That’s a round-about way of saying I watched Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in the theater today.

Movies based on video games generally tend to miss expectations, but happily, I have never played the video game that this movie is based on. If you haven’t either, then here’s the gist: a magic dagger turns back time and uses some magic sand to fuel its time-circuits (okay, I was just kidding about the time-circuits). You can figure out the rest.

Here’s the important thing to note about movies that involve time-travel: no matter what happens, you can’t take it at face value because sooner or later some bloke will come along and undo all of it. And when the only thing stopping you is some lame threat involving sand-storms across the world, no one really gives a second thought to changing time as they please. Now if someone had said the entire space-time fabric would come unravelled causing the Universe to implode, that would have made them sit up and pay attention…

In case you were wondering, the hero’s uncle — the King’s brother — is the bad guy. And in case you don’t want to read the spoilers, skip the previous sentence. With that out of the way, here are the top four reasons why he’s the bad guy:

1. He is the prince’s uncle. Uncles seldom end up on the good side.
2. The prince claims that he is the only one he can trust. Er…yeah, right.
3. He has a pointy beard.
4. He has a name like “Nizam”.

Moving on, there’s the question of how long the movie really lasted, after all of the time-travel, I mean. Here’s what happens: the Persian army camps outside the city, attacks at dawn, after which the prince accuses the uncle of treachery. In a bizarre reaction, the uncle gives himself away by attacking the prince (why?) and gets himself killed in the resulting scuffle. The prince gets the girl. The end.

Finally, the action sequences seemed a little far-fetched, but entertaining. Now if you weren’t satisfied with this movie, there’s always the sequel. Any movie that has a colon in it and sounds like “X: blah blah” has a sequel coming in the near future.

Worse still, the little video screen in front of your seat may get turned off a little early, just before you’re told the name of the villain in a whodunit. And if that’s the movie you’ve been itching to watch for a while, it’s been effectively ruined for you.

That’s why I decided to watch “A Time Traveler’s Wife” on my trip from Seattle to Mumbai. It’s a perfect pick: I never really intended to watch the whole thing, so I couldn’t care less if it got cut off in the middle. The dialog didn’t matter too much, since Rachel McAdams is easy on the eyes and this is such a typical romance (man loves woman, woman loves man, man keep disappearing and popping up in other times, yada, yada…). And of course, I dozed off several times as the movie played on, but that didn’t matter all that much either.

Anyway, with this a priori stance about the movie, you shouldn’t really be expecting an unbiased review, but the truth is, I’m not here to comment on the movie at all. In fact, the only comment I have is on the name of the movie: I strongly believe the movie should have been named The Guy Who Disappears and Steals Clothes because, well, that’s what the lead character does all the time. Yes, he travels through time, sure, but that’s quite irrelevant, especially on mute.

Speaking of traveling through space-time, have you ever noticed how time-travelers appear elsewhere almost instantaneously? In real life, I would expect molecules of air and dust to get shoved aside violently when this happens, causing a tiny explosion. Oh well, I guess you can’t be all that realistic in a movie.…

On the bright side, this time traveler was less annoying than Hiro the Hero.

Truth be told, I’m feeling kinda guilty about keeping mum all this while, especially after seeing several movies worthy of comment. Trust me, “worthy of comment” does not mean “excellent”, “wonderful” or anything like that. Not necessarily, anyway.

Digging up memories from the past long gone, I remember watching Inglourious Basterds, which was an excellent movie. Sudden bursts of extreme violence that’ll make you retch, but excellent all the same. I had almost completely recovered by the time the movie ended.

Ever sat in a large kadai and spun around until you felt sick? The funny thing is, it doesn’t take more than a week for you to forget all about that feeling and do it again. That’s an analogy, if you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about. The very next week I watched this spectacularly awful movie called District 9. I know, I know — some people like it, but if you thought the movie was good, then listen to this: in my mind, that movie’s become the de facto standard for judging bad movies. For instance, when I staggered out of Totem Lake Cinema after a valiant battle against Dil Bole Hadippa!, my first words were, “God! What an awful movie! Almost as bad as District 9!”

Okay, so I made that last part up, big deal.

Then there was Julie & Julia. That was a movie about cooking, so you’ll understand why I won’t say much about it. I was as out of place in that movie theater as a duck in a cuckoo’s nest.

If you’re sensing a trend here, you’re wrong. I don’t always watch movies I don’t like. Don’t believe me? I watched this movie today called Zombieland which was incredibly entertaining. QED.

