A girl and her mother are mushroom hunting when the young child finds a thirty-year-old skeleton, directed by a glowing boy who has been missing since 1975.

Ah, 1975, a time when a young priest hung himself — maybe — in a church tower. Shortly after his funeral, a mysterious girl appears in the village who everyone thinks killed the priest. After all, she’s afraid of crosses.

Another flashback: Erwin, his nephew Albert and Martin Delacroix get all messed up on absinthe. Albert makes a doll from brooms and rags, telling the others about the Sennentuntschi, a legend of three herdsmen who make a doll that comes to life. The next day, a girl dressed like the doll shows up and despite Erwin telling Martin that the story ends with all the men dead, they assault the girl, leading to Erwin losing his sheep and goats before being stabbed, Albert dies in a fire, and Martin dies of tetanus after being bitten by the girl. Oh, Martin. You didn’t break up with your lover. You killed her and were hiding here.

Meanwhile, a cop named Reusch is the only one who wants to save the mysterious girl. Even the bishop rallies the people around him, as he claims that she’s a demon and once showed up 25 years ago looking the same. That woman was really her mother, who the bishop raped. She went into hiding in the mountain house of the herdsmen, but was thrown from a cliff by the holy man. He then murdered the herdsman and kept their child in an underground chamber. When she escaped, she became the mystery girl in town. 

After she runs into the woods, Reusch finds her alive, having turned the skins of Albert, Erwin and Martin into a doll. This makes the officer angry, so she runs again, falling to her death in a foggy ravine. When he finds her body, he kills himself. Those are the bodies found at the beginning.

Directed by Michael Steiner, this movie is based on “The Guschg Herdsmen’s Doll,” which was already made in 1989 as Sukkubus. This may involve a confusing amount of time travel, but it’s an interesting idea.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Is Moby Dick the original kaiju? Maybe. But anyways, Moby Dick 2010.

Back in 1969, Captain Jonah Ahab (Barry Bostwick) lost his left leg, his sub and his crew to a giant whale. Now, in 2010, he believes that monstrous thing was Moby Dick, “a legendary sea creature of evil and immortality.” I had to take that line from Wikipedia because I liked it so much. 

Anyway, this whale keeps taking out U.S. Navy ships, and we can’t have that. The USS Essex gets wiped out, but the Pequod is where Ahab and a crew of marine scientists are, searching the seas for Dick, Moby Dick.

When I was a kid, there was a book-on-record ad that played one line from every novel adaptation. The only one I remember is “There she blows! There she blows! A hump like a snowhill! ‘Tis Moby Dick!” For decades, I’ve yelled this for no reason, always thinking it was “a hook like a snowhill,” which makes so much less sense. What’s wrong with me?

At the end of the movie, Moby Dick has killed almost everyone, sunk multiple ships, lost an eye and then dodged nukes. I’m going to write that again. It dodges nukes. These idiots wipe out an entire island, and Moby Dick swims away, and only Dr. Michelle Herman (Renee O’Connor, of course, you know her as Xena’s wife, Gabrielle) survives, but again, if you didn’t get it above, they just nuked the entire area, so she’s going to end up like the cast of The Conqueror. 

The whale can walk on land, and Bostwick built his own weapon, telling MediaMikes, “I didn’t want to be embarrassed by the fact that they only had a dollar and a quarter, you know, to make that movie. I still have that gun mounted in my workshop. I felt the gun had to be something reflective of the character…much larger than life.”

The IMDB facts for this movie all come from what I can only imagine is a disgruntled Navy veteran, who left notes like “None of the uniforms and insignia (or lack thereof) are appropriate for U.S. Navy personnel in the situations shown in the film.” and “The characters constantly state that this event in the film happened between Naval vessels of the 3rd Fleet off of San Diego, CA. Any and all United States Naval ships in and around San Diego are in the 7th Fleet. The 3rd Fleet is located much farther north, near Washington State.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

One of the three major yokai of Japan, the kappa is a water monster that looks like a frog wth a turtle shell. While they were once said to be killing machines that loved to drown people and cattle. Sometimes, they would remove a mythical organ called the shirikodama from their victims’ buttholes. But now, we see them as mischievous monsters that perform acts of kindness when captured, like revealing a secret medicine.

