31 Days of Halloween: Quarantine

2008,  John Erick Dowdle (Devil) -- Netflix

This movie is a remake of the 2007 Spanish movie Rec by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, who also directed the sequel [Rec]². This movie is of the tradition of faithfully remaking a movie exactly as the first, but for American audiences, and set in the US.

I rewatched this as a filler for this year's "31 Days of Halloween" as there are always a few days we miss due to ... life. I am also tempted to rewatch the original, just because.

Found Footage movies usually have the conceit that we know everyone is dead. The footage is supposed to be recovered after they all die, or disappear. In this case, the "everyone is dead" comes preposed because the trailers had the final scene of the movie -- main character Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter, Dexter) being dragged off into the darkness by an unknown assailant. 

The movie begins with her footage of the San Francisco firehall. She is one of those fluff reporters building a repertoire of feel-good stories, and this one is a ride-along with a local fire station. There is some lively banter, some flirting between her and a couple of handsome firefighters Fletcher (Jonathan Schaech, Takers) and Jake (Jay Hernandez, Magnum PI), and then the call comes. They tell her that most of their calls are paramedic in nature, and most of the firefighters are trained in medical first response. An elderly lady in an old apartment building has been making a godawful din and they have called police & paramedics. A bunch of tenants have been wakened, including the super. When the cops investigate, the aggressive old lady pounces on one of the cops and tears out his throat. Everyone panics, carrying the bleeding cop to the lobby floor. Not long after, Fletcher the firefighter comes plummeting from above, crashing into the lobby floor in a bloody, broken mess. When they try to exit the building to the waiting ambulance, they are halted by men with guns and the doors are locked. 

Remember, the entire introduction is via the camera man's viewpoint, and Angela's constant coaxing to get it all on camera. At this point, she isn't panicking, but everyone around her is. Full on chaotic panic from first responders & residents with only Jake doing his best to keep a level head. The super points out that there is an overhang with window access from his office, and maybe someone could escape from there, but before they can, spotlights and armed forces and a big plastic tarp is dropped. The are being sealed in, entirely. Soon power and phone are cut. They are trapped inside with whatever is going on. The old lady has been shot, as she has killed her housekeeper. The panic ramps up.

Some details are eked out as the movie progresses. One of the residents had a sick dog, and her husband brought it to the vet. Their daughter has a fever. Another resident shows signs of illness, frothing at the mouth. The injured cop and firefighter and both salivating really bad. A vet who lives in the building comments on that being signs of rabies, but rabies takes month to progress to that state, and by that time it is fatal. The CDC sends in bunny suited specialists to test Fletcher and the cop, but that doesn't end well. Yep, zombies or Infected, but aggressive and killers.

The movie is very very effective in keeping the tension high, like on the edge of a knife high. There are lots of people screaming at each other, emotions are ratcheted up to 11 and normally this just bugs me, but here it feels appropriate. Soon, the movie escalates from a group of people trying to figure out how to escape the building, to just fleeing and hiding, until its only Jake and Angela and Scott, the camera man. They flee to the penthouse apartment, rented by a man not seen in months. His is not an apartment, more a chaotic mess of a lab, an Angela cannot help herself but rifle through the notes, giving us hints of this man investigating some sort of ancient tribal virus, something horrific and violent. The movie ends with the camera light breaking, Scott is down, the nightvision filter is on and Angela is doing her best to hide from a gaunt creature that must be the tenant. And then, like he poster, she is dragged screaming off into the dark.

Being a faithful remake of the original, I do like this movie, but again recall liking the original better, but likely only due to it being my first exposure to the story, and my enjoyment of another country's vision of an infected zombie apocalypse emerging. The found footage nature is mostly effective, if not entirely realistic. At some point, someone would have just said "fuck this" and tosses the bulky camera, screwing the record of events.

Chiplog: Bret's Aligot

Pre-chip: I don't know what "Aligot" is, but I gather from the package that it's, like, fondue cheese? Ok, quick search finds that Aligot is a fondue-like dish made from cheese blended into mashed potatoes from the L'Aubrac region in the south of France. I love mashed potatoes, and I love cheese, so I need to try Aligot at some point. But for now, le chipsier francais will have to do

Ingredients:Potatoes, sunflower oil, processed cheese powder, whey powder, natural flavourings (milk), salt, garlic, cream powder.

First smell:Even without sticking my nose into the bag, the aroma is punching me in the nose with delight. It's a sharp cheese smell that is unlike any Cheeto or Dorito out there. Super appealing but also intense.

First taste:This is perhaps the strongest flavour on a Brets chip I've ever had. Cheese and garlic in an intense combat in my mouth, powerful and pleasing. The sharpness of the cheese is like a bold white cheddar chip or popcorn flavour dialed up a couple notches without the side of manufactured flavour boosters or, as is so common, onion.

Aftertaste: The garlic lingers as garlic is want to do, but the desire for salted starchy cheesiness is what triggers the brain for more.

Mass consumption: At first I thought this would be too powerful a cheese flavour to want to eat too much of, but no, it's surprisingly easy to return back for more and more. I've already eaten three handfuls before I wrote these meager few paragraphs. This bag is going to go down real fast and real easy. 

Final thoughts: After repeatedly dipping into the bag, my oily powdered fingers mucking up my keyboard real good, I realized this flavour was triggering a familiar sensation, a sort of nostalgia tug. Growing up in Northwestern Ontario, our preferred brand of chips was a regional company called Old Dutch (who have since expanded nationally). They had a chip called "Onion and Garlic" which, to this day, is the only onion and garlic chip I think I've ever seen. Despite not having onion in the ingredients, the potency of the garlic and the creamy cheesiness for some reason (I guess "garlic") is creating that same sensation. Delicious onion-free chip plus nostalgia trip, oh yeah!  If ever I want a cheesy chip, this will definitely be a go-to (if it sticks around).

Rating; 8.8

31 Days of Halloween: Something Wicked This Way Comes

1983, Jack Clayton (The Great Gatsby) -- Disney

OK, what is it with classic America not decorating for Halloween around the time of Halloween? Are you telling me on October 24th in the 1940s, middle America didn't at least put a jack-o-lantern on the porch, or maybe a spooky scarecrow or two? Trick or Treat-ing was already a thing in the 40s so there should have been at least some reference to the kids building costumes. Alas...

The movie begins with "the lightning rod salesman" (Royal Dano, The Outlaw Josey Wales) wandering into Green Town, Illinois with an evocative voice over of a boy being all nostalgic over Autumn in the 40s. This is prime Bradbury writing style, as he wrote the screenplay for Clayton based on his 1962 novel which he had already adopted from his own 40s short story. We are then introduced to Will Halloway (Vidal Peterson, ST: TNG: Unification II), the narrator, and his best friend Jim Nightshade (what a last name! Shawn Carson, The Funhouse), and their picturesque little town with iconic shop keepers and Will's dad, the librarian, who is suffering a mild depression over his age, and having married late in life.

The carnival is coming to town, and almost immediately it proves itself magical. From just the sound of a steam whistle, to an instantaneously built midway, the boys recognize something is just not right here. And then there's its ring leader Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce, Slow Horses) littering the town square with his advertisements. And things get scarier and more mystical after just opening night with the locals lured into various traps of an arcane nature.

This is a classic Disney style adventure of a magical & horror nature meant for kids. The victims of Mr. Dark's dark magic are all adults, falling to their own desires and folly, and only the kids seems to recognize something is awry. But its also a story of the love between a father and a son, who despite their challenges, are strongly bonded. There is really no true violence, not real death, but a lot of kid-level scary things. Maybe I am not as in touch with my kid-level whimsy as I thought (dude, this post says otherwise) but it didn't do much for me. Its just another example of things that don't hold up as well over time.

I love David Grove's poster work....

