Reviews

This could have been a classic, but instead it's vlassic (pickles). The final battle between the wolf men was so laughable, it resembled two teddy bears doing their best UFC imitation. Ruined the whole movie! Waste of an excellent cast and some good atmospherics. Pass on this one unless you like battling teddies.

A viscous polemic against Christianity, contrived to put Christians in the worst possible light. It sets up an outlandish twisting of Scripture as the basis for a diatribe that panders to the paranoia of secularism that all Christians are to be feared as deluded, evil psychopaths who only desire to make others, especially women, miserable and oppressed. No sect ever interpreted 1 Corinthians 7:36 as condoning incest with one's daughter. Even the Old Testament vehemently condemns any such notion. This movie's goal is to provoke paranoia and persecution against anyone who tries to live a Christian life according to the Bible. Dangerous!!!!!

Perverse sex, tired stereotypical characters, gratuitous nudity, and a clownish creature that we're supposed to empathize with, all make me wonder what the academy sees in this film. The story: a new species of aquatic humanoid is found in South America and transported back to a Baltimore oceanographic institute. The head of security wants to vivisect it. The Russians want to kill it so that the Americans can't study it. And the lonely mute cleaning woman wants to have sex with it. I don't know how it ended, because I had no interest in the outcome of such a silly, twisted fable. I shut it down and went to bed. I have always been a great admirer of Guillermo del Toro's films-until now. What's the message here? Are there no limits on what we can have sex with? Does sexual fulfillment trump all ideas of decency? Is this the best our culture can do in defining a meaning for our lives? How squalid and bankrupt a vision we are left with in this and other films like it. The whole thing left me feeling that I was supposed to be carried away with the charm and romance of the story; but it left me feeling ashamed, disgusted, and betrayed.

Most historical summaries of the solution to "The Jewish Question" during World War II start with the Einsatzgruppen, giving it short treatment as the initial method of exterminating Jews and other undesirables. Usually it is described as both inefficient and too stressful for those who did the killing. Then the narrative normally shifts to treat the death camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor in great detail.

Granted, this is where the greatest numbers of people were exterminated in the shortest time, but it was the work of the Einsatzgruppen that really exhibited the extremes of inhumanity, depravity, and brutality during this period in history. Nor was this operation just a precursor to the subsequent death camps; this extreme brutality continued straight through to the end of the war, especially in the form of "Operation 1005," the cover-up attempted once the Germans understood that they would soon lose the war and be held accountable for these horrors against humanity.

The horrors perpetrated by these death squads cannot be overstated. The massive scale upon which this most extreme horror took place boggles the human mind and soul. Such extremes of mass cruelty, humiliation, torture, and death are beyond the normal understanding. Even the Nazis could not bear to take part in it without constant and copious consumption of alcohol. Further, most of the killing was carried out by non-Germans and even non-Nazis, with the actual Germans normally filling only a supervisory function. The pain reliever of choice for these nationals was once again large amounts of alcohol. Though this dulled their senses, it also removed their inhibitions, causing many to become not only desensitized to the brutality, but even inspiring them to enjoy it. Some even began to get "creative" about how they went about the cruelty and killing.

If you don't know the Einsatzgruppen, you don't know the Holocaust!

H. is filled with symbolism and contrasting juxtapositioning of material. The film seems to take its title from the main protagonists, two women named Helen who both live in Troy, New York.

One is late middle-aged and a member of "Newborn Angels," a group of childless women who dote upon ultra-lifelike infant dolls as if they were live infants, including setting alarms for 3:00 AM feedings and, yes; even breastfeeding them (or at least pretending to). Helen's husband, Roy, seems devoted to Helen at most times, but there is also an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and boredom in his attitude, especially toward Henry, Helen's reborn infant doll.

The second Helen is younger, perhaps in her early 30s, and is part of a performance art team along with her husband. The focus of their chosen art genre seems to be death, violence, and blood. They have been known to have knock-down, drag-out arguments with each other, including hitting, punching, and bruising one another at times. They include this as part of their art. Helen is expecting a child. Her husband, Alex, is a known philanderer, but he also seems to genuinely love and treasure Helen.

These two women are followed as contrasting parallel stories surrounding a suspected meteor explosion that causes many people in troy to start behaving strangely around the time of the meteor event. Some are convulsed by an ear-splitting whine that precedes the meteor. Others wander away from home and family without knowing where they are going.

