The View From The Mountain

Harry Hole? Seriously? That’s the name of the lead character played by Michael Fassbender in The Snowman , a police thriller that’s set in the snowy landscape of Norway. It’s famously become one of the worst--if not the worst--movies of 2017, thanks in part to its own director, Tomas Alfredson, admitting that they were unable to film about ten to fifteen percent of the script, which led to large chunks of story that were missing when it came time to edit everything together. But even with some reshooting having been done after main production wrapped, The Snowman is still a mess. Harry Hole is a slovenly drunk cop who wakes up in children’s playground areas, among other places (and given the bitterly cold Norwegian winters, one wonders how he even manages to wake up at all), when he’s not pestering his ex-girlfriend. A series of disappearances begins in Norway, with the victims being young women who have children. The killer telegraphs his intentions by creating snowmen outside the...

When I first heard about a sequel being made to Blade Runner , the classic science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott thirty five years ago, I was unsure whether or not this was a good idea. But I was heartened by the fact that Scott would be returning as a producer, as was Harrison Ford, the original film’s lead, reprising his role as Rick Deckard. But what really gave me hope was that the director of the sequel would be Denis Villeneuve, a French Canadian who directed the great Sicario and the fantastic Arrival . In his recent films, Villeneuve displays strong characterization, and is unwilling to let the story trappings (such as avoiding action film tropes in Sicario) interfere with his characters, who always remain the focus of his films. That’s why Blade Runner 2049 is so absorbing from the very first frame. Taking place thirty years after the first film, the Tyrell Corporation has went bankrupt after a series of brutal rebellions by its Nexus Class Replicants. It’s been bo...

I had no interest in women’s figure skating until Tony Harding came along. No, scratch that. I had no interest in women’s figure skating until the “incident” occurred. That moment when ice skater Nancy Kerrigan got kneecapped was all over the news, and that incident--along with the sordid story that came crawling out afterwards--was such a WTF moment for me that I proceeded to watch everything about it, just like the rest of the country did. It was clear why Tonya Harding was so popular in figure skating--she came from a rough and tumble background, and her down to earth nature was nothing like the perfect little ice princesses whom the sport promoted. Many people liked Harding because they saw her as being one of them, an ordinary gal who made good. But that surface veneer is far from being the actual story, here. In the new film, I, Tonya , ably directed by Craig Gillespie (who also helmed the superb Lars and the Real Girl ), Tonya’s story is told from the beginning, where a very y...