Interestingly, the movie is completely in 3D, which means the audience needs to wear those special goggles that make things stand out (notice the pun?) The effects are pretty impressive, I must say.

Bolt rates high on the cute-o-meter, just as you would expect of a movie with a dog, a cat and a hamster in it. Add to that a little girl (voiced by Miley Cyrus) who loves her dog very much indeed, and you have the perfect recipe for a lovable Thursday-night-movie.

There’s no doubt that Ram Gopal Varma’s genre of horror is way better than the traditional Ramsay Brothers’ formula. Even so, low expectations is no excuse for making a mediocre film. Phoonk is a mixture of ideas taken from The Omen, The Exorcist and others, with an occasional attempt at cuteness. The underlying theme is the usual one: a man who doesn’t believe in the supernatural and his gradual transformation into a believer. Perhaps this movie was aimed at an audience unfamiliar with those classic themes, but a little originality would have been more than welcome.

I am also disappointed with the background score of the film. This is one of the most important elements of any movie, and is especially important for one that claims to scare its audience. Consider any well-received movie and you will find a fantastic score played at the right time and place, subtle yet effective. In the case of Phoonk and such other films, there’s nothing but a supposedly scary piece of music played loudly at random intervals, making it quite hard to listen to the dialogue.

Cinema is a composition of light and sound that requires careful timing, a plot built up at the right pace and a series of climaxes that enthralls the audience in one way or the other. Phoonk tries to be a ‘scary movie’ from the beginning to the end, and not surprisingly, it fails at this task.

Over the last week, I watched the latest avatar of Knight Rider: the movie that aired on NBC. Now, it may have struck you as strange that I said ‘over the last week’, because people generally don’t watch movies over a week. Give them two hours, and they’re done with it. But this one was different. This one was so bad you could have mistaken it for a soap opera. They might as well have sung me a lullaby.

Occasionally, the actors tried to act. Oh well, I’m sure they tried their best. See, this woman is chased by bad guys, who have probably killed her father. I suppose she believes in living “in the moment” though, because she only seems interested in that car of hers. She’s also very interested in knowing why her old boyfriend left her.

Like all movies, there’s this guy who claims to be the hero. He doesn’t do much, but I suppose they needed someone to fill the spot. He’s the son of the original Knight Rider, which is deemed an appropriate excuse for pretty much everything he does. He’s also our heroine’s former boyfriend, who blew her off years ago for no reason at all.

There is no chemistry between them. She might just as well have eloped with the car.

And speaking of the car, this car has one of the most advanced artificial intelligence systems ever built. It can do a lot of things — access information that couldn’t possibly be obtained, talk to people to make them feel better, and show pretty pictures related to everything it says. Unfortunately, its brilliant creator forgot to install a decent intrusion detection system, so the average bad-guy-geek can hack into its computer in what, twenty minutes?

Let’s skip ahead to the end. Actually, I still haven’t watched the ending, but let me guess how it would turn out. Obviously, our hero would claim some deep and dark reason for having abandoned his girl despite having loved her, and we would all be asked to feel sorry for him. Then the reunited couple would exchange the customary hugs and kisses, and would live happily ever after.

Maybe I’ll find out how it really ended, someday, but frankly, not knowing is turning out to be a far more exciting prospect.

Did you say McClane was indestructible in the previous movies too? True, but then he didn’t battle a military jet or kill the bad guy by shooting him through himself. I bet the older John McClane could have given the Terminator a run for his money.

Never mind all that: what I simply cannot comprehend is how everyone seems to have access to every single Government network possible. I do mean everyone — the hackers as well as the crackers. I know people can do some cool things with their computers, but this is way too much. Anyway, I was glad there was no third-time-lucky-password sequence (that is, the hacker/cracker is presented with a password prompt that he cracks on the third try, without ever having done it before.)

One important flaw, in my opinion, was that they paired up the wrong people. You know the classic plot — boy meets girl, rough times together, lots of destruction, hugs and kisses all around, love at last, et cetera. But how the heck is that supposed to happen if the guy (Matt Farrell, played by Justin Long) spends all his time with McClane instead of McClane’s daughter? Looks like they really messed up that part of the story.

Overall, I would give it a rating of 3.5 out of 5. It could have been better. But wait — was it just a beta release?

My opinion about the movie: definitely worth watching. The script and direction combine a passion for the game with light touches of comedy and drama to conjure up a couple of hours of sheer excitement. There are also elements pointing to the personal lives of some of the characters, adding a measure of reality to the story.