the first movie, please remember this is a sequel, and does not make much sense without the first one, but anyway it was a fast paced movie that slowed down along the way but picked up steam at the end, but was full of good music, car chases and fight sequences throughout. Good old masala. So anyone expecting anything more would be disappointed.

Let's get to the point. How was Part 2? Well to be honest if I had left during the intermission I would have gladly said the movie is horrible. The first half of the movie is long drawn out and boring, the acting by all actors in the movie is terrible, with not one of them showing an ounce of emotion. Kareena Kapoor showed more emotion in the one song that she came in the first movie than all of them did in this movie put together. But the movie does compensate with a good second half where they actually get into the job of storytelling and the twist at the end though expected, makes you leave the theater with a smile on your face. Does the movie shamelessly borrow sequences from Mission Impossible, sure and you are going to see the similarity all the time. But you will enjoy it.

So my rating? 2.5 would be it. Not good or bad.

A review is not going to make you go watch or avoid this movie, somewhere along the way you will watch it. The action is really good, the car chases are fun and you do recognize the music from the first movie, so like I said before it's Good old masala.

Rahul

Ra.One - Review

Ra.One - "A Bollywood superhero flick with a lot of promise and an excellent first half, got bogged down by too much song & dance, masala and a lackluster story in the second half. But after Endhiran, this is the best special effects I have seen in an Indian movie. And for that reason alone, worth a watch at the theater"

When you decide to watch a superhero flick, there are certain things that should be left at the door. The first one being Logic. We watch these movies to have a good time, for a few laughs and some dramatic action sequences. To a large extend all these rules apply to Ra.One as well. Shahrukh Khan plays Shekar Subramaniam, a video game developer in London, who has a young son Prateek (played by Arman Verma) and tried to live up to his son's expectations of a bad ass game. His son tells him that Villains are cool and that his father should create the toughest super villain in the world. And thus from this wish comes Ra.One (a pseudonym for Raavan). As expected things go out of hand, and Ra.One comes into the real world and creates havoc. It's actually a good premise for a superhero movie, a super villain that's next to impossible to destroy and the hero, G.One created with all the good in Shekar's heart to vanquish him.

I tried imagining the movie without the song & dance routines that showed up every 10 to 15 minutes or so. The movie would have been 2 hours long at the maximum, they might have been able to keep the audience attention for that long and the shoddy ending may have been glossed over and to say make a hindi movie without the songs is not unheard of today. The second half of the movie adds not even half as much to the movie as the first half and as expected Kareena Kapoor is the movie as eye candy and to play the damsel in distress and does not really contribute much to the story, but then to do her justice, it's really a father and son story with G.One taking the place of Prateek's dad.

All in all not a great movie. It's just timepass and a good action & adventure movie.

My Rating: 3 on 5.

Rahul.

Real Steel - Movie Review

REAL STEEL - "It's a feel good movie that provides a couple of hours of laughs and entertainment. Hey, Robot Boxing is action packed fun!"


Sometime in the near future, boxing goes out of style and Robot Boxing is the name of the game. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a former boxer who now fights in the ring using the robots, but times have changed and he can't really keep up. After a fight he is approached by some guys who tell him that his ex-girlfriend has died and certain things happen that his son Max Kenton (Dakota Gayo) comes to live with him and travel on the road as he fights this robots. Along the way they find ATOM a robot in a junkyard and they brush him up for the ring.

The movie is really a father-son story of endearment and a little guy taking on the the big guns kind of story. Dakota Gayo puts in a really wonderful performance as Max Kenton, that really makes you connect with the character and cheer the robot along. Hugh Jackman's chemistry with him really is what makes the movie worth a watch.

 The only real reason to watch the movie on the big screen is the Robots, the boxing matches were actually a lot of fun. I'd give the movie an average rating of about 3 on 5.

Rahul