The View From The Mountain

I came across a movie on Amazon Prime called Schizoid, starring the infamous Klaus Kinski, who is maybe better known for his starring role in the 1979 German remake of Nosferatu (as well as his strange and inexcusable behavior). In Schizoid, released in 1980, Kinski plays a Los Angles psychiatrist who runs a group therapy session that features Julie (Mariana Hill, from Blood Beach), a newspaper columnist who is receiving threats in the mail from a stalker. Things heat up when people in Julie’s group therapy start turning up dead. For what it is--a low budget horror thriller--Schizoid is not bad, not bad at all. Despite it’s slasher trappings, writer/director David Paulsen manages to create a decent murder mystery amidst the gory kill scenes. The cast of suspects include Donna Wilkes (Angel) as the doctor’s volatile daughter, Craig Wasson (Ghost Story) as Julie’s ex-husband, Flo Gerrish (Don’t Answer The Phone), and Christopher Lloyd (Back To The Future), as anoth

Babylon 5 was a science fiction TV series that aired back in the 1990s. It was about a massive space station that was under the command of Earth. It was a fantastic series, and is available on physical media, as well as HBO-Max. In the show, the space station was protected by several wings of space fighters known as Starfuries. They were one of the best-designed, and coolest-looking space fighters to ever launch from a TV series. This is a model kit of the B-5 Starfury that was released by Revell/Monogram in 1/72 scale. But instead of doing the standard Starfury assigned to Babylon 5, I decided to do mine up as a Psi Corps version. The Psi Corps was a telepath group whose fascist ideals threatened B5, as well as Earth itself. The Psi Corps version of the Starfury was black in color, although

"Satre said, 'Hell is other people.' He was my first crush." -- Wednesday Addams. Back when I heard they were making a TV series out of the Addams Family character Wednesday for Netflix, I really didn’t have much faith that it would be very good. And when I read what the basic plot would be: that Wednesday would be sent to a special school of the dark and wicked, I figured this was going to be much worse than I had initially thought. The Addams Family had been around for decades; it didn’t need to be “modernized” with a bastardized format that merged it with Harry Potter (and I’m really sick and tired of the frigging “magical school for kids” plot that has seemingly overtaken nearly every movie and TV show within the last twenty years). But when I finally saw Wednesday , you know what? It didn’t suck. In fact, the new Wednesday show on Netflix is really very good. What the heck happened? It’s several things. The firs

Looking at the reviews for Andor , the latest Star Wars series produced by and exclusively for Disney Plus, they all say the same thing: that Andor is a vastly mature TV series--and it is. But many of these reviews also appear to be a back-handed insult to the Star Wars franchise in general, by stating how Andor was made for the adults in the room, and how it lacked the dopey ‘pew-pew-pew’ action of space wizards fighting each other with their laser swords that we get in Star Wars . And yeah, Star Wars does have its silly moments (and that’s pretty much all of Return of the Jedi ). But the very best of Star Wars (the original Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back , Rogue One , The Last Jedi ) strived mightily to be far more than the simple space operas they appeared to be. And even the films that didn’t have such lofty goals ( Solo , SW: Revenge of the Sith ) are still vastly entertaining. But it doesn’t appear that most people are really complaining abo

I first saw Bram Stoker’s Dracula when it was initially released in theaters in November of 1992, and I recall expecting to see a serious, solemn drama that was based on the classic horror novel that was written in the 19th century by Stoker. But I also remember being pleasantly surprised by the luscious, imaginative cinematic dark fairy tale that was weaved onscreen by Francis Ford Coppola, the visionary director of the Godfather trilogy, along with The Conversation , and Apocalypse Now (the latter being my all-time favorite Coppola film). Um, Coppola also gave us the lame Jack , with Robin Williams as a boy who pre-maturely grew into a man, but nobody's perfect. While Coppola presented the Dracula story with complete seriousness, he also seemed to have a great deal of fun with the subject matter, as well, presenting the movie as a lurid fever dream by using every in-camera movie trick in the book (even a few from the silent film era), with the lone ex

