The View From The Mountain

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...

I avoided seeing Ghostbusters Afterlife because the 2016 remake of Ghostbusters wasn’t very good. Neither was the 1989 sequel to Ghostbusters--and, admittedly, I wasn’t a huge fan of the original 1984 Ghostbusters, either. I didn’t hate the original movie, but I was never caught up in the wave of adoration for it that swept through the country back then. I guess you can say I’m not a Ghosthead, one of the rabid fans of the franchise, and the subject of a very well-made documentary that you should see, especially if you really enjoy the movies. But I eventually saw Ghostbusters Afterlife because--well, why not? I assumed beforehand that I would dislike it, but that it wouldn’t matter, because I’d only watch it once, and just forget about it, just like I did with the other Ghostbusters films. But something interesting happened: I would up enjoying Ghostbusters Afterlife a great deal. The new Ghostbusters film tries to be the true sequel to the original film, despi...