31 Days of Halloween: Haul Out the Halloween

2025, Maclain Nelson (Christmas in Vienna) -- download

In the same vein as the last movie (fits in because its set during Halloween), and yes, this is a Hallmarkie set at Halloween, and apparently one of a few in a "Haul Out the..." series. I learned one thing in watching this movie, in that if I am not watching a Hallmarkie with at least the thinnest hint of "the formula" then... well, I am not interested -- and they don't have to be just Xmas; I rather enjoyed a "harvest fest" a few years ago. This Hallmarkie came more by way of a terrible Disney Channel sitcom than a "proper" Hallmarkie, and yes, I said that -- "proper". But it was about decorating for Halloween, so at least that can be fun, huh?

Nuh uh.

So, it starts with Emily Melrose (Lacey Chabert, The Christmas Waltz) getting married to Jared Farnsworth (Wes Brown, My Southern Family Christmas). Sorry, it starts with a flyover of a Picturesque Small Town with snow capped mountains in the background, and some dialogue about Evergreen Lane. No, not Evergreen, the perpetual Xmas village of other Hallmarkies, nor Evergreen of Peacemaker but just some town with a cul-de-sac called Evergreen Lane. It is Autumn and the town is aflame in colours.

So yeah the main characters are getting married. I guess there were escapades in previous movies that have brought us to this moment, and we are supposed to recognize most of the supporting wedding cast. The wedding is typical Hallmarkie sweet but almost immediately the movie jumps into the plot -- new neighbours have moved in and they are a little over-the-top when it comes to decorating for Halloween. As in Violating the HOA Charter over-the-top. 

Yes, this is a movie about overbearing HOA members, and wherein most movies have the HOA as an unstoppable force of Evil, this one has them as the main characters. It says something about the current American value system that the Main Characters are all members of a horrible political system. Anywayz, it seems Halloween Decorating was not outright banned on Evergreen Lane but expected to be very toned down because of The Incident. What Incident, you ask? Well apparently Emily got jump scared when she was 10, so for the last 30 years... seriously, WTF? A kid gets scared at Halloween and they basically ban the event for THIRTY YEARS?!?! Pay no mind, obviously they repeal that or we wouldn't have the movie but... ?!?!?!

The rest of the movie is about the lead up to decorating, some internal squabbling with the neighbours and families, and complications with the local news reporter. I guess they assume that since these aspects are typical plot points in other Hallmarkies, just lumping them together in this movie as connectors between the plot and all the other sitcom-y shenanigans will satisfy viewers? I won't comment on what truly typical Hallmarkie viewers think of this mash-up but it is not for me. There was some fun spins on the Baking Competition and the Holiday Sweater (set decorators had fun, plot basically ignored the element) but for the most part the movie focused on the shenanigans. And the actual Halloween night event is... toned down? One thing I love about the Xmas Hallmarkies is how utterly over-the-top they go in decorating their Xmas Villages or Squares, but here it was only one notch up from Spirit Halloween. In fact, I am pretty sure they shot in one of its stores. 

This was a Hallmarkie that was boring, stupid, celebrated terrible people and barely enjoyed the thrill of the season, and worst of all, the Main Characters had zero chemistry or charm.

Speaking of terrible, while trying to find a poster for this post, I ran into at least two different AI generated posters, which were created for AI generated posts meaning to lead people to malware and scammy stuff. The posters were decently done, but not this movie and the movie they described were not even this movie, but something entirely fabricated. I even ran into one that generated a terrible AI version of a poster for this actual movie, but still... so so wrong. Its amazing how quickly the Use AI for Evil has gotten out of hand.

Series Minded: Trons

[Series Minded is an irregular feature here at T&KSD, wherein we tackle the entire run of a film, TV, or videogame series in one fell swoop]

Tron (1982, d. Steven Lisberger - Disney+)
Tron: Legacy (2010, d. Josef Kosinski - Disney+/Blu-ray [my internet crapped out about halfway through so I had to switch formats, and let me say physical was so much better])
Tron: Ares (2025, d. Joachim Rønning - in theatre, IMAX 3-D)

Tron debuted in 1982, 43 years ago, as an extremely modest success, at least financially, making its budget back and a little extra for the Disney coffers. But it was not the nu-Star Wars smash that its corporate overlords had hoped. Toys went on discount, and the merchandising blitz and tie ins came and went. It’s only resounding wins were the piles of quarters dumped into its fairly radical (and still alluring) arcade cabinets.

Steven Lisberger’s idea for Tron would basically become the template of so many Pixar and Pixar-esque films: a what if x-inanimate objects or concepts had feelings and lives and culture and civilization. In Tron’s case, it’s a “what if programs were real?” The reality they exist in is called The Grid, and it was all conceived in a nascent computer age where 64 kilobytes (practically the size of this text document) was considered a lot of processing power. The general populace didn’t really understand computers on a technical level and were barely familiar with them on an operational level. It’s also like the screenwriters of Tron weren’t all that knowledgeable themselves. Either that or they liberated themselves from the restraints of that knowledge in order to make their techno-fantasy world, and frankly it’s a better film for it.

Tron, at its core, is about world building, with a story about a user getting trapped in the digital world as he seeks evidence of a corporate executive having stole his ideas for himself. The bad guy is Encom VP Ed Dillinger (David Warner, The Omen) whose master control program (MCP) started life as a chess game and evolved into a bloatware tyrant absorbing all useful programs and trashing the rest as it rampages its way through corporate and governmental systems. Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, Starman) created a half dozen very lucrative video games that Dillinger stole, passed off as his own, made the company some serious cash and got promoted and while Flynn fired. But Flynn has friends on the inside of Encom who help him get access to find the evidence he needs, only the MCP uses an experimental digitizing laser to zap Flynn into the digital world.

The titular Tron is, effectively, a security watchdog program, and Flynn needs Tron’s help if he’s going to both escape and bring down Dillinger as well as his tyrannical MCP.

Tron opens on the Grid with Flynn’s Clu avatar (also Jeff Bridges) driving a tank through the vector-graphics inspired world, communicating back and forth with Flynn as it seeks the evidence Flynn’s looking for but is overpowered by the MCP’s response team. Clu’s failure immediately takes us to the real world, where we see Dillinger interact with the MCP, concerned over yet another incursion, as well as introduce us to Flynn’s friends Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, Scarecrow and Mrs. King) and Dr. Lora Baines (Cindy Morgan, Caddyshack). Alan is the creator of Tron, while Lori is the designer of the digitizing laser. There is a half-hearted love triangle (Lora is Flynn’s ex, and is currently dating Alan) that extends to the Grid when Flynn meets their avatars Tron and Yori.

The in-Grid world had three primary designers. Legendary French comics illustrator Jean “Moebius” Giraud worked sets and costumes, primarily, with neo-futurist designer Syd Mead creating the film’s vehicles, and digital commercial artist Peter Lloyd creating the landscapes. As much as the film is known for its extensive use of then cutting edge computer effects, much of it is trick-of-the-eye as painted backdrops and clever use of light and shadow as well as rotoscoping and a lot of manual processing was necessary to build the world. It was a strenuous and laborious process to create the look and feel of the Grid, shot in black and white, with up to ten layers of processing as well as merging with digital effects… it’s the only film of its kind like this and it never fails to impress. It’s so damn unique.

The film’s other trick-of-the-eye is in its use of sound to flesh out its world. There’s nothing else that sounds like Tron, effects wise. As the Skywalker Sound library has gotten pillaged over the years and the sound effects of Star Wars have bled into other films and television, the sounds of Tron remain uniquely its own. Rather than using the primitive 8-bit audio sounds from video games of the era, sound designer Frank Serafine built everything specifically for the film. 

Wendy Carlos, composer known for her pioneering digital compositions, most notably for her scores to A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, creates her own digital audio soundscape here. Like those Toto or Tangerine Dream scores of the fantasy and sci-fi films of the early 80’s, Carlos’s score feels so very coded to its time. Electronic music was still exceptionally primitive at this time, but even at this era, it was being blended into rock and pop to greater effect than as its own enjoyable compositions. But the mix of score with visuals as well as technical adventurousness now cements the film to its time and it feels so pointedly a snapshot of an era, a piece of history [something not lost on the makers of the new Tron: Ares, but also sadly not replicated].

