The View From The Mountain

Since 2019 marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of movies that were released back in 1984, I’ve been writing a lot about the cinematic highlights (and lowlights) of that year lately, with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , and Conan the Destroyer being just two of those reviews (with more to come). Maybe it’s because I’ve been writing about so many 1984 movies, but I recently took note of a film called Summer of ’84 . Released in 2018, but taking place back during the summer of Gremlins , and Ghostbusters , Summer of ’84 tries to be a nostalgic look at a bygone era that’s told through the eyes of a group of teens--one of whom thinks there may be a serial killer living in his area. Davey Armstrong (Graham Verchere) begins to suspect that Mr. Mackey (Rich Sommer) his neighbor, who’s also a local cop, might be the serial killer that he’s been hearing about when he spots some suspicious things going on. Davey believes he briefly saw one of the missing boys through a window inside Mac...

Released two years after Conan the Barbarian , Conan the Destroyer was the first and only sequel starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the titular warrior. John Milius, who wrote and directed the first Conan movie, wasn’t available to helm the sequel due to prior commitments. Milius recommended veteran film director Richard Fleischer for the job. Fleischer helmed The Vikings (which was a film that Milius enjoyed and mainly why he recommended Fleischer for Conan II), as well as the Walt Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea , and Soylent Green , among many others. Fleischer would also direct Schwarzenegger once again in Red Sonja (released the following year), starring Brigitte Nielsen in the lead role. Conan the Barbarian made a ton of money back in 1982 even with an R rating. Both Schwarzenegger and Fleischer had initially expected Conan the Destroyer to also be R rated--until Universal, the studio that released the Conan movies, informed them that Destroyer must have a ...

The Captain Marvel that I knew and loved as a kid was from DC Comics. He was the superhero that young Billy Batson turned into whenever he said the word “SHAZAM!” I used to read the DC Captain Marvel comics in the 1970s, as well as watch his half-hour TV show (which aired in an hour block with Isis , another female superhero who will probably never be revived, thanks to negative present-day connotations with her name). By the time Marvel Comics had gotten hold of the Captain Marvel name and recreated her as Carol Danvers in the 1990s, I had stopped reading comics on a regular basis (they were just getting too expensive for me). So I really had no idea who this new-fangled (at least to me) Captain Marvel was when I started watching her film, which was the next stop on the ongoing cinematic saga that the Marvel superhero films have become in recent years. There was one main draw for me in seeing this Captain Marvel , and that was the woman who plays her, Brie Larson. I first saw B...