The View From The Mountain

I have to admit to never being a big fan of Seth McFarlane’s. I’ve never watched Family Guy , and I don’t really care for his sense of humor, which often boarders on being extremely childish and way too on the nose for my taste. So when I heard that he was doing The Orville , a science fiction series for Fox, I figured that I would avoid it like the plague, just like I’ve avoided Family Guy and his film projects. What convinced me that The Orville would be bad was the trailer for the series, which made it out to be another laugh-riot spoof, this time on science fiction shows (and I’m not adverse to a good SF spoof--I loved Galaxy Quest --I just didn’t want to see one done by McFarlane). But then I discovered something interesting. Shortly before the pilot for The Orville was to air, I found out that the series was not a spoof, and that it wasn’t even a comedy. Intrigued by this turn of events I watched the pilot, which was written by McFarlane and directed by Jon Favreau (who also ...

When Ghost in the Shell, the live-action version of the 1995 Japanese anime film of the same name announced that its lead character would be played by Scarlett Johansson, there was some concern in the social media and regular entertainment media circles about having a white woman play what was traditionally a part played (or voiced) by a Japanese actress--which is where the term ’white-casting’ comes into play. And I could certainly understand the feeling, since there are plenty of superb Asian actresses (both in Hollywood and aboard) who could easily have played this part. But the new Ghost in the Shell, directed by Rupert Sanders (who directed Snow White and the Huntsman ), had chosen its actress. And Johansson is very good in the part of a dying woman who gains a second chance at life when her brain is placed within a sophisticated android body. But the corporation that performed the procedure is not working for free; they expect Johansson’s character to use her newfangled android...

The recent death of Sonny Landham has got me thinking about the tough guy actor’s film career, and the various films he had done. He was probably best known as Billy, one of the commandos who gets hunted by an alien in the original Predator , a film that was top-heavy with super-charged testosterone-laced actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura. Landham, like other hard working actors, also did many other films, such as 48 Hours , Southern Comfort , and Action Jackson . But the movie that I remember Sonny best from was a cheapie independent film known as Fleshburn . Based on the novel Fear In A Handful of Dust , by Brian Garfield--who also wrote the original Death Wish novel that the first Charles Bronson film was based on--Fleshburn deals with a native-American Vietnam veteran named Calvin Duggai who escapes the mental institution he has been committed to so he can exact revenge on four psychiatrists who testified against him in...

This weekend, Netflix debuts Marvel's The Defender s, which unites the heroes from the superhero series Daredevil , Jessica Jones , Luke Cage , and Iron Fist into one action-packed adventure. I've already seen The Defenders and it's immensely enjoyable and comes highly recommended. In honor of the Defenders debut, here's a list of my top ten superhero films (subject to change if or when new superhero movies come out, or if I change my mind--which is often). Let's start the countdown. 10: Ant Man -- Paul Rudd as a superhero? Oh yes, please. More of a comedic heist flick than a straight up superhero film, Ant Man is a great deal of fun. And any superhero movie that’s got the divine Evangeline Lilly in its cast can’t be all bad. 9: Iron Man -- the film that launched the present cinematic Marvel superhero universe still stands as a great flick in its own right. Superhero tropes are challenged here while Robert Downey Jr.’s considerable charm is allowed to run ...

In over sixty years of his cinematic terrorizing of Japan, Godzilla has caused so much damage that the Japanese construction companies must love him, because he keeps them in constant work. The level of destruction that the Big G commits in Shin Godzilla , the latest Godzilla film from Toho, is also pretty impressive on a big monster movie scale. But that’s basically the only thing that has remained the same. Gone are the wonderfully kitschy elements that were found in abundance in the Godzilla films of the 1990s: the cute girls with psychic powers, sub plots involving the Yakuza and time travel, Baby Godzilla, and just about everything else that Toho threw in to make each Godzilla adventure a popcorn film classic (and I thoroughly enjoyed these films for what they were: fun flicks). But Shin Godzilla pretty much strips away the last sixty years of Godzilla mythology, making this a reboot of sorts. Godzilla first appears after inflicting damage on an underwater tunnel that runs acro...

Atomic Blonde stars Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton, a secret agent working for MI6 (the real life British intelligence service that the fictional James Bond also works for). Lorraine is sent to Berlin after a fellow MI6 agent (who was also her lover) winds up dead. Taking place in 1989, Berlin is a pretty wild place to be, what with the Iron Curtain crumbling, threatening to also bring down the wall that had kept West Berlin separated from East Berlin for almost thirty years. Teaming up with David Percival (James McAvoy), the MI6 station chief in Berlin, Lorraine ducks bullets, cops, and takes on countless assassins in her search for the truth--as well as a list of spies and double agents that the East Germans, the Russians and the CIA are all on the hunt for. Having the story take place just at the end of the Cold War was a great idea, for Berlin--always a dangerous place for spies even during the calmer days of the Cold War--now feels like a bomb that’s about to go off at a...

Director Ben Wheatley is so far known for Kill List , High Rise , and Sightseers , as well as a load of television work (including two episodes of Doctor Who ). His latest is Free Fire , a pretty simple story about a gun deal between two gangs that goes horribly wrong in an abandoned factory in Boston back in 1978. Cillian Murphy ( Dunkirk , Peaky Blinders ) stars as the buyer of the guns, a shipment of M-16s that he hopes to deliver to his countrymen back home in Northern Ireland for use against the British. But the seller, Vernon, a wily South African perfectly played to the wild-eyed hilt by Sharlto Copley ( District Nine , The A-Team ), delivers a set of completely different machine guns. While not happy, Murphy’s character buys the guns, after trying one of them out right in the abandoned factory (a well-done set that Wheatley actually designed while using the Minecraft video game). But just when it looks like a potential problem may have been averted, two of the men from each o...