Tron is simultaneously not a great movie and also a mindblowing one. It’s so awkward in its conception of programs as living beings, and the society of The Grid makes no sense, and their worship of users as deities seems especially cruel, but at the end of the day, when Jeff Bridges is your guide into an adventurous world of kick ass games like disc wars and lightcycles, it’s too enjoyable to really care that deeply about where it goes wrong.

The first resurrection of the Tron property came with "Tron 2.0" in 2003, a first-person-shooter videogame that was a sort of testbed for the appetite for new Tron content. It was modestly well received and modestly successful. Modesty would be an enduring theme for Tron.

2010, though, had designs on blowing the modesty right off of the perception of Tron. Josef Kosinski’s directorial debut would cost at least 170 million dollars to produce, and every damn penny of it is up on the screen. Kosinski, an architect by training, really wanted to reintroduce The Grid for a modern era. To do so he would design the living hell out of it. Though indebted to the first film, and holding true to the light-piping effect, and the bold colours, Kosinski and his team really leaned into the shadows and contrasts with this film, to make the colours pop even more, and boy do they pop.

The light cycles, the Recognizers and the tanks, the buildings, the costumes, the landscapes, they’re all taking those original designs and reimagining them with absolute love and care. The vision of Tron: Legacy is an utterly stunning one, and just may be the most eye-popping movie ever made. Not even joking.

The story of Legacy is a sweeping one, following Kevin Flynn’s kid, Sam (Garrett Hedlund, Pan) as he gets sucked into the grid on what he thinks is an accident, but turns out to be the work of a new Clu, designed by Flynn years earlier to create the perfect system. Unfortunately Clu became a tyrant, chasing the impossibility of perfection, with nothing to guide him. Kevin Flynn has been trapped in the grid for about 20 years, he missed Sam grow up, and he watched his other baby, the Grid, fall victim to authoritarian rule. The world inside the Grid is just as bad as the outside.

On top of the drama of Sam reuniting with his father, and Clu’s own “father issues” , the film seeds the story of the ISOs, a unique breed of program that sprang up organically, not programmed. New life. Flynn was on the cusp of introducing them to the world when Clu’s regime took over, and his jealousy and distrust of ISOs led to mass extermination. The only survivor is Quorra (Olivia Wide, House M.D.).

Flynn and Quorra must get Sam out of the Grid and into the real world before Clu does, as he’s breeding an army to head in to the real world  and make it the “perfect system” too.

Tron: Legacy, while certainly not the first of the “legasequels” definitely was at the forefront of the trend that ran wild in the 2010s and still has not abated. It’s also one of the best, if only because it’s “franchise restarting” designs didn’t yield a film that feels unresolved by the end of it. Sure, there were seeds for where a follow-up might go, and yes Cilian Murphy was cast in a small role as Ed Dillnger’s kid as foundation for a larger role later on, but the story of Tron: Legacy is self-contained much in the same way Tron was. It builds the world, tells its specific story and it ends with a basically happy ending.

Rewatching Tron: Legacy [which I seem to do often] is always transportive. It is a world I get sucked into and a world I am absolutely transfixed by. It’s not just visually attractive, it’s sexy, without ever intoning sex. It’s just pure dopamine fuel, eye candy so sweet you’ll have ocular diabetes afterwards. The sound design, once again, is on point, but unlike the first movie where even the footfalls announce themselves, here the sound design is so clearly second in line to the Daft Punk soundtrack.  The soundtrack is part of the otherworldliness of the Grid, it’s so well integrated into the film that it feels like it’s impossible to separate the sounds from the visuals… and yet, the soundtrack is such incredible listening on its own. But the reverse likely isn’t true…as pretty as the film is, it loses much without the score.

Bridges hit his academy award-winning elder statesman phase at this exact time, with his Crazy Heart Oscar win the year before and True Grit reteaming him with the Coen Brothers the same year, it’s a reminder of just how much he brings to any film he’s in. Nearly every line delivery (only exception: “Nice!”) is pure gold, carrying either the full weight of Bridges seniority, or his post Lebowski Dude-ness, sometimes both at once. The first Tron movie would be primarily a curious relic without his affable persona as its demi-heroic lead.  Garrett Hedlund got a bad rap at the time of being another of the “bland” young leads that Hollywood was trying to force out into the theatre. I don’t think Hedlund particularly pops, but he’s definitely got character, and his performance is full of subtlety.  He’s not the brash, big-talking, jokey hero… he plays a thrill-seeking rich kid with daddy issues as a very down-to-earth, likeable, believable guy..with daddy issues.  Olivia Wilde’s Quorra is maybe the only “born sexy yesterday” character that should be given a pass. The camera is definitely in love with her, but it’s never objectifying her. The camera looks at her like the way she looks at Sam, intrigued, captivated, curious and admiring. She is a skilled fighter, and she’s full of curiosity. She’s not dumb, but she’s only experienced life inside the Grid, and so her wanting to know more of the outside world where her mentor comes from is naturally her focal point with Sam. It’s too bad the character doesn’t have more of the weight of being the last of the ISO’s, the trauma of having watched her entire race get eradicated, sitting on her shoulders, but, to paraphrase a Bridges line, that would be, like, a total bummer man.

There are few movies I love watching more than Tron:Legacy, and there are few theatrical experiences that legitimately blew my mind like Tron:Legacy. For a long time I held out hope that Kosinski would return to Tron and deliver another all out audio-visual assault, but I knew once Top Gun: Maverick became the biggest movie of 2022 [not a legasequel, btw, as often erroneously ascribed] that we would not be getting Kosinski back on Tron unless he had an absolute passion to do so. He does not.

So Tron:Ares being announced not long after Top Gun: Maverick was a definite surprise, and one that I welcomed… with trepidation.

The first trailer whetted the appetite, as it presented light cycles and Recognizers moving through the real world (Vancouver) and seemed to maintain the same bold contrasts of Tron: Legacy. Those jet black blacks and those vibrant popping trails (mostly red in Ares’ case). The soundtrack, at first, was the tag on the end of the trailer. Nine Inch Nails. Yes, it’s Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the duo responsible for many of the best soundtracks of the past dozen years, but they’re doing it as fucking Nine Inch Nails! Getting the band back together! It would go on to be the major point of the film’s marketing, boldly proclaiming the NIN soundtrack early and often in commercials. So we know the producers at least did  one thing right.

But the flipside was the film stars Jared Leto.

Leto (House of Gucci) is a frustrating performer and as a human being, real suspect. Reports of his “method” antics on set, and reports of his real-world activities leaves nothing but a bad taste in one’s mouth. On screen, he can deliver performances that range from incredible to damn annoying. It’s a backhanded compliment from Fight Club – “I felt like destroying something beautiful” (referring to the scene where Ed Norton bashes Leto’s face in during a fight) – that’s hard to erase from one’s memory every time you see him.

So this film had a lot of goodwill thanks to Tron: Legacy and NIN, but also had an uphill battle.

The end result is kind of a draw.

Directed by Joachim Rønning, the less-than visionary director of the last of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (for now) and the Maleficent sequel from a script from David DiGilio (The Terminal List), the creative impetus is not anything other than “make content to see if the property is still viable”.

With Tron: Legacy, the film was accompanied by a blitz of toys, comics, video games, an animated prequel series, merchandizing tie-ins. It didn’t gross the near-billions that I think Disney was hoping for, but it was a modest success at 400 million globally, and it’s had staying power, in no small part thanks to the Light Cycle rides at Disney parks.  Tron is never going to be the cash cow that Disney wants all its properties to be, but if the property is treated with reverence and care, then the fanbase will keep coming along.

There’s no multimedia merchandizing blitz for Tron:Ares, and even less love and care shown for the property in the movie itself. The film plays out nothing like the adventurous world building of the prior two films, and instead opts for a 2000s-era action film centered around the good guys and bad guys chasing a maguffin. It’s not exactly paint-by-numbers, because the Tron elements force at least a few intriguing deviations, but where those deviations SHOULD have been the story of the film, it can’t seem to get back to its nonsense plot fast enough.

