the kino park

One of Greta Lee's past lives I suppose *a spoiler free review* Whether in fact due to its own uselessness or even perhaps a better word would be unworthiness, any kind of thematic engagement with Tron: Ares seems about as productive as expecting its lead actor to be able to successfully open a film. While in another world maybe the movie’s swan dive into a cesspool of current issues could be commended, both those inherent to its premise and even some that seem unnecessarily added, its abject failure to approach anything even resembling an insight seems so glaringly obvious that to point this out conjures mostly just a feeling of thuddening inanity. Why spend undue energy acknowledging that while yes, making some consideration into AI was probably inevitable for a film in the Tron- verse, the fact that the film centers around dueling billionaires, locked in a tech war, was not a choice that needed to be made for a movie about sentient video games. It’s choices of this ilk and their...

*I openly spoil the ending of Alien:Earth season 1 as well as several more of the Alien films here. A short summary of my thoughts on the season without spoilers is that I think it's pretty good. It goes in new directions while homaging the long running film series in a way that was far less grating than Alien: Romulus last year (even if I still enjoy that particular film). I remain resolute in my feeling that its a generally bad idea to take things that are movies and make tv-shows out of them, even I think this one by and large works. *          Perhaps because AI then did not exist, nor does it really exist now in the way they thought it would, the conception that AI could teach us about the human soul is almost equally prolific a science fiction trope as its malicious world destroying counterpart. For every Terminator, Hal 9000, and human battery farm, there is a reformed T-800, Haley Joel Osment, and a little girl stuck in a train station (that of cour...