HOTEL MUMBAI is an exceptional dramatic thriller that is based on a true story. Dev Patel plays Arjun, a waiter at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, India. One night a group of terrorists raid the hotel and 11 other locations in Mumbai. Employees and guests are trapped in the hotel for several hours as they wait for special forces to arrive from New Delhi. The movie is intense and definitely keeps its audience on edge.
HOTEL MUMBAI also stars Armie Hammer as David, an American married to a Muslim Iranian-British heiress named Zahra (Nazanin Boniadi). The film ends by showing the actual people who endured the horrific events. They have reunited at the renovated Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.
I saw HOTEL MUMBAI at a theatre in April. Now you may watch the movie on various Web sites, including YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, and Google Play.
Felicity Jones gives an exceptional performance as United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in ON THE BASIS OF SEX. Jones efficiently shows strength and determination throughout the story. Ginsburg attends Harvard Law School in the 1950's when there are few women students. Her husband Martin (Armie Hammer) is also a student at Harvard Law. When he falls ill, she attends both her and his classes. The couple's partnership also consists of raising their two children and working as joint counsel for a case that makes it possible for Ginsburg to practice law.
In the 1960's very few women practice law, so Ginsburg teaches law. She is not satisfied with this, and in 1970 when Martin discovers a tax law case involving a man named Charles Moritz (Chris Mulkey) who hires a nurse to help him care for his aging mother, Ruth accepts it. Moritz is denied a tax deduction for the nursing care because the deduction is limited to "a woman, a widower or divorcee, or a husband whose wife is incapacitated or institutionalized," which is Section 214 of the Internal Revenue Code. The opportunity allows Ginsburg to overturn the law, which also challenges laws that discriminate against women. Additionally, she believes winning the case will start her career of practicing law.
In the United States landmark cases and laws have made it possible for school integration (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 1954) and voting rights for all (Voting Rights Act, 1965). In the 1970's Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes it possible for women to work in professions seen as only for men by successfully proving that a man is discriminated against on the basis of his sex. As society changes, the laws should change.
