The View From The Mountain

The Amazon streaming service had a surprise for me the other night: Brainstorm , the 1983 science fiction film that wound up becoming actress Natalie Wood’s last movie, due to her untimely death. I saw this when it was first released in theaters, not really paying much heed to the behind the scenes saga. At that time, I was so hungry for new science fiction--ANY science fiction--that I happily ran to the theater whenever a promising SF feature came out. Watching Brainstorm , with its themes of life and death, wound up made me very sad back then--so much so that I never re-watched the film again (until recently). I wasn't prepared for how much it reminded too much of the then-recent death of my mother, who was a huge fan of Natalie Wood. Now, re-watching the film for the first time some 42 years later, I enjoyed it as being a strange piece of nostalgia from my late teens. While Brainstorm is flawed, the concept of scientists working on a m...

Despite coming out thirty six years after the first film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice , once again directed by Tim Burton, wound up being vastly entertaining, adding lots of pleasant surprises, like the use of stop-motion animation. The sequel takes place within the same real-life time frame, with Lydia Deetz, played with wry humor by Winona Ryder, now the host of a ghost hunting show. She’s also the mother of Astrid, a teenager played by Jenna Ortega. They live with Delia Deetz (the always great Catherine O'Hara), Lydia’s step-mother and Astrid’s step-grandmother. After the death of Charles--Delia’s husband and Lydia’s father--during a bird-watching accident involving sharks, the Deetz ladies must go back up to the creepy house in Winter River, Connecticut for his funeral. This is the same place where Lydia first encountered Beetlejuice all those years ago, and she is understandably reluctant to even mention his name, lest she accidentally calls forth Beet...

I saw the original Alien film in the theaters when it first came out back in 1979, and I was instantly a fan of the film, as well as its director, Ridley Scott. I followed this film series as one movie after the other was released over the years, and found myself really enjoying them, even if some of the films weren’t that great. The last film in this series was 2017’s Alien Covenant , a Scott-directed sequel to a prequel (!!!) which did so badly that I figured the Alien film franchise was finally over and done with. But, forty five years after the release of the first Alien , we finally get another in the series: Alien Romulus . I was genuinely (and pleasantly) surprised to see this, with 20th Century Fox, the studio that made and distributed the Alien films, having been gobbled up by Disney. The behind the scenes story was that Alien Romulus was only going to be released on Hulu, but that Disney executives saw something in the rough cut that made them chang...

Osgood Perkins is the eldest son of actor Anthony Perkins, who was best known for his role as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film, Psycho . Osgood Perkins would make his acting debut as a twelve year old Norman within a flashback sequence in 1983’s Psycho II . After writing several screenplays, Osgood Perkins made his directorial debut (also writing the script) in 2015 with The Blackcoat’s Daughter , a mesmerizing horror film that wound up being an elegant, if horrifying, twist on The Exorcist . Original, imaginative, and deeply disturbing, The Blackcoat’s Daughter contains images that are truly chilling. It’s a hard film to talk about without giving away a major plot point, so I won’t, but it’s highly recommended. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a darkly brilliant horror film with some great performances by its entire cast: Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, Lauren Holly, and James Remar. It’s also one of the most coldest films ever mad...

I was really looking forward to seeing Furiosa , despite these prequel-crazy times we’re living in where every movie, TV show, and book has to be a prequel that shows us exactly how Miles first met Becky, and how it almost always winds up an underwhelming exercise in frustration because it wasn‘t done very well. There are exceptions, like House of the Dragon (which is far superior to Game of Thrones ), Star Wars: Rogue One (a great movie that compliments the original Star Wars film), and--now having finally seen it--I can add the Mad Max prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to that esteemed list. The reason I had such high hopes for Furiosa was its director, George Miller, who brought his Mad Max saga back to rip-roaring life almost ten years ago with the incredible Mad Max: Fury Road . First starting out as a doctor in his native Australia, Miller has gone on to become an extremely talented film director over the course of his over forty year career. Furi...

“You’ll enjoy Mr. Barlow. And he’ll enjoy you.” --Richard Straker (James Mason) from ‘Salem’s Lot 1979 ‘Salem’s Lot is one of my favorite novels by Stephen King. ‘Salem’s Lot is the locals’ name for their town, known officially as Jerusalem’s Lot, in Maine. King’s book describes the insidious and terrifying invasion of ’Salem’s Lot by vampires, led by Richard Straker and Kurt Barlow, two outsiders who have come to the town to disingenuously open an antiques store. They also bought the Martsen House, a creepy old abandoned mansion that sits overlooking the town, to serve as their home. Writer Ben Mears, who suffered a traumatic event in the Marsten House as a boy, returns to ’Salem’s Lot for research for his latest novel, only to find himself--along with several others--battling for the very souls of its townspeople. With this masterful book, only his second after Carrie, Stephen King updated the vampire myth to the then-modern day. Instead of lurking ...