The older Helen's husband has a fishing buddy named Harold. Roy and Harold decide to go fishing at nearby Lake George, which also turns out later to be the destination of all the missing people who wander off from their homes. Helen does not hear from Roy for a couple of days after the meteor explosion, and suspects that he must be one of the people who wandered into the field near lake George where all the other missing people have congregated, lying down in the snow in semi-fetal positions.

Many of the missing people are found to have no memory of who they are or how they got to Lake George. When Helen calls the hotline for the families of the missing people, she is told that Roy is not among those found lying in the field near Lake George. She is very upset, and asks if there are any men who have forgotten who they are and have no ID. She is told that they have one such "John Doe" who has not been claimed by anyone yet. She goes to the hospital and finds that the John Doe is not Roy, but is close to the same age. She pretends that he is her Roy and claims him anyway, not revealing the truth to the officials at the hospital.

The younger Helen feels that there something wrong with her unborn child and has a sonogram performed during which the doctors find that there is no fetus present in her womb. They conclude that Helen has suffered a false pregnancy, but Helen will not believe it, insisting that she feels the baby moving and kicking inside her. Around the time of the meteor event, Helen drives to Lake George and winds up lying among the other missing people there. But for unknown reasons she becomes the only fatality among them. Alex is heartbroken over his wife's death. Here the film mysteriously ends.

Two of the major symbols that recur in the course of the film are the stray black horse, which appears in three separate scenes: first blocking the road in front of Roy and Harold's car. Next running through the streets of Troy amidst the confusion of the meteor event. And finally in the woods near Lake George with the younger Helen. Here the black horse appears in two forms: as a normal horse and as a man-horse creature that confronts Helen just before she gets to the field where she lays down and dies.

The other symbol is the giant head of a statue, presumably of Helen of Troy, which is found inexplicably floating in Lake George. It is either the remains of the meteor itself or it was blown off an existing statue somewhere. We are never told where the head or the horse came from during the film or given any specific information about their significance.

This film may bore many people, but I found it really enthralling, especially the reborn doll scenes. I had never heard of such a thing before I saw this film. The dolls captured my interest initially (they really creeped me out personally!) and the other story elements carried me along.

First saw this film as an Elvira, Mistress of the Dark feature. Kinski is hilarious! He runs around having sex with everyone and yelling "Vhat are you dooing!" constantly. Kinski plays psychoanalyst Dr. Fales (no pun intended, I think but the shoe fits pretty well!), whose therapy group is being murdered by an unknown assassin one-by-one. Fales also has to cope with his rebellious daughter, Alison, who's hopping from bed to bed with numerous guys. Daddy can't understand why she's like this, even though he himself is shtupping practically every woman in sight. Basically, Fales becomes a caricature of Kinski himself. Chaotic plot (if you can call it that) and scene pacing. After watching it through, all I could say was "What are you doing?"

This film allows all you bleeding hearts out there to spend some quality time wallowing in that most selfish of emotions: guilt. Guilt about all the pristine native cultures your forbears annihilated from existence. Not that your guilt will bring any of them back, but at least you can feel good about yourself. After all, you're clearly more enlightened than your benighted ancestors, who thought their own culture was the only one that mattered. You even get to deceive yourself into thinking that you can actually experience and become a member of one of their mystical, ecologically friendly tribes, appreciate their sacred mysteries, and admit how insensitive, ignorant, and cruel your forefathers were! Such a deal!

For my own part, I have better things to do; so I regret the wasted time this film tricked me into sacrificing for the sake of it's indulgent, hypocritical, pointless nonsense.

But don't you find it ironic and contradictory that when Martius does not want to leave behind a compass with the tribe because it will change the way they navigate the Amazon and cause them to lose part of their cultural identity, Karamakate rebukes him because "knowledge belongs to all men, not just to you whites!" But then later, Karamakate refuses to allow the yakruna blossom to be shared with white culture on the grounds that it is sacred. What happened to knowledge belonging to all men? What is sacred to the whites is exactly the thing they bring with them to share with all native cultures, and that is what these filmmakers resent most!

Then we have the "noble" Karamakate ridiculing the white researchers about thinking that "things" are so important and insisting on dumping their belongings into the river so that these poor benighted fools can "find themselves." But his observation is an ignorant one, blind to the simple fact that some cultures had to learn to survive in environments and climates where you can't just walk around naked 24/7/365 and get all your food from whatever happens to be currently hanging off the nearby trees or wandering onto your path.

