The View From The Mountain

A little to the left...no, your other left.... Rogue One: A Star Wars Story really shouldn’t have been this good. It’s one of those “fan service” movies that purports to fill in the blanks of the overall Star Wars saga by explaining just how the Rebellion got the plans to destroy the Death Star, which sounds like the sort of details that only rabid Star Wars fans (like me) would be interested in. But I knew it was going to be something special when they hired Gareth Edwards ( Monsters , and the 2014 Godzilla ) to direct, and then they cast the marvelous actress Felicity Jones to play the lead role of Jyn Erso. Like last year’s The Force Awakens , which focused on Daisy Ridley’s Rey, Rogue One also has a strong female in its lead in Jyn, which was an important plus in its favor right out of the gate. Growing up on a desolate planet, young Jyn finds herself on the run when her mother is killed and her father (Mads Mikkelsen) is arrested by Imperial troops under the command of Or...

The SF convention got a little unruly. Imagine my surprise, when watching Star Trek Beyond , that it wound up being an extremely well-made, enjoyable movie. That probably doesn’t sound very fair, as if I went into the movie with very low expectations, but consider the evidence. The previous Star Trek film, Into Darkness , just wasn’t very good on so many levels. Aside from being a very badly done remake of the far superior Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan , Into Darkness just didn’t “get it” when it came to the Star Trek characters, particularly Kirk, played here by Chris Pine. There was a scene in Into Darkness where Kirk found himself completely flummoxed by an enemy ship that wiped out the Enterprise’s engines and weapons systems. As the Enterprise sat there, helpless, while the enemy charged up its main guns to wipe them out, Kirk turned to the bridge crew and said that he was sorry for letting them down. The Captain Kirk that I grew up with on the original Star Tre...

Holy animation,, Batman! Batman: The Return of the Caped Crusaders is a loving tribute to the 1960s TV series that manages to feel like the second 1960s-era Batman movie, thanks to the voice-casting of original Batman and Robin stars Adam West and Burt Ward, along with Julie Newmar, who reprises her role as Catwoman. Taking place in the same time period as the series, the film is filled with the social mores of the time, such as having Catwoman demurely step to the side whenever Batman and Robin battle the villainous henchmen (complete with the customary BIFF! BAM! and POW! word balloons the original series always flashed during the fight scenes). Catwoman is a part of a fearsome foursome of rogues that includes the Joker, Penguin and the Riddler as they set out to work together to wreak havoc on Gotham City. The fact that these villains team up, along with their use of a penguin-themed zeppelin later in the film, is a nice nod to the original 1966 Batman movie that was relea...

That thing's gonna need a lot of window cleaner! My first introduction to Doctor Strange was a TV movie that was produced in 1978. I haven’t seen it since then (although that will change soon, because I’ve recently discovered that it’s available on video, ), but I remember liking it very much at the time. My father, upon hearing that I had enjoyed this tele-film, proceeded to get me the Doctor Strange comics. To say that the comics were psychedelic head trips on paper is putting it mildly. Doctor Strange ventured into mystical realms that were best described as an LSD trip without the LSD. Once exposed to the comics, my love of the TV movie lessened, as I realized just how lame the movie was, compared to the unrestrained imagination on display within the vibrant panels of the comics. This was why, when they announced that Marvel was producing a cinematic version of the Sorcerer Supreme, I was eager to see it. Not restrained by the meager budget of a TV film (n...

Nice trick, kid. The Sith Lords could use you.  Midnight Special is one of those great movies that hits the ground running--literally, since the main characters Roy, played by Michael Shannon and Lucas, played by Joel Edgerton, find themselves on the news during an Amber alert, which accuses them of having abducted a young boy. It turns out that they did take a boy, but he’s Roy’s son Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) and he was actually taken from a cult that’s led by Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard). Calvin had taken Alton from Roy (who was a member of the cult) and raised the kid as his own son--the reason being is that Alton has developed some very particular powers at a very young age, powers that make the cult worship Alton as if he were a prophet. Abducting his child from the cult compound, Roy goes on the run, with his childhood friend Lucas helping in any way he can. Calvin, not wanting to let the golden goose slip out of his grasp, begins organizing some men to go after Roy--until...

What's the frequency, Kenneth? Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them takes place in the same Harry Potter universe, but some seventy years before the boy-wizard would go off to school at Hogwarts (which means the Harry Potter stories took place in the ‘90s!). Premiering fifteen years after the first Harry Potter film, Fantastic Beasts stars Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, a specialist in peculiar animals, and I’m not talking about various frog species. With this tale being set in the Harry Potter universe, these beasts are truly fantastic and creative examples of literally magical creatures. Newt keeps them in his suitcase, which, like Doctor Who’s Tardis, is much bigger on the inside. My favorite of these beasts is a hysterically funny little guy who looks like a platypus with an ornery love of money and all things shiny. It’s called a Niffler, and Newt winds up chasing him all over New York City. The Niffler gleefully robs and steals everything that’s no...