In terms of any film that has ever told a true story of a horrific terrorist attack, I have never seen a more intense, disturbing or hard to watch example than this one. The terrorist attacks that happened in Mumbai from November 26-29, 2008 claimed 166 lives not including 9 of the 10 terrorists. This horrific event involved ten terrorists who broke into 12 different buildings including the famous “Hotel Mumbai” and indiscriminately slaughtered men, women and children as they ran for their lives.

Some critics have correctly written that this movie goes too far in showing this horrific terrorist attack, the point being – why depict the sick evil acts that animals like this perpetrated on so many innocent people at this level of evil inhumanity? I agree with this opinion and my thinking is that for this movie, the overwhelming scenes of so much death and the way people were killed went too far.

Hotel Mumbai stars Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, Jason Isaacs and Nazanin Boniadi and the acting throughout this story was real and well done. This movie is not not for the faint of heart or any children. The fear with all movies like this is that some sick person in the world might see it and be inspired by the extreme terrorism and non stop murder.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are 74% and I give it only 60% because it was just not necessary to make a film about a real terrorist attack that this was overwhelmingly violent and disturbing. I would recommend anyone read about this terrorist attack that happened in 2008 instead of seeing this movie.

For the movie “Get Out”, released in 2017, Jordan Peele won the Oscar for best original screenplay. His new movie Us, is very similar in design to Get Out in that he combines horror, strange, crazy and weird into what could be argued a completely new genre of film. Like Get Out the ratings for Us are extremely high, but for me, crazy, strange and weird is not scary. Crazy and strange is just strange, not terrifying. It is no surprise that Peele, who is being called the new Alfred Hitchcock, has made a second horror movie right after Get Out and you have to admire the effort to think of another strange idea like Us.

The story of Us, starts in 1986 around the time of the “Hands Across America” event of all things, where a young girl sees her exact counterpart in a haunted house on the beach. After many years she returns to this exact same beach with her husband, daughter and son, and the existence of these counterparts explodes into something that resembles a zombie movie. Us has only one known actor, Lupita Nyong’o and her acting in this movie holds your attention throughout.

I only recommend Us for those who enjoy a strange horror zombie movies and for the rest of us, this one should be skipped.

The new movie “Gloria Bell” is about many things, but mostly about survival after a divorce. Gloria Bell is played by Julianne Moore, a woman in her 50’s and after her divorce is trying to find someone in LA dance clubs that play music from the 1970’s and 80’s. The awkwardness of trying to have any conversation with anyone in a noisy dance club like this, I thought was played out very well. This entire movie is a series of connected and disconnected scenes with Gloria and her new boyfriend, played by John Turturro and her x-husband, her daughter who is moving away, her son who is having marriage problems and the complicated awkward emotions so common in all human relationships.

Given that the story was so disconnected there is less of a real story and more of a series of emotions based on something that is either going wrong or right at the time. The acting in Gloria Bell is outstanding and includes a large number of known actors Michael Cera, Holland Taylor, Brad Garrett, Rita Wilson, Sean Astin and Jeanne Tripplehorn who I have not seen in a movie in many years. Unfortunately and once again, there are too many scenes where people are smoking in this film, continuing this stain on so many movies that are financed by Tobacco companies.

The Rotten Tomatoes review for Gloria Bell is a very high 94% and my rating is a very solid 85%, more for the acting then the story.