This movie is beautifully filmed in black and white, reserving the color sequences for the caapi hallucinations late in the story. But it is full of muddleheaded thinking about guilt, regret, and nostalgia for lost native cultures it will never know or understand. But if the setting of the story is so life-changingly beautiful, why not let us appreciate it the way God created it: in color?

South American native cultures are not the first ones to be lost by being supplanted by superseding, technologically superior ones. If you study history, it is merely the way things work. You would think that people who believe in natural selection would understand that advantageous, technologically adept cultures will always tend to supplant and make obsolete primitive ones that offer few advantages.

The whole endeavor just nauseatingly pointless anthropological hand-wringing and conscience-soothing.

Get over it, already! And appreciate your own culture for it's irresistible, superseding superiority!

I have always found the Mad Max films and their ilk, for all their sound and fury action, to be boring. This is because the stories are set in a world where no one who lives there would actually want to go on living! A good story needs a certain amount of raison d'être for it to be worth watching until the end. If I ever found myself living in such a world, I would not care to go on living in it. Just kill me and get it over with.

This is the main problem with these films. I think it takes a certain level of emotional sickness to find such a world entertaining. This one, unlike the original Mel Gibson films, really minimizes the back-story of Max's tragic origins and it also minimizes his altruism. We are left with pure survival for survival's sake. But in a world without joy or even any reasonable prospect of longevity for one's self or one's children, what's the point?

Perhaps the sick minds behind such films see the present world in the same terms. I feel truly sorry for such an outlook, but I cannot identify with it. As bad as the present world is, it still presents us with the simple joys and beauties of God's intended creation, as well as a reasonable expectation of happiness, which is the basis for most modern constitutions.

This film is finely made and acted, so I give it a 6. Too bad it's lack of hope makes the story of no real interest. Everyone in it should just give up and die. Perhaps the only hope would be that the Wise Creator would just obliterate it, forget about it, and start over from scratch?

As good a film as this is, it was not the film I wanted to watch. I think this did contribute to my lowered opinion of it. Admittedly this is not really a fair criticism, but I do think that a film about someone actually surviving on Mars for an extended period without assistance from earth would have been a more interesting story.

Anyway, there were a few key things that just didn't sit well with me about this film.

Foremost, I suppose, was the ever heightening complications and ever increasing risk factors that just kept being heaped upon the story until I felt it just got beyond what is credible. I thought the final stripping of the MAV unit to gain altitude was just too far-fetched. At some point the film crosses the line from telling a good story to just showing off one's knowledge of science and engineering. At that point I was just ready to give up any connection with real-life probabilities. In short, everything got to the point where the whole thing just seemed too contrived to be believed.

Next, the New Year's Eve size gatherings all over the world to await the outcome with bated breath just did not seem realistic at all. The only reason people gather in those numbers on New Year's Eve is for the prospect of massive substance abuse and illicit sexual encounters. It is extremely doubtful whether the fate of one astronaut would motivate such gatherings throughout the world. We have had astronauts in danger before, and no such gatherings took place. Taking into account the current increased apathy toward the space program, I find this likewise far-fetched.

Finally, the unabashed worship of science as religion. "Trust in Science, and lean not on faith in any other God. In all thy trials, rest assured that if you do the math, it will save your soul!" Throughout the film this message is beaten like a dead horse. Reality has taught us that such an assurance about science is both inappropriate and unrealistic. Even our best scientific efforts often end in tragedy and death. No amount of Pollyanna-ish optimism is going to unite the world in peace and harmony. This pervasively näive positivism descends to the level of nausea.

In addition, there's something creepy about Ridley Scott making an upbeat, optimistic film. He should stick to more barrenly realistic narratives. These have always been his best efforts.

Strigoi is a funny little film. It's a mystery-horror-comedy-adventure. The dialogue and folksy music blend to create a thoroughly dry, witty atmosphere.

