The View From The Mountain

Despite the fact that I never believed in the so-called real-life “paranormal investigators” whose adventures they were based on, I still greatly enjoyed the two Conjuring films that were directed by James Wan. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson were extremely engaging as the husband and wife ghost/demon hunting team from those two films, and when I heard that they were coming back in Annabelle Comes Home (the title makes this sound like a TV movie on the Lifetime Network--“Annabelle Comes Home, To Find Love!”), I was eager to see this film whenever it came out.   It turned out that Annabelle actually Came Home last year, in 2019, and I completely missed it. But, considering the multitude of real-life horrors--both personal and public--that 2020 would eventually present to us, I think can be excused for not catching this film in a timely fashion. Once I finally did see Annabelle Comes Home , I was immediately struck at how Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson only appeared at the be...

Anna Kendrick stars as Stephanie Smothers, a prim and proper suburbanite living in Connecticut. A single mom, she still finds the time to help out at her young son’s school and run a cooking/arts & crafts vlog online. Stephanie is so proper that she never curses, nor does she get a chance to hear much cursing in her quaint, quiet life--at least until she meets Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), a worldly woman who drops the f-bomb every other word in her sentences. The extremely laid back Emily works at a high-pressured job in New York City, and doesn’t think of anything of having a martini (or two, or three) in the middle of the day. The fact that these two become fast friends despite their differences is a testament to the well-written script, as well as its two talented leading ladies. And if A Simple Favor simply stopped there and became a comedy/drama about this Odd Couple relationship between two women in the suburbs, it would still be an extremely good movie. But director Paul F...