Tron: Ares opens much like Tron:Legacy does, with a voiceover from Bridges explaining the Grid, and then news highlights filling the audience in on what’s happened in the world of Encom in the years since. The point here being to close the door on any further adventures of Sam Flynn and Quorra while tepidly introducing both our human protagonist, Eve Kim (Greta Lee, Past Lives) co-CEO of Encom, and Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters, X-Men: Apocalypse), the newest head of Dillinger Corp.  Both companies are in a race to bring the digital world to reality, and they’ve developed the 3-D printing technology to do it, to create living things and functional products, except the technology only lasts for 29 minutes before cohesiveness fatally breaks down. Eve wants to use the technology for the benefit of society and Dillinger wants to use it to make weapons.

Eve has discovered “the permanence code” from Flynn’s records and Dillinger wants it and will do anything to get it, including sending his Master Control Program, Ares (Leto), off Grid and into the real world to find Eve and take the code from her by force. The mission is successful, except Ares is discovering emotions and humanity in himself, and wants the permanence code for himself. The result is against programming, protecting Eve at all costs. So Dillinger sends the ruthless Athena (Jodi Turner-Smith, Bad Monkey) after them and she takes control of Dillinger Corp, prints out her own army, and is willing to decimate The City (Vancouver) to do so.

The plot seems like your standard direct-to-streaming sci-fi action movie premise, and lacks most of the Tron flavour. Our main “Grid” protagonist, Ares, is a nothingburger of a character, much like many a lead from said 2000’s-style action spectacles. Ares is just a curious program who has such a strong desire not to be a program anymore that he defies orders. He’s a weapon with a heart. He’s the Terminator in Terminator 2, with Athena being the T-1000. It’s largely been done before, and mostly better.

Leto is fine in the role, inoffensive, but there’s no real charm either. The character should be discovering himself, but there’s nothing behind the performance that says that’s what he’s doing, he just seems like a wide-eyed know-it-all who knows he doesn’t know it all (it’s really hard to power wash the smarm off of him). We’ve seen the little digital boy wants to be a real boy story so many times by now, it’s beyond cliche and nothing new is added to that cliche here. There is a scene where Ares encounters a legacy program of Flynn and we get even older than The Old Man Bridges, still full of more charm and life and unique energy than Leto 30 years his junior. 

Greta Lee does so much of the heavy lifting in this film. She has an innate sense of self-awareness that at once displays strength, smarts, confidence and vulnerability. She’s so alive, blood-pumping, playing against a character with barely a spark of life in him, whose veins bleed cold code. Jodi Turner-Smith needs to remain cold-cold-cold to the point of evil, which is always a flaw in these stories. They even state in the endgame that she was just fulfilling her programming, but at times it comes off as vengeful, emotional, and it’s too much for the character. I’m sure it’s what Turner was asked to do, and she does it well, I think it deserved more restraint. Peters as Dillnger is, again, an underbaked character. He’s so singularly focused on his objective that there’s no sense of calculation, just an idiot with a one-track mind. Gillian Anderson (American Gods) plays his mother, his advisor, the CEO he succeeded, and she’s trying to be the voice of reason and conscience and he ignores her. The conflicts between mother and son should be fascinating, but they’re like bargain basement Succession riffs and Peters falls short of being anything but a comic book villain.

The best moments in the film are two “Grid” sequences: the first in which Ares and Eve must escape Dillinger’s grid, and the second is Ares’ journey into the 1980’s Grid.  Both should have been full-act adventures on their own, instead they are mere sequences within the film that don’t amount to a whole hell of a lot. The ‘80’s Grid is largely a nostalgia tug that, sadly, has no reason to execute an action sequence (wouldn’t it have been more fun if Athena had infected the Grid and resurrected legacy protective programs and Ares had to find Tron to help him escape.... Or something?).  The journey into Dillinger’s Grid comes at the right time, right at the time where I was about to check out of the film for not really having the same vibe as the other films in the series. It just doesn’t last long enough and doesn’t explore what life in DIllinger’s militaristic Grid is really like.

The climax of the film, with Athena bringing a Recognizer into the real world (I don’t think that hangar bay was big enough to print that out completely…some assembly required?) is really the only “Tron-in-the-real-world” aspect that fully delivers on awe. The light cycles riding around Vancouver never quite feel tangibly part of their environment, and people in Tron costumes walking around real-world sets, well, often feel like people in Tron costumes walking around real-world sets. The Recognizer sequence seems to get, late in the film, how Tron-stuff works in the real world, but it’s still a sequence that feels like an action sequence and lacks real narrative thrust.

I watched the film in IMAX 3-D, and I have to say that 3-D technology, in IMAX at the very least, has advanced leaps and bounds since the last time I watched a 3-D movie. The depth of field seemed well orchestrated (especially where the light trails were involved) and the 3-D-ness of it all rarely called attention to itself. At the same time, I did have to wonder if some of the difficulty I was having with appreciating the action sequences was because of the 3-Dness, or if it was how Rønning shot the film. I didn’t have full clarity on the action sequences at all times. The fight choreography was also seriously underwhelming.

The Nine Inch Nails soundtrack is huge. It delivers, mostly. Because it’s playing with aspect from Legacy and the original, there are obvious nods to the Carlos and Daft Punk scores (and Carolos and Daft Punk sounds outside of their Tron work) as well NIN seem to crib notable sounds from Radiohead, Bjork and Massive Attack which left me puzzled as to the intent of the nod (I wonder how many would actually notice). It’s a kick ass soundtrack that, unfortunately, isn’t in complete lock-step with the film, and at times overpowers the imagery on screen.

Tron: Ares is satisfactory (but not satisfying). Like the prior two films it has an ending, but offers a braindead post-script (two actually) that tease where it could go in the future, and we're never going to get there.  Outside of it’s soundtrack, is not daring in any way. It does not live up to the legacy its predecessors established, and never fully feels connected to its past despite all the references and desperate efforts to tangentially connect it (really, the “permanence code” should have been related to the ISOs, to Quorra, but I suspect Disney was hoping to cater to a new new audience more than servicing an existing fanbase…and fair enough). It’s true crime is just being generic in its storytelling and action sensibilities in having the real world and the digital one collide. There should be more meat on those bones.

Tron:Ares will, unfortunately, put the lid back on the box for at least another 15 years before Disney decides to dust it off again. We'll see then what kind of effort they're willing to put into this modest property.

[Poster talk... quickly, as I've been at this for long enough. The main Tron poster, of Tron and Yuri and the ascending data disc in the (original) laser-in-the-sky is one of the series' most iconic images, so it was obviously replicated for both Legacy and Ares. Legacy tries to sexify it up a bit with Quorra's hand on Sam Flynn (which doesn't happen in the film), while Ares spoils the whole meeting of Ares with Flynn in the 80's Grid. Not sure how I feel about that. I really don't like the Ares' poster representing this, though).

Other posters for OG Tron are pretty clunky.  For Legacy, there's a plethora of posters highlighting all the gorgeous visual elements of the film, the costuming and vehicles with a big focus on the light cycles. Ares likewise focuses on the light cycles heavily in its posters.  I like the poster that highlights that Legacy introduces a new vehicle (though Legacy did not have a plane or glider poster which is too bad). Ares only introduced one new vehicle, a sort of monster truck/snowplow hybrid, and it didn't make the posters.

I didn't talk about Legacy's "digital de-aging" here, but it's curious that there are many posters spotlighting Clu and his weird cgi-reconstruction of Bridges young face.

Ares' poster series delivers the usual spate of character posters...so boring. It also leans heavily into the red accent of the film, but ignores the Triangle motif that the film tries to establish early on, only to abandon by the end of the first act. There are some Leto posters and just as many Turner-Smith posters, so, to quote Flynn... Nice. There's also a heavy focus for Ares on Tron-in-the-real-world including a series of posters with a light cycle driving through or past famous international landmarks. Meh.]