Poor Vlad has returned home from studying medicine with his father in Italy, but he finds everything in his little village has taken a turn for the strange. His grandfather complains about the communists stealing his dog and the Gypsies stealing his cigarettes. Old Florin has been killed and the men of the town claim that it was an accident, but what kind of accident leaves thumb-shaped bruises on the throat? Something weird is going on with the Tirescus, the long-time patrons of the village. Constantin says he is always hungry, and his abdomen rumbles continuously to prove it. Constantin's wife has taken up residence in Vlad's aunt's kitchen, eating everything in sight and demanding ever more food. Vlad awakens in the night to find his grandfather sucking his blood from a curious welt on his thigh. Someone is buying up all the land around the town without the permission of its owners. Where will all this lead? Vlad has no idea, but he is learning that there is much more to the old legends he heard as a boy than he'd always assumed.

This film is full of the ironies of small town life, presented in a dark but charming manner. Sort of a Romanian Green Acres with vampires.

Dwayne Johnson makes all the FX believable! Just looking at his massive physique, you are not really surprised that he can flip an oncoming battle steed, flatten 5 adversaries with one blow from his club, or even topple an enormous statue of his "step mom" Hera from her pedestal.

The characters in his cadre of mercenaries are all likable enough; Ian McShane as the visionary, Amphiaraus; Rufus Sewell as Herc's Spartan BFF, Autolycus ; Aksel Hennie as the ambiguous and taciturn Tydeus; Ingrid Berdal as the chaste but alluring amazon, Atalanta; and Reece Ritchie as Herc's verbose nephew, Iolaus. All of these characters accurately correspond to legendary Greek figures either associated with Hercules or other related myths.

I found the film very entertaining and well directed. The production value was very high, and the feel of the story is also very enthralling.

Lots of fun!

I have read the many vicious negative reviews for this film, and I must say that I am at a loss to understand most of the complaints.

Many condemned the film as unrealistic. I find this hard to believe, since I have seen almost every WW2 film ever made, including documentaries that used actual war footage, and I found this film to be perhaps the most exciting and realistic one that has ever been made.

Consider: This is the only film to ever use an actual, working tiger tank, as well as actual, working Sherman's. In addition, the cast was trained by navy seals and army rangers in an 8-week boot-camp. The main cast was also trained in how to operate, drive, and fire the main Sherman, dubbed "Fury." In many scenes the actors themselves were actually operating a real Sherman tank during the live filming. The cast was also coached by four actual surviving WW2 2nd armored division veterans in their 90s to find out what actually being in combat was like, and to what lengths some of them had to go under extreme wartime conditions. Watch the special features on the blu-ray edition, and you will see how much painstaking care was taken by the production crew to present a realistic image of WW2 combat conditions.

I'm assuming that most of the negative reviewers are not actual WW2 2nd armored division veterans, since there are only the 4 who consulted on this film still living; yet they posture themselves as experts. I can only assume that these people are armchair, primarily book-informed ideologues who think too much of their own second-hand expertise.

Some reviewers complained about the language and behavior of the characters in the film, as if WW2 soldiers did not use profanity or vulgar innuendo, did not have illicit sex with European women, never shot prisoners, and were all Christian, god-fearing, faithful husbands. From all the evidences that I have ever considered on this war, their assertions simply do not hold water, and seem to deny any semblance of reality. Just because they were the greatest generation does not mean that they were all sainted, tee-totaling, Bible quoting, refined gentlemen.

The Don "Wardaddy" Collier character was a chain-gang prisoner who was given the option of hard labor in prison or fighting and dying for his country. It is conclusive that many actual soldiers were in fact from such a background, and it is hard to imagine such people not using profanity, and engaging in many unethical activities under the extreme duress experienced during actual wartime.

The tank battle scene was perhaps somewhat unrealistic, but when one considers the fact that there were only a hand-full of tigers left by the stage of the war depicted in this film, and that Germany had run out of experienced tank soldiers and would have been manning tanks with teenagers and even perhaps young girls, the idea that a tiger would not be able to destroy all the Sherman's, which was the usual outcome throughout most of the war, is not so far-fetched after all. Besides, the Fury's crew were portrayed as being highly experienced in fighting German tanks back to the battles in Northern Africa, so again, the idea that they would be able to at least narrowly survive such an encounter with a tiger while sustaining substantial damages, is really not so unrealistic as some reviewers assume.

I do admit that I was a bit troubled by the fact that the SS battalion was initially presented as marching toward the Fury carrying what were obviously many anti-tank weapons, yet when they actually began fighting the Fury's crew it seemed to take the Germans a long time to resort to actually using these bazookas against the Fury. But I suppose some license had to be allowed for to make for an exciting final conflict, and for that I cannot fault the filmmakers too much. Perhaps the Germans were so surprised and scattered by the ruse used by the Fury's crew that they had no time to coordinate such an attack? Whatever the excuse, the final battle is one of the most poignant and moving battle scenes ever filmed, in my extensive experience of watching many other WW2 films.

