The View From The Mountain

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...

I had no interest in women’s figure skating until Tony Harding came along. No, scratch that. I had no interest in women’s figure skating until the “incident” occurred. That moment when ice skater Nancy Kerrigan got kneecapped was all over the news, and that incident--along with the sordid story that came crawling out afterwards--was such a WTF moment for me that I proceeded to watch everything about it, just like the rest of the country did. It was clear why Tonya Harding was so popular in figure skating--she came from a rough and tumble background, and her down to earth nature was nothing like the perfect little ice princesses whom the sport promoted. Many people liked Harding because they saw her as being one of them, an ordinary gal who made good. But that surface veneer is far from being the actual story, here. In the new film, I, Tonya , ably directed by Craig Gillespie (who also helmed the superb Lars and the Real Girl ), Tonya’s story is told from the beginning, where a very y...

Warning, there are spoilers in this review. Please wait until you have seen The Last Jedi before you read this. I went to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi feeling pretty confident that it would be good. This latest chapter in the (hopefully) neverending Star Wars saga was directed by Rian Johnson, who also did the superb Looper and The Brothers Bloom --the latter being one of my favorite films, and not just because Rachel Weisz co-stars in it. I was hoping Johnson could deliver a new Star Wars film with this sequel that would be more satisfying by simply not being another stealth remake--like what the last third of The Force Awakens turned into (don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed that film, though). But, having now seen it, I can say that The Last Jedi was far more than satisfying. It was magnificent. The great thing about The Last Jedi is that Rian Johnson takes whatever preconceptions the viewer has and flips them right over. Just when you think a character or a scene is...

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...

Twenty years after the release of his The Fifth Element , director Luc Besson regales us with another imaginative science fiction film. But where The Fifth Element was from his own fertile imagination, Valerian and the City Of A Thousand Planets is based on a French comic book series that’s been running for half a century, now, making it older than Star Wars , and almost as old as Star Trek . Valerian was a big bomb when it was released this past August--but unlike most big-budget tent pole films that underperform at the box office, Valerian didn’t deserve to be ignored by audiences. Starring Dane DeHaan and Carla Delevingne as a pair of interstellar space agents, Valerian is visual eye candy in the best sense of the word. Opening on the beaches of an alien planet, with a fully realized alien civilization lounging by the ocean until a cataclysmic event ruins their day, the viewer is immersed in this imaginative science fiction universe that’s just as vividly created as the Star W...

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 ...