 

31 Days of Halloween: Arsenic and Old Lace

1944, Frank Capra (It's a Wonderful Life) -- download

A movie about a pair of serial killers set during the Halloween season? What could be more 31 Days !!

This movie is a classic, both very much a product of its time but still stands the test of time. Dark Comedies have that enduring ability, but I guess a little slap stick doesn't hurt.

Renowned theatre critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant, North by Northwest) wants to marry Elaine (Priscilla Lane, Four Daughters), but feels a need to hide it, for his reputation is built on hating marriage, romance and all the drivel. Meanwhile over in Brooklyn (the movie comes with a lot of derision for Brooklyn, something I would have to research) police officer Brophy is showing his beat to O'Hara who will take over from him, and this includes the old house belonging to the Brewster sisters, sweet old ladies that never turn a hungry soul away from their door. Mortimer and Elaine, her parents living next door to the Brewsters, and Mortimer wants to break the news to his aunts. We also meet Teddy, Mortimer's brother who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt and whom the neighbours are constantly complaining about, but mainly his trumpeting in the middle of the night.

And then Mortimer finds a body in the window seat. You see, his sweet old aunts like to invite homeless men in, under the pretense of renting a room (the room is never rented) and kill them with wine laced with arsenic, strychnine and cyanide. They were inspired when their first potential renter died of a heart attack in front of them, and looked so peaceful afterwards. At first Mortimer believes Teddy must have done it, given his brother's state of mind, and begins to make plans to have Teddy committed to the Happy Dale Asylum. Then he learns it was his aunts, and begins cracking himself.

Screwball Comedy is the term. The situation just keeps on heaping more and more complications upon poor Mortimer. His black sheep other brother Jonathan returns, an escaped criminal with his own body count, seeking to hide out at his aunt's place, as well as hide his own body. His partner Dr. Einstein, an escaped murderer in his own right, will also finish the botched plastic surgery job he did on Jonathan, an operation that has left the man with a resemblance to Boris Karloff, in the movie Frankenstein to be precise -- this is an in-joke, as Boris Karloff played the character in the original Broadway production. Meanwhile Elaine just wants to head off to Niagara Falls, and they even have a cab waiting outside for them. 

The movie is hilarious. Its not really Halloween-ish, as the only connection is the commentary about it at the beginning. I am not sure of the state of decorating for Halloween in the 40s, but I would have liked to at least see some more trappings. Still, it checks the box.

31 Days of Halloween: The Ugly Step Sister

2025, Emilie Blichfeldt (feature debut) -- download

Or stygge stesøsteren.

The elevator pitch is pretty much, "Cinderella but from the point of view of one of 'ugly' step sisters" and I can hear my coworkers now, decrying its "woke feminist agenda". The movie does have a strong message about altering one's appearance to fit into societal moulds, no matter what the cost personally. 

Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp, The Quake) arrives at the opulent home of her new husband Otto, with her two daughters Elvira (Lea Myren, Kids in Crime) and Alma (Flo Fagerli, Kuppel 16), where they meet Otto's haughty and beautiful daughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss, La Palma). Otto obviously has money, from the grand stature of his home to the lavish design of Agnes' dresses. Plural. The family lives in the shadow of the Prince's castle, whom Elvira has constant fantasies about as she reads his poetry. It is a time when widows have to marry into money in order to survive, except they discover that Otto thought he was doing the same thing -- turns out they are both barely eking by. Barely, as in only a handful of servants.

Almost immediately after her arrival Otto dies and Rebekah sets her eyes on marrying off her daughters, Agnes as well, relying on the virginal nature every man desires. An invitation comes from the Prince, to attend a ball in four months time. That is plenty of time for Rebekah to have Elvira made into something more beautiful, partially through starvation, partially through reconstructive surgery on her already very normal, but not "slender" nose, and partially via a finishing school. But the cost is extravagant and Agnes challenges her spending the money there, while her father literally rots in the drawing room. Literally, with flies and maggots and bloating. This is not a faery tale from Perrault, but one by way of Grimm and David Cronenburg. Oh yeah, the starvation is helped along by swallowing the egg of a tapeworm.

Eventually Agnes, who is excelling at everything at the finishing school, while Elvira usually gets last place, is caught fucking the stable boy. How dare she sully her virgin status with the help?!? Rebekah drives the boy off, and shoves Agnes down onto the scullery floor, to assume her "cinderella" role. Meanwhile adolescent Alma, who disappears into the background, falls into the stable boy role, dressing in pants and mucking out stables.

Everything is leading to The Ball. As the tapeworm grows inside her, Elvira suffers horrible stomach pains and binges on treats from the pantry whenever she can hide it from her mother. Agnes shoulders her new role with aplomb but as time gets closer to the date, she still has a desire to attend. She even has the perfect dress and the perfect shoes, that is until Elvira sees them and tears them to shred. She is finally getting somewhere, having lost weight and the nose covering has been removed to show a slim & slender proboscis, and her braces are off revealing perfect teeth. She has even risen in the ranks at the finishing school because of Agnes's absence. She's also become a wee bit unhinged with the obsession impressed upon her by her mother. Agnes runs off in tears to her... ick... father's melting corpse, where the ghost of her mother appears. Oh yeah, Cinderella story so let's have some minor Magic Realism and the maggots become silk worms that repair her dress to its high glory.

The night of The Ball is all bloated with our, the viewer's, expectations on how things are going to go. Elvira is beautiful, even if her hair falling out had to be replaced by a wig, and she can dance well, but is kind of flatulent and her tummy growls and moans constantly. We know how its going to go. But this is not an American movie, so the climax is not at The Ball itself, but further in, once The Prince has become enamoured with Agnes/Cinderella who has to run from the dance before midnight. This movie is from Elvira's perspective, and her reaction to all her painful plans being dashed by Agnes (AGNES !!) 

So, we know there has to be a fallen shoe, and the step-sisters have to try them on, but in this movie its all happening off camera. There is no way Elvira's big feet will fit into that shoe, so why not just cut off some toes. That doesn't go so well, and the pain knocks her out. No matter, her mom finishes things off, even pointing out she did it to the wrong foot. So, five toes become ten. Buuuuut, again off camera, the Prince has already bumped into Agnes and... they have ridden off into the sunset, happily ever after. A drugged and in pain Elvira falls out of bed breaking her fragile nose and her shiny teeth. All the ugly on the inside is now on the outside. But her sister Alma, now more stable boy than potential virgin bride, still loves her and the two rob their mother and escape into the fog to have ... different lives.

The movie was somewhat painfully indie feeling. Its very rough around the edges but its strength lies in knowing exactly what tale its telling and the, yeah well "agenda" is very on point. And by very potent performances. Elvira is driven by what is expected of her, and nothing ever comes easy for the girl. I won't preach on its message, but its well told. The horror of the story comes in the consequences, the body horror, and the (even if it didn't happen at The Ball) inevitable extrication of the tape worm. That scene was all the more horrible for the reality of it all. Makes me squeamish just recalling, squick almighty!

31 Days of Halloween: Revival

2025, download -- 3 / 10 episodes

I once said, "It wouldn't be Halloween without something by Mike Flanagan." I should have kept my big mouth shut as all his shows and movies are still forthcoming, while 2024's The Life of Chuck is not Halloweenish, nor watched yet. But, its nice that there is usually something on TV, this season or this year, that is genre appropriate. And people coming back from the dead is Halloweenish, right?

A reporter and a crematorium/morgue staff member have a traumatic beginning to an event in the rural Wisconsin town of Wausau -- the guy being toasted kicks the door off, and then the person in the body bag sits up. Meanwhile across town, Deputy Dana Cypress (Melanie Scrofano, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) is trying to quit her job and leave town, but her dad, the Sheriff (David James Elliot, JAG) won't have any of it. Revival Day interrupts her plans.

