The View From The Mountain

Back in January of this year, Netflix premiered Woman of the Dead , a crime thriller from Austria with slight supernatural overtones. I figured I’d give it a shot, since I was in the mood for a good Lifetime-type crime story. Do you know what I mean when I refer to these Lifetime TV movies? They’re goofy crime “thrillers” regarding soccer moms who become amateur sleuths that wind up being so silly that they’re more unintentionally funny than anything else. But within the first fifteen minutes of its first episode, Woman of the Dead proves itself to be more of a Hitchcockian thriller: a darker, high-brow, and sophisticated thriller that’s genuinely exciting. Anna Maria Mühe stars as Brunhilde Blum (everybody calls her Blum), an undertaker in a small Austrian mountain town where it seemingly snows all year round. Her beloved husband works as a cop with the local police force--until the moment when he gets savagely run down on his motorcycle by a black Range Rover that abr...

When Serenity , starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, was released theatrically earlier this year, it was ripped, bashed and completely trashed by reviewers, many of whom thought of it as being an insipidly stupid story that never should have seen the light of day. Some even criticized it for taking the name of a much better movie called Serenity (2005), the Joss Whedon-directed science fiction film that served as a magnificent capper to his equally marvelous TV series, Firefly (and I agree that the SF Serenity is superb). Naturally, I wanted to see this new Serenity , which dared to take the name of a beloved SF film, because I wanted to see if this new film lived up to the hype of being such a scathingly reviewed flick that has already earned its place on several “worst of” lists of 2019. McConaughey stars as a fishing boat skipper named Baker Dill who’s having some trouble keeping his grip on reality. He’s served in Iraq, and--as he freely admits--his tour in the milita...

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...

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...

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...

Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olson are probably best known for their roles in the Marvel superhero movies as Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch, respectively. But they team up again in Wind River to play more down to earth characters in an earnest drama that’s set in the wintry mid-west--and it turns out to be a riveting thriller, as well. Renner plays Corey Lambert, a veteran tracker with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Whenever a wolf, a bear, or any kind of predator gets too close for comfort with human society, it’s Corey’s job to track it down and kill it. This is what he’s doing in the mountainous, snowy terrain of Wyoming when he comes across the body of a young Native American woman. When he calls the authorities, they call in Jane Banner (Olsen), a rookie FBI agent who’s normally stationed in Las Vegas. The victim turns out to be a teenager whom Corey knows, a girl named Natalie who was the best friend of his deceased daughter. The autopsy shows that Natalie had been sexually assaulte...

I have to admit that A Cure For Wellness slipped right under my radar when it was first released earlier this year. Mainly because the movie didn’t do very well, and quickly slinked out of theaters due to the bad box office. When I discovered that it had been directed by Gore Verbinski, I didn’t want to see it because I wasn’t a big fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean films that he made (granted, the first Pirates film was an enjoyable piece of fluff, but its countless sequels are a real slog to get through). But I was reminded that Verbinski also directed The Lone Ranger reboot, which I really liked (and I’m probably one of five people who do so), and he also helmed the superb remake of The Ring , starring Naomi Watts and a really scary videotape. A Cure For Wellness recalls The Ring in that it’s a horror movie with a burning mystery at its center. Verbinski pulls you in slowly, showing an office worker keeling over from a heart attack while working late one night. It turns out ...

I first saw the original Murder On The Orient Express back in the late seventies, maybe early eighties, on the then nascent cable TV, which was still pretty much unknown and struggling for viewers. My mother was an early subscriber, having been lured in with the idea of watching movies uncut, uninterrupted--and usually very late at night, which was when the cable channels would air the more racy, adult-themed stuff. Watching Murder On The Orient Express back then was my introduction not only to its hero, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, but to his creator, Agatha Christie. And the movie imbued in me a deep fascination with the character that led me to seek out the Poirot books. The new film, which stars Kenneth Branagh as Poirot (and was directed by him as well), is extremely faithful to the original story--which meant that I knew going in who the killer would be. But that did not bother me; I was never one of these people who gets overly bent out of shape over spoilers. Because, ...

I was first introduced to Jack Reacher through the Tom Cruise movie of the same name that was released back in 2012. I liked the movie well enough, despite a few nitpicks here and there--but I really enjoyed reading the novels by Lee Child. Jack Reacher was a former US Army officer who retires and becomes a drifter, roaming from state to state in the country that he fought so hard to protect. And Reacher is still protecting us, taking on a variety of villains, from backwoods mobsters to big-city terrorists from book to book. The stories in the books are well-told, with great attention paid to the smallest of details. I think of them as 1980s action films, only without being insulting to your intelligence. What a perfect series to adapt to movies, right? Well, Tom Cruise looks nothing like how Jack Reacher is described in the books. And while I thought the first Jack Reacher film was good, the second, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back , is very badly flawed. Based on the JR novel of the sa...

I wrote a recent review for The Disappointments Room , a horror thriller starring Kate Beckinsale as a woman who may or may not be experiencing a haunting in her own home. Naomi Watts also did her own version of this story, called Shut In , where she plays a child psychologist who loses her husband in a nasty car accident. Her teenage son, Stephen (played by Charlie Heaton, better known as the older brother from Stranger Things ) was also in the car wreck, but he survived--just barely. While Stephen is alive, the accident left him brain dead, needing constant care from Watts’ character all day long. But the spooky stuff doesn’t happen until one of Watts’ patients, a young boy named Tom (played by Jacob Tremblay, from Room ) breaks into her house because he didn’t want to be sent away--yet no sooner does young Tom show up then he abruptly disappears, seemingly into the deep wintry Maine woods, where the boy’s chances of survival are nil. It’s only after Tom is gone after several days a...

I.T. tries to be a Hitchcock-like thriller that stars former James Bond Peirce Brosnan as Mike Regan, an airline tycoon who befriends Patrick (Jason Barry), his I.T. advisor, after Patrick’s wizardry with computers saves Mike’s life during an important business presentation. Mike then invites Patrick to his upscale smart mansion to fix the wifi--but doing this winds up being a big mistake, since Patrick turns out to be a sick puppy who begins stalking Mike’s daughter Kaitlyn (Stefanie Scott) through their smart house, which helpfully comes equipped with cameras that allow Patrick to spy on them in the supposed privacy of their home any time he wants. I mainly saw I.T. because of the sturdy cast--which, aside from Brosnan (who I thought did a fine job as Bond), also includes Anna Friel ( Marcella , Timeline ) as his wife and Stefanie Scott ( Insidious: Chapter 3 ) as his daughter. And even Michael Nyqvist ( The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo ) shows up. But I.T. winds up being pretty ...