Peter Huggie

A 2-hour film that seems to drag on for four hours. Aliens with technology sophisticated enough to get them here from a planet light-years away, but still using machine guns like ours. No plot. Endless, gratuitous, exaggerated drama, highlighted by tiresome soap-opera music. The soap-opera music builds to a crescendo during every one of Staff Sergeant Nantz's dozens of motivational speeches, all of which he's able to orate without getting shot. That kind of combat realism reminds me of John Wayne in "The Green Berets."

A beautiful film! Sean Penn's character, Clark, applies the wisdom gained by experienced cab drivers and bartenders who trade personal stories about their lives with customers who offer theirs in return; both of whom understand that their temporary relationship affords a depth of trust that is rare in relationships. His rider, played by Dakota Johnson, in just a couple of hours finds the father she longs for and still needs, but never had: a man both supportive, encouraging and lovingly critical, yet humble enough to accept correction and even rebuke graciously. When he offers her a handshake on the sidewalk in front of her home, she instead reaches her hand out to caress his cheek. One can bet she will look him up at his cab company again for the parental influence she needs.

The film doesn't use any cinematographic devices to signal its flashbacks, which confused my wife and I as we watched. Other movies and series use, for example, a green or blue filter to signal a flashback. It could have been a really great story.

I started watching the series, impressed by what I thought was the depiction of the likely struggle to survive which the crews of the HMS Erebus and Terror might have faced on their ice-bound ships in the Arctic, although almost nothing is really known. The compelling acting and Ridley Scott's involvement as executive producer gave me high expectations. However, midway through Episode 4 the film depicted the primary threat to the British sailors as an elusive and savage beast that strikes far too quickly and stealthily to be a bear, and whose footprints are several times a bear's size. I then realized this movie belongs in the Bigfoot, vampires, wolfmen and zombies genre of films about creatures that don't actually exist, and dropped it from my watchlist.

This is a stupid film. Alec Baldwin must be really broke. How did the hijackers get into the cockpit? Can anyone imagine hijackers allowing passengers such freedom of movement, while screaming at them with brandished guns? How'd they get them ON the jet, when you can't get a box cutter through Heathrow? How are the hijackers so gullible that they keep trusting this Interpol guy? And how did NSA Director Alec Baldwin manage to hire only eight employees for a 30,000-square-foot building, and he's got them doing the job of the FAA and U.S. Air Force? Are they also doing the DEA's narcotics interdictions? The USDA's meat inspections? Perhaps the lowest point is our Interpol hero claiming he's inspired by "Hamlet," accompanied by droning French horns.

Another crockumentary in "The Blair Witch Project" genre, but with realistic CGI-generated sharks eating the hapless, panicked frat graduates and their hysterical ditz, Megan. They pass up their few chances to get rescued or resources, because Megan insists that they stay together, and she can't swim. Brilliant! You knew the producers are sexist after wiggie Megan launches their only remaining flare INSIDE the life raft. First Place in the Darwin Awards.

Alicia Silverstone stars as one of two finalists, along with her husband, for Darwin's List.

I've seen some really stupid movies in my 60 years, but this one contends for the stupidest.  Even after I pay my respects to Indian customs and culture, the Bollywood extremes are ridiculous invasions of consciousness.  The combat scenes suffer from a laughable John Woo slow-mo overkill.  The music score pummels the audience with an almost non-stop staccato bass synthesizer that often underscores the trivial.  Why blast that racket when the camera pans an empty police conference room?  The soundtrack is a lampoon of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.  And then there's the hero, Arjun, whose brilliance, omniscience – I kid you not – prescience, deference and just plain good manners make all the other cops look so dumb and crude, that they crown him czar of the police department.  I'm sure his European blood adds to his distinctives.  He's integral to an overarching and campy morality play that suggests the influence of the BJP-ruled Ministry of Culture.  I could go on, but I won't.

The appeal in this film is the irreconcilable moral conflict between preserving a people and their culture, or exterminating them for their abhorrent cruelty to other human beings. The grotesque cannibalism, torture and mutilation, and the pleasure these villagers derive from their inhumanity are not gratuitous, even if almost intolerable for the audience to witness. They illustrate the utter depravity of this people. One might criticize me for judging them harshly by Western values, but respect for others is, in my view, not merely Western, but universal. The highest tribute one can make to Western civilization is to impose a quarantine on this people.

I gave it two stars for the compelling drama, but the series elides a bit too much the impact of inhuman working conditions on ordinary Americans, and how decades of their misery exploded in the faces of the self-deluded Industrialists in the early 20th Century. As a result, for example, the viewer doesn't gain an appreciation for Theodore Roosevelt's rabid popularity. JP Morgan -- the originator of the cruel "Morganization" business strategy -- expected TR to negotiate with him, and TR told him to go blow. By eliding the treatment of workers, there's no way to understand 20th Century history at all.