A month later, the town is still under quarantine, nobody coming in or going out. No mention of food logistics, but at least their lockdown has been lifted. The month has proven that all the people who died within a two week period of the fateful day woke up. Miracle or supernatural or freak physics phenomena? Nobody knows, but the CDC has sent Dr. Ibrahim Rahin (Andy McQueen, Mrs. Davis) to investigate. One doctor, and maybe some support staff? Seems underplayed.

Like most SyFy / Canadian specific TV, its focused on the people element, so the first three episodes are about getting to know the characters, including Em Cypress (Romy Weltman, Slasher), the younger sister, who turns out to have also revived, waking up from drowning in the river, but with no memory of how she died. But she's having weird visions and filling sketch books with ominous imagery. All the Revived are normal, but for an encounter with old Arlene Stankiewicz who has been pulling out her own teeth, watching them grow back -- oh yeah, side effect of being revived -- you are now invulnerable, and heal from any wound; ANY wound. Arlene goes bonkers and kills her own daughter in law, which leaves the town nervous that maybe other revivers are going to go off the rails.

Its not bad. Its been a while since we had some familiar Canadian scifi/horror/specfic, so its almost like comfort food. I covered some of the plethora of fictional media that deal with this same topic back in 2014, and the graphic novel from which this was adapted is 2012, so right in there. Unlike many TV shows, where three episodes is enough to determine whether to give it a pass, I have a feeling, again like much Canadian produced TV, this will be OK enough but satisfaction will come only if they handle the final few episodes of the season well. I mean, something is going on, we just have to slowly reveal what it is and stretch it out enough to last more than one season. I am not convinced so far this will get its second.

1-1-1: Peacemaker Season 2

2025, 8 episodes - HBO
created by James Gunn

The What 100: Peacemaker Chris Smith, failing at love and rejected as a superhero, sinks into a deep depression when he discovers a gateway to an alternate reality where his father loves him and his brother is still alive. Rejected by Harcourt, Chris decides to leave his world behind and assume the life of his alt-reality self, except the 11th Street Kids aren't ready to let him go, and this other reality isn't as peaceful as it seems. Plus, Rick Flagg Sr., now head of Argus, seems to be putting all his efforts and resources into fucking Chris over.

(1 Great) Season two backs off of the conflicts among the core cast and instead delves deeper into Chris' traumas, his regrets, and his desire to be someone else. He's dug himself into a pit that he can't seem to climb out of. This season, despite some very big ideas and having to deal with being the immediate follow-up to Superman, manages to center itself around Chris' emotional journey, and highlight the impact Chris has had on his friends. John Cena, almost always a likeable comedic presence reaches deep for pathos and melancholy that shows what a strong actor he has become. He has gotten to the point where he can deliver multiple emotions at once, having his face express one emotion, his eyes another, his physicality another, and his voice yet another. I don't think 10 years ago when Cena appeared with a facecloth covering his junk in Trainwreck that we ever would have expected this out of him.

The foundation of Peacemaker as a series has always been about the character's guilt over killing Rick Flagg Jr. (Joel Kinneman) in The Suicide Squad. He's built a whole show and cast of characters around Peacemaker's attempts at reform, and this season really is about setbacks after saving the world last season. This season, that guilt starts to multiply, as Chris has to come face to face not just with other people from Flagg's life, but seeing and feeling for the first time the impact his rather extreme actions have had on other people. 

It has always been about a traumatized man confronting his trauma and how it's shape the person he has been on the path to reinvention if not necessarily redemption.

(1 Good) We'll get to the downside of James Gunn's scripting this season in a second, but the really good elements of Gunn's scripts this season is not falling into the Marvel trap of making everything so obviously a setup or callback to something else. My biggest worry for the season, following Superman, was that Gunn would be so obviously setting up tent poles for future DC movies or TV shows. And it's not like he isn't, as he has said as much on the official Peacemaker podcast, but it never feels like it's stepping outside the fundamentals of the show.

Rick Flagg Sr. (Frank Grillo) was seen in Superman and Creature Commandos before this, but here he is treated as cast, not simply relying upon past appearances. Gunn does call back to The Suicide Squad and Superman, among other DC references (there's a Lex Luthor cameo, and the character's presence is really felt in the endgame of the season) but Gunn makes all the actions and events a part of the show. Even if there are reverberations that might be felt outside of the series, Gunn primarily focuses on the immediate impact on the characters at hand.  The finale, which I was worried would be just a big tease for something in the future, never actually feels like it's stepping outside of the Peacemaker slice of the DC Unverse.

(1 Bad) Gunn's scripting this season, however, is far from perfect, and is a step down from both the previous season and Superman. I can't help but feel like Gunn, writing two TV series and a film to kickstart this new branch of DC on TV and in film, as well as being chief creative and producer of all things DC, has overextended himself. The Peacemaker season 2 scripts are not as tight as season 1, they're not as funny, and they don't manage to balance the characters out nearly as well as season one. The season largely focuses on Chris and Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) to the expense of Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), Adebayo (Danielle Broosk),  and especially the new characters like Flagg Sr., Sasha Bordeaux (Sol Rodriguez) and Langston Fleury (Tim Meadows). With many of the episodes clocking in at barely 30 minutes, it's not really a surprise the season feels a little under-baked compared to the series before. There's nothing *bad* here, but it's clear that Gunn is an incredibly busy man, and if the show struggles, it probably in his ability to commit his full energy to one project.

META: The highlight of Season 1, a damn entertaining season of superhero-based television, was absolutely the opening credits. The dance sequence to Wig Wam's "Do Ya Wanna Taste It" was an immediate sensation, and I looked forward every week to a new episode just to see the credits. (Yes, I know I could have watched them any time on YouTube or social media, but it was so perfect at amping me up for the episode that followed). This season Gunn selected a new song, Foxy Shazam's "Oh Lord", to open the show. Unlike "Do Ya Wanna Taste It", which is modern Euro hair metal at its most infectious, "Oh Lord" is an epic power ballad that feels much more serious than fun. It took me aback, and I didn't know what to think of it for weeks.  But with each episode, I warmed to it, especially how the production would overlay the start of the song in the cold opens, and the end of the song's "La la la's" acted as a segue into the main episode. It did have the effect of making the show feel at once more epic and more intimate.

Also, I keep forgetting that the main city of Peacemaker is Evergreen...like in the Hallmark movies, lol. Isn't it delightful to think of Peacemaker existing in the same reality as Christmas in Evergreen (of course it's much more like the alt-world there... *tugs at collar*)

Also also, it was hilarious and very disarming that the first episode of, well, anything DC-related following the almost-wholesome Superman includes a pretty graphic orgy scene. Tits and dicks and simulated sex everywhere. Gunn has never lost his provocateur nature, and this is very provocative.

[Poster talk... the main poster is the "painted billboard" version that appears in the back of comic books, while the bus ads I've seen have been the banner with Peacemaker and Eagly touching noggings. The latter is just kitschy while the former is kind of brilliant. The alt-reality that Chris finds himself in has "The Terrific Trio" (Alt-Chris, his father and his brother) painted in a similar mural in the town's square, so this poster recollects that, where it feels like a celebration of heroes admired by the people rather than propaganda. Here, it's got Chris, in his full regalia, looking up at the image of the 11th Street Kids, again they are like a group of heroes, and yet that small image of Chris is on the outside looking up, hoping to one day live up to that image. It's really really good, very effective act capturing the emotional journey of the season in a nutshell.]

31 Days of Halloween: Weapons

2025, Zach Cregger (Barbarian) -- download

In 2022 (wait; that wasn't last year? it seems so recent), we loved Barbarian and like Kent, I am hesitant to label Cregger as the "next....". We've got a lot of those currently, and while I don't mind adding more standard horror directors to the roster, I don't care when they get labelled as the top of their food chain.

This movie was a fucking ride, just like the last one.

And just to get this out there, it almost felt like he got heavy-handed with the allegory early on in the story, just to get it out of the way. Then shit could get entirely fucked up without diluting his intent. 

