The View From The Mountain

I first saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in the theater back when it first came out thirty five years ago this week. I was nineteen in the summer of 1984, and I loved the Temple of Doom so much then that I promptly watched it three times in the theaters (movies coming out on home video at that time was a little sketchy; so if I really liked a movie, I usually had to see it as often as I could in the theater). I was a huge fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark (and still am), and, back in 1984, I considered watching Temple of Doom almost like revisiting an old friend. I’ve seen Temple of Doom several times since on home video, first on VHS and then DVD, and I have to admit that each time I re-watched the film my love for it has lessened more and more. When I recently saw it again in preparation for this 35th anniversary review…well, to be honest, while I still enjoyed certain aspects of Temple of Doom , overall, the film is not one of my favorites. One of the reasons that it doesn...

The first Fantastic Beasts movie was an enjoyable lark that tried to extend the popularity of the Harry Potter universe, now known as the “Wizarding World” in the all-important theme parks. The first film succeeded on both counts, introducing us to the new characters led by Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterson) in this prequel cinematic series that takes place in the 1920s, long before Harry Potter was a gleam in his parents’ eyes. The second film, The Crimes of Grindelwald , focuses on the main villain, played by Jonny Depp with his usual razor sharp intensity--yet he lacks the dark menace that Colin Farrell brought to the role in the first film. Written by Potter creator J.K. Rowling, the second film is a grimmer tale that dives right into its main story, setting up a daring prison escape for Grindelwald, who publicly claims to be merely leading a peaceful revolution against the wizards’ unfair status quo. However, Rowling drops very telling hints ...

I was looking forward to seeing The Predator , but not because I was a big fan of the Predator film series. While I enjoyed the original 1987 Predator --with Arnold Schwarzenegger and a cast of manly men squaring off against an alien hunting them in the jungles--the sequel was atrociously bad, and I enjoyed the first Aliens Vs. Predators movie more because I’m a huge fan of the Alien film series, but the AvP sequel was also another inferior entry, too. And I admit to never really being a big fan of the Predator itself, either; as a movie monster, the Predator never really felt strong enough to carry its own film series. The real reason I was looking forward to seeing The Predator , which was released in the fall of 2018, was because it was directed by Shane Black. Shane Black is a writer/director who gave us such marvelous movies as Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang , and The Nice Guys . And he also managed to make a decent Iron Man sequel with the third entry in that series. Black got his s...

Warning: Spoilers! Coming on the heels of the far superior Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , Star Trek III: The Search for Spock had a lot to live up to--and, to be blunt, the third film in the Star Trek film series (released 35 years ago this year) is sorely lacking when compared to Wrath of Khan . However, Search For Spock , while far from being a great film, does fulfill some important fan service duties to the Star Trek canon. As its name implies, The Search for Spock goes looking for the popular character, who was played by Leonard Nimoy in the classic Star Trek TV series that aired in the late 1960s. But it’s not an easy search; Spock famously died at the end of Wrath of Khan --which was reportedly at the behest of Nimoy, who had grown tired of playing the half human/half Vulcan after three seasons of Star Trek , as well as the first Star Trek film, The Motion(less) Picture , which was released to lackluster reviews (from both critics and fans) in 1979. Yet when Wrath of Kha...

Like most people these days, I was suffering from zombie fatigue, and so when I heard about a new zombie series on Netflix called Black Summer , I was tempted to just ignore it, because, you know, zombies…ugh. However, with Stephen King giving the show a verbal thumbs up on Twitter, I decided to reconsider my embargo on all things zombies long enough to give Black Summer a chance. I was only going to watch the first episode of Black Summer , just to gauge how good the series is, and I wound up watching the first four episodes back to back before I finally reluctantly gave into sleep--yes, it’s that good. Taking place in the early days of a zombie outbreak, with civilization teetering on the verge of catastrophe, Black Summer details how an orderly march of suburbanites into an evacuation by the military quickly becomes a horrific fight for survival once things start going sideways. Jaime King plays Rose, who gets separated from her young daughter right at the start of the show. The...

When I saw a movie listed on the Amazon streaming service as Dead And Buried , I wondered if this was the very same Dead And Buried which scared the daylights out of me back when I first saw it as a VHS rental in the early eighties. The image that Amazon had was just a text title of the film’s name. So I cranked up the great Amazonian streaming machine and, lo and behold, there it truly was: Dead And Buried , freshly come back to life for me much like the characters in the film do. Taking place in a quiet coastal town, Sheriff Gillis (James Farentino--who I’ll always fondly remember as Cmdr Richard Owens from The Final Countdown ) deals with a series of grisly murders where the victims are either burned up or chopped up in vicious ways. On top of all of this is the fact that Gillis is also dealing with the strange behavior of his wife, Janet (Melody Anderson--best known as Dale Arden from the 1980 Flash Gordon ), who may be having an affair behind his back. There is one really shoc...

I was looking forward to seeing Aquaman when I first heard it was announced. Mainly because I had already seen Aquaman in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (albeit in a small cameo) as well as Justice League . While the Justice League movie left a lot to be desired for me, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman was one of the few bright spots of that troubled production. His easy going ‘surfer dude’ take on Aquaman was a nice change of pace from the dark and brooding superheroes we’ve been getting up to that point from the DC comics movies (and even a few of the Marvel superhero films, too). The overly grim take on the DC superhero films (which also included Suicide Squad ) were a wrong turn courtesy of the Warner Brothers studio executives, who mistook the popularity of the Christopher Nolan Batman films to be that the audience preferred dreary superhero movies--when in fact the Nolan Batman films ( Batman Begin s/ The Dark Knight / The Dark Knight Rises ) were so popular because they were just v...