The View From The Mountain

I was looking forward to seeing Bumblebee , largely for two reasons. The first was that Hailee Steinfeld was starring in it. This is the very same Hailee Steinfeld who admirably held her own against Jeff Bridges in the Coen Brothers’ superb remake of True Grit (and she also gave voice to Gwen Stacey in one of my all-time favorite superhero movies, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ). The other reason I wanted to see Bumblebee was that it was directed by Travis Knight, who also directed the astoundingly good Kubo and the Two Strings , a movie that made me care deeply about a group of animated characters from beginning to end. Bumblebee starts out like a typical Transformers film, with the Transformers battling their blood enemies on their homeworld, and losing badly. When I first saw this CGI orgy, I let out an audible groan, thinking it would devolve into the usual confusing Transformer slugfest that Michael (Boom-Boom) Bay gave us in the previous five (!!!) films, where you ha...

Before Batman first premiered in the summer of 1989, my younger self was convinced that it was going to suck really badly. Here were my reasons: it was directed by Tim Burton--who, at that point, only directed Pee Wee’s Big Adventure , and Beetlejuice --and it starred Michael Keaton, an actor, who, at that time, was best known for starring in comedies like Mr. Mom . Once I heard that ‘Mr. Mom’ was playing Batman, I was convinced that the then-new Batman film was going to be a disaster. Of course, back when I held these firm convictions about Tim Burton’s Batman , I hadn’t actually SEEN the movie yet. When Batman opened, it wasn’t just a hit movie, it was a cultural phenomenon. The character was already a well-known commodity, thanks to the 1960s Batman TV series, which served as my introduction to the Dark Knight back when I was a toddler. However, it felt as if the entire nation happily suffered Batman fever during the summer of ’89. Batman , both the film and the character, was ...

When I finally saw Shazam , the latest superhero movie from the DC Comics Universe, I thought it was marginally good at first. It was interesting, and a little bit funny…cute, even. But as I kept watching Shazam , something really nice happened. It got better. And then from that point, just when Shazam was getting really, really good, something even more amazing had occurred. Shazam had become fantastic. I should mention that I have been a fan of the Big Red Cheese from a very long time ago, back when he was known as Captain Marvel and had a TV show alongside another superhero named Isis (this was back in the 1970s, before that name became thoroughly trashed by real-world connotations). You see, “Shazam” was the phrase that young Billy Batson used to turn into Captain Marvel, a super powered hero to comes to the aid of those in need. But since Marvel Comics hijacked the Captain Marvel name for their own second stringer hero, the Shazam filmmakers, led by director David F. Sandber...

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...

Released two years after Conan the Barbarian , Conan the Destroyer was the first and only sequel starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the titular warrior. John Milius, who wrote and directed the first Conan movie, wasn’t available to helm the sequel due to prior commitments. Milius recommended veteran film director Richard Fleischer for the job. Fleischer helmed The Vikings (which was a film that Milius enjoyed and mainly why he recommended Fleischer for Conan II), as well as the Walt Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea , and Soylent Green , among many others. Fleischer would also direct Schwarzenegger once again in Red Sonja (released the following year), starring Brigitte Nielsen in the lead role. Conan the Barbarian made a ton of money back in 1982 even with an R rating. Both Schwarzenegger and Fleischer had initially expected Conan the Destroyer to also be R rated--until Universal, the studio that released the Conan movies, informed them that Destroyer must have a ...

The Captain Marvel that I knew and loved as a kid was from DC Comics. He was the superhero that young Billy Batson turned into whenever he said the word “SHAZAM!” I used to read the DC Captain Marvel comics in the 1970s, as well as watch his half-hour TV show (which aired in an hour block with Isis , another female superhero who will probably never be revived, thanks to negative present-day connotations with her name). By the time Marvel Comics had gotten hold of the Captain Marvel name and recreated her as Carol Danvers in the 1990s, I had stopped reading comics on a regular basis (they were just getting too expensive for me). So I really had no idea who this new-fangled (at least to me) Captain Marvel was when I started watching her film, which was the next stop on the ongoing cinematic saga that the Marvel superhero films have become in recent years. There was one main draw for me in seeing this Captain Marvel , and that was the woman who plays her, Brie Larson. I first saw B...

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...