Some reviewers found the ending, where Norman survives even though he is discovered by an SS soldier who then inexplicably never reports finding him, preposterous. But I personally do not. I imagine that there were many reluctant recruits in the German army and even in the SS during this very late stage of the war; and, realizing that such a survivor was worthy of some deference for the courage of mounting such a suicidal defense of that strategic crossroads, decided mercifully not to reveal his whereabouts.

All-in-all, I find the observations of the negative reviewers less than compelling, while the film itself I find enormously compelling from start to finish.

Fury will forever hold a lasting, memorable place in my experiences of WW2 films; and I highly recommend it!

So there!

The excellence of every aspect of this film is beyond dispute. It's melding of animation and live action is brilliant, nearly 20 years prior to "Mary Poppins," which always gets such fawning recognition from all the critics for this very thing.

The child acting is also impeccable. Ginny is a stunningly beautiful child (who, by the way, never was able to measure up to her childhood good looks as an adult, and died of complications from rheumatoid arthritis and respiratory failure, already a decrepit crone at the age of 57), and a fine child actress. The tragic Billy Driscoll, who died very young, is also impressive, as he always was as a child star. James Basket is so charming and admirable as the iconic Uncle Remus. He instills wisdom, dignity, and integrity in his portrayal. To see his performance as merely a racist caricature is to deny historical reality.

Yes, the idyllic nostalgia with which post-civil-war plantation life is portrayed may stick in the craw of many a civil-rights revisionist who would rather we forget such times ever existed; but it is also admirable that the relationships between the plantation owners and the former slaves are presented with familial equality. White children play with black children, Uncle Remus and Aunt Tempy are allowed to respectfully criticize the decisions of their white employers, and former slaves are presented with all the dignity that those newly freed but still dependent people historically possessed.

To brand this film as racist is to indulge in racial paranoia and a deluded denial of actual history. To say that poor, uneducated, but wise and dignified people such as Remus and Tempy never existed or are stereotypes that must be forever banned from public consideration shows an unhealthy and obsessed insecurity that is both tyrannical and stifling to authentic creativity.

I know we are a beset with morons in this country, but I've never seen so many reviewers that just don't get it! Most reviewers are so shallow that they cannot see that this film a most effective vehicle for presenting the horror of our common human experience.

It sort of encapsulates the idea presented in the Book of Ecclesiastes. We are all trapped in a world where there is no meaning, with every now and then our friends and loved ones disappearing forever without explanation.

This film is very good! It is consistent in it's unfolding throughout. It never compromises it's relentless progress, no matter how much the characters protest and no matter what they do to try to stave off the inevitable. The acting is quite convincing. This film proves that a thing does not need an explanation to be scary.

It's primarily a metaphor of life and death itself. We live our lives while friends and loved ones disappear from time to time, never to reappear and without explanation, until it's our own turn...

Very nicely conceived!

I do appreciate the technical aspects of this film: the use of single take/shot filming, the incorporation of magic realism as a plot device, and the cynicism/sarcasm directed toward the narcissism and egoism that is ubiquitous within the theatrical community. The acting is very good.

My problem is that all this destructive self-centeredness gets really tedious after about the first half hour of the film. The use of magic realism seems inconsistent, since it is portrayed as a personal delusion throughout the body of the film, only to be shared (rather ambiguously) by one other person at the very end. At that point it is unclear what that shared reality is supposed to mean. Is the film affirming suicide as a path to personal fulfillment? Can Riggan actually fly? Is Sam happy for her father in his desire to "go out on top?" The entire effect is unsatisfying at best.

I have a low tolerance about indulging fools in their folly, I admit. The only character who is worthwhile as a person is Riggan's ex, and she is a very minor character, although essential. Sam's tirade against her father is spot on, but falls flat without acknowledgment.

All in all, a mixed bag of tricks that are altogether un-compelling.

Beautifully filmed, acted, and cleverly devised, this monumental dissertation on Hollywood's Neo-Buddhism is a complete waste of time for anyone who doesn't buy into it's ideology. It even misses the point of Hindu/Buddhist philosophy, since it sees reincarnation as a desirable cosmic adventure, rather than a burdensome cycle of personal and material existence that must be transcended to achieve personal enlightenment and nirvana.

