Meanwhile, Sonia Hoffman, a Norwegian physicist living in exile locally, has a tiff with her daughter and decides to visit the castle also. Soon after entering the castle, she overhears the men talking about life, the universe and everything, and feels obliged to chip in. Unlike normal people, the men start to listen to this nosy stranger’s harangue, instead of telling her to mind her own business.

Harriman, the poet, is astonished that Sonia doesn’t know who Jack is. Quick – how many Americans can tell me any of the unsuccessful challengers for the last British premiership? Hmmm, I thought not. So why would the men assume right from the start that Sonia is a voting American citizen, even though they meet her in Northern France and she has a Norwegian accent? Even worse, why doesn’t Sonia question their assumptions? Typical of North Americentric film-making, though. There are some odd discontinuiies in the conversation, so I’m guessing that a chunk of the movie was edited out in the final stages to get the time down. Shame they didn’t keep hacking and get it down to, say, five minutes or so.

Having usurped center stage, Sonia rails on about every bleeding heart liberal cause under the sun. At no point does she question her own beliefs or ask the two men what they think. In fact, I don’t recall her asking any questions at all. The plot device (and I really should use air quotes here) for the movie consists of the men setting up strawmen arguments for Sonia to knock down and rant on about.

In one of her more curious tangents, she babbles on about being unable to find a metaphor for how empty atoms really are. She tries to use oranges, then the island itself as examples, but the writers missed the boat on this one – the solar system is a perfectly good example to use – big empty space, nucleus in the middle – planets orbiting. Duh! And she’s a “physicist”. Way to go, Sonia.

It turns out that Sonia is in self-imposed exile as a physicist because her breakthrough in laser physics was used on the SDI program. Horror of horrors! A program designed to kill nuclear missiles! How terrible!

If your political beliefs match Sonia’s I would guess you’d like this movie, because it doesn’t question anything you believe in. So much political rhetoric (from both sides) is like this these days. If you toe the party line, nobody questions how you get there.

Anyway, I made it through about a hundred minutes of Sonia’s harangue before fast forwarding through the last ten minutes to see if the ending was anything other than anti-climactic.

Fortunately for all of us, it did end, but without any redeeming car chases or gun battles. I had hopes that James Bond might drop in by helicopter to liven things up in the last few minutes, but no such luck.

Writing credits (more air quotes) go to Fritjof Capra (writer of The Turning Point, the book on which the movie is based) and Floyd Byars, while the director is Bernt Capra (anyone smell any nepotism here?)

You may have guessed by now that I didn’t care for the movie. I was unable to find a copy of the book it was based on, but Capra’s next book “The Web of Life” continues the theme of Sonia’s harangue. Same bat time, same bat channel.

But beyond the writing, the acting was extremely wooden. The material didn’t leave much room for quality performances, but the acting reminded me of daytime soaps. And by that I mean how good daytime soaps look compared to this.

This is definitely two thumbs down. In fact, I’d be starving the lions for an extra couple of days before letting them loose on this piece of carrion.
Rating: 1 / 5

This movie, and the authors book “Turning Point” are nothing more than a phony liberal view of the planet as mother God, and we as simple minded cretins who inhabit it.

Lucky for me Amazon has a wonderful return policy.
Rating: 1 / 5

I used it recently to build a window seat for the nursery. Because I wanted to make it extremely sturdy (since I’ll be sitting there together with the baby to feed her or read her a book), I framed the seat with 2×4 and and slid in boxed plywood horizontally inside the frame and did a stile and rail molding. The plywood box wasn’t going to bear any load but since the inside was going to be visible so I wanted tight joints. It was an ideal situation for pocket hole joinery.

You can supplement the strength of the joint with glue along the edge and maybe some finish nails. Depending on your need, you can actually remove the pocket hole screws once the glue cures and reuse them later. This is great because with biscuit joinery, you still have to clamp the joint and obviously, you can’t recover the biscuits.

I love this thing and hope to use it for many years to come. I do have some concerns for durability like previous reviewers mentioned but for my relatively infrequent use, I couldn’t justify a more expensive model.
Rating: 5 / 5

Is it possible to make philosophical heavyweights like Rene Descartes interesting and relevant to modern audiences? Sure. Does this film accomplish this? No. Avoid this one like the plague.
Rating: 1 / 5