In the American wild there still remain about 100,00 wild horses and at the beginning of the new film “The Mustang” we learn that one way this country deals with these wild horse is to give them to prisons around the country for training and eventual auction.

The Mustang is about several men in jail for committing a violent crime that came from short term rage that resulted in a long term prison term. There are many of us who have thought of violence as retribution for an extreme wrong that has been done to them, but it is the fear of prison that keeps most of us from acting on our most violent instincts.

This story is simple and centers on one prisoner who is in jail for a violent crime, and only due to what is called an “Inmate Wild Mustang program” is able to find both a purpose and some level of peace while coming to terms with what he did. The connection with the one horse assigned to the prisoner Roman, played very well by Matthias Schoenaerts, is long and arduous and at first his anger over why he is in prison is taken out on the horse because of his frustration on not being able to connect with the Mustang. Over time the connection between Roman and the horse is extremely moving and the best part of this film.

It was surprising to see actor Bruce Dern in this movie, considering he is almost 83 years old and still a very good actor. His performance in this movie could be worthy of Oscar consideration, even though this movie has come out early in the year.

The Rotten Tomatoes review for The Mustang are an extremely high 95% and I am giving this film a very solid 85% and I do recommend it for its overall quality and solid acting.

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.