The story is told from a few different viewpoints, doing the tape rewind, so we can see each person's perspective. But the bookended story is told like a campfire tale, from a little girl's voice, the kind of scary stories children tell each other, far fetched and unreal, like the ones I used to hear/tell, about the Butterscotch Palace (a large caramel coloured hospital in my home town) and the insane patients who escaped. One night, 17 children from Ms Gandy's class ran out into the night, at 2:17am precisely, and ... well, we assume, were never seen again. One child was left behind, and nobody knew what happened.

We start with Ms Gandy (Julia Garner, Wolf Man) and, yeah, she's a bit of a mess. She knows exactly where the vodka is stored in the large alcohol convenience store -- making a beeline right to the fridge and grabs two large bottles. Not that we would fault her, for she is being blamed by the parents of all the missing children, though the investigation for the following month found nothing to connect her. Nor did they find out why only Alex didn't run.... away. She really really wants to connect with Alex, but as Principal Marcus (Benedict Wong, 3 Body Problem) says, that's more to make her feel better than him.

Next up is Archer (Josh Brolin, Outer Range), the father of one of the kids. He's angry and upset and is demanding more be done to find the kids, and figure out whatever the fuck happened. He's the only one who seems to pay close attention to the weird way the kids run and the direction they head. He's also stalking Ms Gandy a wee bit, giving somewhat innocent explanation to the stalking figure she's been feeling. 

And there's Paul (Alden Ehrenreich, Beautiful Creatures) the cop she used to date, who shows up to comfort her. And opposite Paul there is James (Austin Abrams, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark), the local junkie who just blunders into the plot, trying to secure funds for his next fix. Just as Archer is catching onto ... something, and goes to Ms Gandy to see where she fits into it, she is attacked by Principal Marcus, who is wide-eyed (wide enough to have torn off his own eyelids?), maddened looking and covered in blood and scratches. Just before he bowls her over, we see he is running like the kids did. Archer saves her and...

Tape rewind, many tape rewinds filling in the story, stretching it far from the allegory of school shootings and gun violence into something... creepier and more traditionally horror. Archer has had his hallucination, a vision of an assault rifle in the sky, with 2:17 imposed on it. Why? What does it mean? Nothing directly connected to the story, but the hit-with-a-hammer metaphor that the US is caught up in a cycle where utterly terrible, confounding things happen and people need explanations, reasons why it keeps on happening, so they can ignore the real reasons it is happening. Here, there is a reason for the horrible, inexplicable event that impacted 17 children -- its a witch (Amy Madigan, Carnivàle), a simple horrible witch with her own Hansel & Gretel level manipulation going on.

I get what Kent was saying Cregger's sketch comedy past being prevalent. I found many scenes more eerie than comical, but there were a few, such as Gladys fleeing the children chasing her, where a guffaw escaped me. But so many many other scenes just overwhelmed the funny with chill; everything was well placed here, scary to me and my mind that fills in so many blanks.

We Agree.

1-1-1: Marvel Zombies

2025, 4 episodes - Disney+
Created by Brian Andrews and Zeb Wells

The What 100:In an alternate reality, a zombie plague has ravaged the earth. The survivors are few and the struggle grows increasingly dire. The zombies are not just mindless, hungering hordes, but being controlled by the Scarlet Witch. Despite seeking complete assimilation the witch has set her focus on Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan who seems to be more important than any other survivor, and not just because Kamala has the maguffin that may just cure the whole thing.

(1 Great) It's no secret that for many Avengers: Endgame was a definitive stopping point and that the MCU has largely been pointless excess since. The "Phase 4" expansion, introducing new characters across movies and television, and introducing new "grand arc" threads of the multiverse proved too much for not just much of the general audience, but also too much for Marvel Studios to replicate the success of the past.

But for all the wobbliness of Phases 4 and 5 (and the uncertainty of Phase 6) what has never failed the Marvel Cinematic Universe was great casting. Marvel Zombies, an animated series spinning out of an episode of the animated multiversal anthology What If?, puts a spotlight on all those great casting choices, starting with Iman Vellani, who has never been anything but spectacularly charming and delightful in the role of Kamala Khan. (Also, in recent years in the Marvel Comics, Ms. Marvel has been portrayed as one of the main survivors of many different possible apocalypses, so it's nice to see that into play here as well).

The series opens with Kamala, Hawkeye Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), and Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) finding food and resources while dodging regular zombies as well as "turned" superheroes. They discover a Pym-particles-shrunken unit that may just be Earth's last hope at salvation and they meet the Blade Knight (a Blade-Moon Knight hybrid, designed to be Mahershala Ali's Blade-that-never-happened, but voiced by Todd Williams) who helps them on their journey to try and find a rocket that will get them into space. Along the way they meet Russian heroes Yelena Belova and Red Guardian (Florence Pugh and David Harbour) as well as Shang-Chi(Simu Liu), his friend Katie (Awkwafina), Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) and the silent assassin Death Dealer. They hitch a ride on the floating prison, the Raft, operated as a survivor's community by Baron Zemo (Rama Vallury subbing in for Daniel Bruhl) and John Walker (Wyatt Russell). Eventually they meet up with Spider-Man (Hudson Thames, voice mimicking Tom Holland) and head-in-a-jar Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and make their way to New Asgard seeking the assistance of Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson).

I don't usually write so much plot in a 1-1-1 review, but this is just a super-stuffed four 20-ish-minute episodes that really explore the post-Endgame MCU, but in a very different capacity. It's all built out of Phase 4 -- so no She-Hulk, no Fantastic Four, no Thunderbolts, no Red Hulk -- but just looking at that superstar voice cast just showcases how stacked Phase 4 really was, and that's not even talking about Zombie Namor, or the setpiece of zombie Captain Marvel fighting Ikaris from The Eternals in a seemingly endless battle. This is a butcher looking to use the whole cow.

(1 Good) Animated movies and tv often struggles with creating action sequences that truly pop, mainly because in animation nothing is real or tangible, and often the animators are limited by time and budget (and sometimes technology) into how much effort they can put into a sequence to give it some physical weight. As well, you can do anything in animation, and sometimes that limitlessness means that there's no reference point and creating something out of nothing can lead to messy sequences that move awkwardly or don't feel human enough. Marvel Zombies does struggle with these problems at times and also overcomes them other times. As such there's some wildly thrilling sequences of heroes facing incredibly overwhelming odds against them, swarms of zombies, regular and superpowered, that just spell doom before them.

If there was any doubt that this would be a "soft" show because it's MCU and the MCU is for kids...well, it's not so soft. It's tepidly gory, but there's still gore, and the oppressiveness of this nihilistic scenario was still enough to give Lady Kent nightmares after only one episode.

But at least once per episode I couldn't help but react out loud, either in appreciation or shock or surprise as to something happening on screen. The Pymed-up zombies in the Shang-Chi flashback were astounding, as was the Captain Marvel/Ikarus backdrop, and the Blade Knight is such a fabulous extension of both Blade and Moon Knight (F. Murray Abraham returns to voice Khonshu). This whole series really impressed me...

(1 Bad) ...Except I don't really understand what game Wanda was playing. I don't really understand why Kamala was so important to her. Kind of the whole build-up of the series was around this confrontation between Kamala and Wanda and I don't think I understood the purpose of it.

META: Zombies, the took a little break for a while, but with 28 Years Later and Marvel Zombies they're back in the spotlight again. Let's hope this doesn't spark another zombie trend though, because zombies get overexposed and derivative real quick. 

I read the original Marvel Zombies mini-series when that debuted 20 years ago, and it was a gross, fun, funny romp through a po-ap Marvel Universe. But then the powers that be at Marvel started milking that property on a regular basis and I don't think I followed along past a few issues of Marvel Zombies 2 in 2007 which were really bad.

This was super fun, but it could have been a movie.

