Q: Based on the novel by Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is about the young son of a notorious gangster who spends his last teenage summer roaming around with two friends. The year is 1983, and young Art Bechstein (Jon Foster) is at a crossroads. Completely opposed to his father's lifestyle, Art plans to become a stockbroker. Visually contrived with painful attempts to create beautiful hip indie cinematography, the whole film feels like the director - whose previous effort Dodgeball was funny if outright commercial - is desperately seeking indie credibility by cobbling together aspects of other indie films but sprinkling it with stars like Mena Suvari, Sienna Miller and Nick Nolte. Like so many of the star-laden premieres at Sundance this year it felt like this was a secrety studio-sponsored vanity project to help the director earn some indie credibility points - it failed in that respect and as a film in its own right. OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: Question: how does a bourgeois director treat a subject like immigration ? Answer: by turning it into an existential alienation parable.

Yes, we're back in the early 90s, just after the disintegration of the Eastern block and the subsequent flooding of immigrants in the European Union, and what better way to deal with the subject than making a film about an existentially alienated middle-class journalist, an existentially alienated upper-class politician, his existentially alienated rich wife, and so on.

In the background, immigrants are asking for political asylum in an unnamed Greek village near the borders. I guess that way Angelopoulos can show some social awareness, while dealing with the existentially troubled upper-classes. I mean honestly, the scene where some top-ranking army-officer curses his destiny cause he sent his daughter to study in London is enough to make you puke.

Anyway, it can't be that bad, Angelopoulos is a master of the cinematic art after all, right ? Wrong. It's at this point when his mannerisms start getting too artificial, sort of like a filtered image in Photoshop. His usual tricks show up: there are blurred windows, blurred lights, a weird wedding, a walk by the river-shore, and people with yellow water-coats. Also Mastroianni breaks new ground for most sleepwalking performance ever. Avoid really. Go for his early films. OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: All of the X-Men movies were great. And I mean all of them, including the long hated X-Men 3. They had solid characters (Magneto and Xavier were the best ones, in my opinion), and a good story arch.

I was all excited when I heard this movie was on production, and my expectations grew bigger and bigger until I saw the movie. I was so disappointed.

Hugh Jackman is not a bad actor (his best movie is The Fountain, although you won't hear about this movie when they talk about the actor), and his acting is not what screws the movie up.

The whole film is plagued with lots of meaningless characters that add nothing to the plot (like Blob or Gambit), which were tossed there to make fans believe that the film makers had read the original comics.

I am a fan of XMen, I have read many, many of their stories and this movie respected none of them. None. Not even the continuity. It doesn't respect Weapon X project, or the relationship between Wolverine and Sabretooth, or Emma Frost, the motivations for wolverine are plain stupid and seen in millions of movies: Revenge for the death of a loved one.

Oh. What I was expecting the whole darn movie was a Berseker moment for Wolverine similar to the one he has in X2 in the school when Stryker men come in and he alone decimates the enemy forces, but hey, this is Fox, this a family flick and you will not see explicit violence from the most violent and gruesome Marvel hero.

Besides, I had a feeling of constant deja vu with this movie because Wolverine's Origins are already explained in X2, we already know how he got his adamantium skeleton so it kind of does not make sense to make a movie of something we already know.

I personally believe that wolverine is one of those few characters that does not need a solid back-story because mystery is the nature of the character. Do we really want to know how the Joker got his scars? OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: The premise and subject about making a criminal realize what his victims went through by capturing his family hostage sounds promising and interesting. But this is the only interesting part which was also dealt 20 years ago with quite finesse by director Ravi Tandon in his film "Jawab'(1985) too. The problem here is Ace Director Rajkumar Santoshi found himself in some sort of confusion as to whether to make it a fast paced action-thriller (viz. Khakee) or an emotions-rich heavy duty drama (Viz. Damini) and this confusion is quite evident in the final outcome. If we ignore two of his-Pukar (2000) and Lajja(2001), this brilliant director has always given us fairly engrossing films with high entertainment value. Therefore this film comes as a surprise, as to what made this script sensitive director going for half-baked characterization of both of his protagonists-Amitabh Bachchan and Aryeman. As the film is getting over, audience didn't know whom to hate and whom to sympathize with and this factor is the major limiting force in the complete narration. Therefore what starts as a war between a common man and an underworld don ends on a strange note of self-realization and regret by the Don about what went wrong with his own family. The revelation of Don's son as a real baddie does not come as a surprise element in the climax which if compared to similar situation in 'Khakee" worked so effectively with Aishwarya's character. That is not all, there is more to it. The whole dramatization of life of an Underworld Don, operating from abroad looks quite illogical. His openly landing up at Mumbai from where he is suppose to be absconding as well as running after his enemies and shooting them himself does not look believable. Pitching a mediocre, newcomer actor like Aryeman opposite Mr. Bachchan is again not a good idea. But nonetheless film has some plus points. Ashok Mehta's fine camera-work, two good fight sequences (co-ordinator Abbas Ali Moughal), some light well-acted scenes of Akshay Kumar in the Ist half, Santoshi's fast-paced slick treatment and of course Mr. Bachchan as usual trying hard to put some life into his lifeless character. But all these put together does not make this viewing an exciting experience for you and your Family! OPTIONS:
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A: negative