Hocus Pocus 2 is a bit of a disappointment. While it’s great seeing Bette Midler, Sara Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy back as the Sanderson Sisters, the witch trio from 1600s Salem who have returned a second time to terrify modern day kids, I just wish the sequel was at least half as good as the original 1993 film. The first HP did a superb job of also firmly establishing its three young leads, played by Omri Katz, Thora Birch, and Vinessa Shaw, that you were still rooting for the kids--despite the wildly charismatic and funny performances by the veteran actresses playing the Sanderson Sisters. In sharp contrast, the sequel barely spends any time fleshing out its three young leads (played by Whitney Peak, Belissa Escobedo, and Lilia Buckingham); they each lack a specific character "moment" that everyone had in the original film. The sequel seems more preoccupied with blatant product placement instead of creating full-blooded characters. And the

I dreaded watching the Doctor Strange sequel, so much so that I avoided it for a while now. I didn’t want to see it for the simple reason that Scott Derrickson, who did such a marvelous job with the first Doctor Strange film, opted out of helming the sequel. Derrickson, who directed such frightfully good films like The Exorcism of Emily Rose , Sinister , and The Black Phone , gave us a wonderfully weird and dark Doctor Strange film that was tinged with such strong elements of horror that it was a little unnerving in certain moments. In other words, the first Doctor Strange was pretty fucking great, and remains one of my all-time favorite Marvel Movies. But since I was a Doctor Strange fan from way back when I was a kid, I finally gave in and watched Doctor Strange in The Multiverse Of Madness on Disney Plus, and guess what? It really wasn’t bad at all. In fact, I kinda, sorta liked it. Well, OK, I really liked it. Yes, I really enjoyed Doctor Strange 2, I admit it

It’s been forty two years since the death of legendary master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, but his influence lives on the a new generation of filmmakers. The recently released Watcher, ably directed by Chloe Okuno, is another thriller with a Hitchcockian flair. Julia (Maika Monroe) moves to Bucharest with her husband Francis (Karl Glusman), who’s been transferred to the Romanian office by his company. Francis speaks Romanian fluently, having been raised by a Romanian mother, but Julia--who’s still trying to learn the language--is lost at sea. Okuno makes a point of not translating any of the Romanian that’s spoken in the film, making us feel Julia’s isolation and frustration at being left out of conversations and life in general. But life gets even harder for Julia when she starts seeing a shadowy figure watching her from one of the windows in the apartment building across the street. Soon, she starts seeing a strange man who appears to be following her where

The Orville has long been an entertaining science fiction show that got even better with its third (and possibly final) season. With shooting on the third season getting held up by the pandemic, Seth MacFarlane--who created the series, as well as stars as its Captain, Ed Mercer--seemingly took the added time to rework the scripts. And that was a very good thing. When The Orville first debuted, it was seen as a comedy that offered a funny, satirical view of Star Trek, the classic series from which The Orville was inspired by. The humor was very broad and bombastic, sometimes going a little over the top. But even in the first two seasons, the slapstick humor began to slowly be replaced by earnest storytelling as MacFarlane and his writers fleshed out their characters and the universe they lived in. And by doing this, The Orville only got better. While there’s still humor in the third season, and it’s much welcome (because the humor here is still genuinely fu

It makes sense that The Batman would have its opening scene take place on Halloween night. Gotham City, Batman’s stomping grounds, is practically a Halloween-fest all year round, with most of its denizens wearing masks. The Riddler (Paul Dano) is clad in a mask when he sneaks into the home of the Gotham City mayor and murders him--later promising more deaths and revelations of dark and dirty secrets online. This Riddler is a far different beast than Frank Gorshin’s Riddler, who I grew up with on the ’66 Batman TV series. But as much as I will always worship Gorshin’s performance (and he remains my all-time favorite Riddler), I thought Paul Dano’s more creepy take of a deeply disturbed Riddler worked very well in The Batman. Tech savvy, including knowing just how to work the rubes into following him online, this new Riddler is far more dangerous--and even scarier--than ever before. And his weird quirk of dropping clues is given a legitimate reason: he wants