[Poster talk... the ten Marvel Zombies posters all feels pretty drab to me. there are ones that are show-focused which center largely around Scarlet Witch as the queen of the dead, and there are the parody posters mimicking The Avengers, or Ant-Man or Age of Ultron posters with the undead, even though Cap and Iron Man and most of the others aren't in the series in any meaningful way. they avoid altogether promoting the show with any of the Phase 4 characters, which I guess reflects how the studio thinks the audience feels about those characters, which is too bad, because I think these are some of the best MCU characters and deserve to be celebrated. gimme a Kamala poster, a Kate Bishop poster, a Blade Knight poster, a poster spotlighting the zombie Namor attack...so much cool shit happens in this series with great characters, that it's a real shame they focus more on looking back on many of these posters)

31 Days of Halloween: Hell Hole

2024,  John Adams, Toby Poser (Hellbender) -- download

We watched a previous film by this family of film makers called Hellbender back in the 2022 year of this series. They have a bit of a name made for themselves in the horror film festival circuit, but we know what I generally think of the horror fandom crowd (less of the crowd, more of what excites them). I could have been one of that fandom, some would probably label me as such -- I have a "horror movie" seasonal series and I did revel in both FantAsia and Toronto After Dark film festivals and attended a few years of TIFF Midnight Madness. But I could never commit. This is my way of saying, after this flick, I can say I don't really care for this family's films. They will not be added to future rosters.

Kent, are the posts you did as a guest-reviewer for After Dark still online somewhere?

American Frackers are in Serbia but halted while some local ecologists look to see if the fracking will damage the ecology of local pika's. Note, the pika is not found in Serbia. Also, the only road into the camp, which is situated on the ruins of some Soviet-era installation, has washed out.

Even with the delay, head fracker Emily (Toby Poser, What We Find on the Road) starts things off by drilling a hole. I guess the low budget of the movie, as long as you can get past the stilted acting, shows itself here, as this is more a piece of machinery used by landscapers than heavy industrial work. No matter, it drills into something bloody. But don't pay attention to that, because the movie quickly forgets that happened so it can focus on the weird cocoon found while digging a garbage trench. And inside the cocoon is a living man. Note, there was a brief preamble showing two men from 19th century France having become lost in Serbia, and were attacked by... something that exploded out of a horse. This guy in the hole is one of them. He doesn't show his hundreds of years.

Nobody knows why this guy was in this weird sack cocoon thing and nobody speaks French well, but eventually they figure out he wants them to kill him, and makes weird gestures that something is in him. Everyone argues about what they should do with him. Kill him! Protect him! Sure, they found him in a hole, and that's weird, but... kill him? Seems a little extreme for even Serbian roughnecks.

Everyone argues about everything. Everyone stands around in half circles and discusses everything contentiously. So... much... standing around in half circles!! Normally a comment like that would lead you to believe this was going to be a cerebral horror movie full of dialogue. But nope, the debate is barely conversational, just angry utterances, and even when they have the scientists do science chatter, its barely above high school level banter. The rest of the movie is either showing they spent their budget on some decent practical blood & gore effects, a painfully rubber monster and some terrible CG.

For a family that is touted as being so deep in the no-budget horror movie making, once given some budget they seem to not be able to rise above a sense of Asylum (my gauge for terrible movie making) level film making. At least Hellbender had some flair and thought to it, but this is just ... tiring. Nothing ever comes of the monster, despite the endless commentary on octopus biology. Depictions of the monster are unnecessarily juvenile and scatological, and then they just explode most of the miners and then rush head long to the "only the sympathetic characters escape" ending with the requisite... but did they escape?!?!

Terrible movie.

Chiplog - Brets Porcini Mushroom

In recent years I have developed an intolerance to onions, consuming which in its various forms can lead to becoming violently ill at worst, and feeling hours of upper gastro-intestinal discomfort at best. Most flavoured chips (and most flavoured anything in North America) wind up having onion or onion powder as a cheap source of easy power-flavour, which leaves me on the outside looking in wanting flavour for myself but finding very little. Chiplog is my hunt for yummy chips that I can actually eat.

Preamblin': I discovered Brets French chips about two years ago at a local bodega (we don't have real "bodegas" in Toronto, but it sounds fancier than "fruit and vegetable store") and instantly fell in love. Despite a bag of Brets being about double the price of, say, a bag of Lays for about half the volume, I was just so golddang excited to have a whole new array of flavoured chips that I could actually consume.

I wrote about those on my mostly abandoned Instagram account (which I'll maybe collect into a supplement Chiplog post here) and absolutely loved logging my chiply adventures. Unfortunately, said Bodega stopped carrying Le Chipsier Francais, and I was very, very sad. Life has literally not been the same since (I'll have to write an entry about the most disgusting chip I've ever eaten).

Lo and behold I was walking past the very same bodega this Saturday, looking wistfully in the doorway, thinking of fonder times, when I spied, just inside the doorway, the STACK OF BOXES with the Brets chips logo on the side. I handed the dog leash off to my wife without a word and charged inside, ready and eager to get some of my favourite chips of all time back into my gullet....

only to discover....

these are ALL NEW FLAVOURS. None of my favourites from before. No Chip Sauce or anise-flavoured chips for me. No, now I had to go through about a dozen flavour varieties and determine which were onion-free and ready for my consumption.  About half proved safe for eating which meant I had decisions to make. I said "only two" but wound up getting three with nothing but utter glee filling my soul for the day. A new flavour adventure awaits!

 Pre-chip: The first chip I'm going with out of this selection is the one that fills me with the most trepidation, mainly because the worst chip experience I've ever had still lingers large in my subconscious and I was similarly excited about eating that chip. Also, I don't really like mushrooms. It's mostly a texture thing, which should not be a problem here...but what do mushrooms actually taste like?  

Why would I buy a mushroom flavoured chip if I don't like mushrooms? Because it's a flavoured chip I *can* actually eat without bad things happening (potentially).
Why would I choose it as my first? Just to get it out of the way in case I don't like it. That way if I don't like it I still have two other flavours I can dive into. Plus, Lady Kent loves mushrooms so perhaps she will like them even if I don't.

Ingredients: Potatoes (France), sunflower oil, salt, natural porcini mushroom flavouring with other natural flavourings, carob powder, dried garlic, powdered porcini mushrooms.

First smell:I was bracing myself for a powerful scent, but mostly it's the aroma of potatoes with a hint of oil, but strangely not sunflower that I'm smelling, but olive. For some reason the sunflower/porcini mix creates a sort of olive scent.

First Taste: Like all Brets chips, the flavour palette is a subtle one that takes a moment to kick in. Unlike American chips which seems intent on overloading your taste buds Brets always wants you to discover the flavour. First taste is, well, it's chips! Yay! Fucking love chips. And it's certainly not a flavour I'm rejecting at all. I don't really know "mushroom" flavour, but if this is it, it's gentle and pleasant ("earthy" as Lady Kent chimed in) and then the garlic finds you, but again, not overwhelmingly so.

Aftertaste: It's the garlic that lingers the most, and that's more than mighty fine.

Mass Consumption: Two chips in rapid succession and yes, I'm ready to consume. The "mushroom" element is coming more to the forefont and it's really is quite enjoyable, which is a definite surprise for this guy who really doesn't like mushrooms. Will this whole 125g bag get eaten tonight? Possibly, but maybe only if Lady Kent helps. A dozen chips down and the flavour is both benefiting from a cumulating effect of mushroom powder in my mouth, but also overwhelming me only in that it's a flavour I'm not fully accustomed to.

Final Thoughts:Oh, we're back! Back into Brets and I'm beside myself. Consistency from chip to chip is pretty erratic here. One chip very garlic heavy, the next really hitting that porcini, the next a dose of saltiness, but that makes the flavour adventure more adventuresome, and kind of encourages me to shovel three or four in my mouth in quick succession to rediscover the flavours. This would never be a staple chip for me, but I could definitely see having a craving for them, or even, when just wanting something different, reaching for a bag. More than anything though, it's really making me want to discover more chip flavours. (So I like it but I'm also ready to move on?)

Rating:6.9/10