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Hotel Mumbai marks the feature film debut of Australian director Anthony Maras who co-wrote the screenplay with veteran Scottish writer John Collee (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Happy Feet).

This non-stop thriller is a highly suspenseful action-packed account of the 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel aka “the Taj” and other locations in Mumbai, India. Although other attacks are shown, the emphasis of the film is on the attack on the five-star luxury hotel, which first opened its doors in 1903.

While the screenplay is a composite of actual and fictional events, the attack by an Islamic terrorist group out of Pakistan was based on hundreds of hours of interviews with survivors and witnesses. A significant amount of dialogue was taken verbatim from intercepted cell phone calls made during the three-day siege.

On the night of November 28, 2008, a group of young men armed with explosives and AK-47s stormed the hotel with instructions fed to them through an earpiece from a controller called “Brother Bull” who promised them Paradise for killing infidels and money paid to their families for their sacrifice in the name of “Allah.” The local police were overwhelmed and initially did nothing but wait for the Special Forces from New Dehli, hours away, to arrive. Eventually, a handful of brave local police did enter the hotel in a mostly failed attempt to help evacuate guests and employees. In the meantime, it was up to the guests and staff members to fend for themselves.

The film plays out much like the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno in which various hotel guests, staff members, and public officials were indiscriminately killed while others survived an attack on the hotel by fire.

Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, Lion) as a Sikh waiter with a pregnant wife and young daughter and Anupam Kher (Silver Linings Playbook, The Big Sick) as the Hindi head chef with 30 years of experience behind him are the principal heroes among the hotel’s staff. Armie Hammer (Call Me by Your Name) as a young American, Nazanin Boniadi (TV’s Homeland) as his Muslim wife, and Tilda Cobham-Hervey as the young nanny who cares for their infant son are the principal guests from America while Jason Isaacs (The Death of Stalin) represents Russian tough guys and the late Carmen Duncan represents the British aristocracy. Not all will survive as bullets fly, hand grenades are thrown, fires are set, and victims are shot point blank as others successfully hide in broom closets and other locations before the terror is put to an end with the arrival of the Indian Special Forces after three days of siege.

This was two-time SAG nominee Anupam Kher’s 501st film.

Hotel Mumbai is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Us, director Jordan Peele’s follow-up to 2017’s megahit Get Out is like his previous film, an expertly made horror film, though not quite as original.

Get Out and Us were both mysteries steeped in horror, both featuring dollops of humor but whereas the humor in Get Out was momentarily tension-relieving, the humor in Us is more disturbing such as when one of the film’s “heroes” bursts out in mirth at the killing of some of the “villains.”.

The beginning of the film takes place on the boardwalk of the beach in Santa Cruz, California in the 1970s where a young girl wanders off and returns to her family as if nothing has happened. The scene then shifts to the present day where the young girl, now a grown woman, is returning to the area with her husband and children for a highly anticipated vacation.

Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar winner for 12 Years a Slave, and one of her Black Panther co-stars, Winston Duke, play the woman and her husband. Shahidi Wright Joseph is their daughter and Evan Alex is their son.

No sooner does the family settle in, than they are confronted by a homeless family that turns out to be doppelgangers for theirs. After several horrific confrontations, the family flees to the home of their neighbors, Elisabeth Moss (TV’s Mad Men) and Tim Heidecker and their daughter Cali Sheldon but discover to their dismay that their neighbors also have nefarious doppelgangers waiting in the lurch.

The film has moments that are reminiscent of such classic horror films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Sixth Sense, Funny Games, and The Babadook, but the ending is a bit of a letdown as it teeters dangerously close to being just another zombie film ready for a sequel to sort out unresolved issues.

Us is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This week’s Blu-ray upgrades include They Might Be Giants and The Border.

They Might Be Giants is a cult classic comedy-mystery that playwright James Goldman wrote before The Lion in Winter, but after winning the Oscar for the 1968 film version of The Lion in Winter, he and Lion in Winter‘s Oscar nominated director, Anthony Harvey, chose his earlier play as their next screen project.

Released in 1971, the film stars George C. Scott in his first theatrical film since his Oscar-winning performance in 1970’s Patton as a man who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes and Joanne Woodward, three years after her Oscar-nominated performance in Rachel, Rachel, as his psychiatrist, an aptly named Dr. Watson.

Sweet and goofy, the film benefits from its New York location filming and its supporting cast of New York based character actors including Jack Gilford, Rue McClanahan, and Al Lewis.

Made between Reds and Terms of Endearment, 1982’s The Border may be one of Jack Nicholson’s least known films, but it is reportedly one of his own personal favorites.

Directed by Oscar winner Tony Richardson (Tom Jones), Nicholson stars as a corrupt border agent in El Paso, Texas who cleans up his act when he takes pity on a young woman whose baby is put up for sale on the black market. Harvey Keitel, Valerie Perrine, Harvey Keitel, and Elpidia Carrillo co-star.

This week’s new releases include Blu-ray upgrades of the classic frightened wife thrillers, Gaslight and Midnight Lace.

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