Basically about the resolution of oppressor/oppressed relationships throughout a broad panorama of revisionist fictional history, this film can be summarized as a positive twisting of Satan's temptation of Eve, i.e. "Ye shall be as gods." All lines of conventional moral restrictions need to be "crossed" in order for human "progress" to continue. Thus it can make no distinction between genuine moral principles of good and evil and merely human prejudices and traditions. It offers nothing really helpful about the human condition, since it cannot make this distinction. For the ideology of this film, all conventions are of merely human origin, and are therefore fallible and temporary. There are no really good prohibitions that keep humanity from destroying itself; all are merely obstacles to human fulfillment and actualization.

The devil must be very pleased to have such an eloquent spokesperson as the writer of this story and the script of this film.

Caveat emptor!

This film is like a culmination of the classic western film genre. It's got it all: great memorable characters, great cinematography, great music soundtrack, and a compelling classic story line. Is it innovative? Not really. But neither was J.S. Bach in music. He culminated the Baroque era that had preceded him. In doing so, he happened to bring baroque music to its highest zenith. This film does much the same for western films. It's chock full of all the most endearing clichés with a little modern flavor added here and there. Most people are unable to get the fact that originality in art is vastly overrated. It's much better to do something really well than to sell out everything to merely do something new. There's a lot of really crappy art out there that has little besides originality going for it! I'd rather admire a story that's been retold with passion and a high level of craftsmanship, and that's what Silverado does!

Good quality cinematography, acting isn't completely terrible, and the music shows some acumen. But the script was written by a college drop out on crack or something close. The direction shows no attempt to make any sense out of the story, but just makes each succeeding scene more irrelevant than the last. In this way, the film achieves a pseudo- artistic mystique that it doesn't deserve from a pervasive contrived ugliness. I have to say that neither of the female actresses is even close to being attractive enough to be worth even a fraction of the trouble they seem to cause the male characters.

I'll just pass on this waste of time.

This film suffers from it's dated views on psychiatry as entirely based on psychoanalysis. Darin's character is portrayed as being pathological because of an abusive, violent father and a weak, inappropriately affectionate mother. This makes the entire series of sessions between doctor and patient a waste of time, since the outcomes are only those that a traditional psychoanalyst would have predicted from the outset, without bothering with any examinations. It offers the tired, naïve liberal sop that all so-called bigots are psychopaths and the product of some textbook dysfunctional family situation. This over-simplification was discredited long ago, and serves only to create an emotionally soothing stereotype.

The film also portrays Darin's character as highly intelligent, yet explains his antisemitism as caused by the belligerent attitude of one Jewish father towards him, although the obvious problem with this would be that by hating all Jews, he would also have to hate the man's daughter, whom he described as the kindest, most caring person he'd ever met! Such a general prejudice could never be adopted by a person of such high intelligence without more compelling evidence than a single bad experience featuring such ambivalent emotions.

Basically, this script was conceived in the most contrived Stanley Kramer tradition from a simplistic, moronic, liberal worldview. The actual causes behind such pathologies are much more complex and contradictory of such a mindset as Kramer's. Writing off such pathologies with obsolete psychoanalytic platitudes does a great disservice to the Hollywood audiences who lap it up without the slightest reservations. Liberals like Kramer just love dismissing their opponents as mentally aberrant psychopaths because it means they never have to seriously deal with any of their detractors' actual arguments, which most of them are not mentally equipped to understand in the first place.

Unlike some reviewers, I found the acting and FX passable, and at times even well done. I certainly have seen a lot worse. My biggest problem is with this monstrosity of a melding of three religions. What a mess! You have to be a moron to think there is any reconciling of these three religions, since you'd have to vacate all their essential teachings to do this. Also, the entire mythos of the Jinn just falls flat from the beginning. The verse from Ezekiel 1:13 read in support of their existence is totally out of context and has absolutely nothing to do with any Jinn; rather this verse describes the Seraphim who surround and guard the throne of God, and there are only four of them. They are also described in Revelation 4:6-9. They are not a "third race" but a special class of angelic being, those closest to God throne. But if you suspend your incredulity for an hour or so, the film is nice entertainment. I have no wish for a sequel to this pretentious hodge-podge of cosmological muck. One is more than enough, thanks!