Directed by Tomoo Haraguchi and written by Masakazu Migita, this film follows Kanako returning home after failing as an idol singer. Just as she arrives, her grandmother Fujiko is run down by a VW Beetle that also smashes a kappa shrine. Her grandmother tells her to protect the kappa, just as the people in the car are taken by strange creatures. As for the kappa, he likes to dance to Kanako’s songs.

One night, those same creatures come to take the kappa, which is saved by Kanako, who is, in turn, kidnapped and presented to a mad scientist named Yuriko. Her creatures are called Umihiko, fish samurai who were supposed to save Japan during World War II, and she’s guided by her mummified grandfather, whom she loves. She wants to resurrect bushido and Japanese imperialism, starting with the girls who killed Fujiko, turning them into sharp-toothed fishwomen. As the kappa comes to save the day, Yuriko sets off a nuclear bomb that transforms all the fish people into a kaiju known as Hangyolas. The kappa kills the monster, but goes on a rampage that only Kanako can stop by singing to him and refilling the bowl on his head.

While this is silly in parts, as a kappa lover, I was beyond pleased.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Based on the “The Supergirl from Krypton” issues of Superman/Batman, this is the sequel to Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and has an art style based on the late Michael Turner. Directed by Lauren Montgomery and written by Tab Murphy, this is the story of Kara Zoe-El (Summer Glau), the heroine who will become Supergirl and how Superman (Tim Daly), Batman (Kevin Conroy), Wonder Woman (Susan Eisenberg) and other heroes like Habringer (Rachel Quaintance) and Artemis (also Rachel Quaintance) help to train her.

Soon, she’s attacked by Granny Goodness’ (Ed Asner) Female Furies — Gilotina (Salli Saffioti), Mad Harriet (also Salli Saffioti), Stompa (Andrea Romano) and Lashina (Tara Strong) — who Darkseid (Andre Braugher) wants to lead them. Superman and Batman turn to the last person who had this title, Big Barda (Julianne Grossman), to go to Apokolips and save the Kryptonian youngster.

This is a fast moving film unafraid to have death and violence in it, so if you have a child who loves superheroes, you should watch it with them and discuss it afterward. It’s very close to the comic, where writer Jeph Loeb has no issues killing off characters, which always surprises me, like Lyla, who was the Harbinger of original Crisis On Infinite Earths.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Lauren Montgomery and Sam Liu and written by Dwayne McDuffie, this is based on Grant Morrison’s JLA: Earth 2 and takes place between Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and Batman: Under the Red Hood.

On Earth-3, Lex Luthor (Chris Noth) is a hero, working with the Jester (James Patrick Stuart) to stop the Crime Syndicate. He escapes to our Earth and informs the Justice League of his plan to stop them from being the rulers of his planet.

Nearly every member of the Crime Syndicate has a duplicate on Earth-1.  Superwoman (Gina Torres) is Superman (Mark Harmon). Owlman (James Woods) is Batman (William Baldwin). Wonder Woman (Vanessa Marshall) is Ultraman (Brian Bloom). Power Ring is Green Lantern (both played by Nolan North), while Johnny Quick (James Patrick Stuart) is The Flash (Josh Keaton). The other Earth is so warped that instead of Deathstroke being a killer, he’s President Slade Wilson (Bruce Davison) and his daughter Rose (Freddi Rogers) somehow doesn’t become a mercenary, but instead one of the few good people on her world, falling in love with Martian Manhunter (Jonathan Adams).

Where the movie simplifies things is the revelation by Morrison that Luthor, no matter the world, is fated to lose while the Justice League will always win. When they switch worlds, this ruins the balance of this predestiny. That said, for a cartoon that has to make a quick version of this story, it’s pretty good. I loved how the Made Men show up, people given powers by the Crime Syndicate as almost mob henchmen, as well as getting to see Firestorm, Black Lightning, Black Canary and alternate versions of the Marvels, Vibe and Looker.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Andrei Konchalovsky made a Christmas movie.

The same Andrei Konchalovsky who made Maria’s Lovers, Shy People, Runaway Train and, oddly, Tango & Cash.

This was his passion project for twenty years.

It is not good.

He was inspired to adapt it into 3D as he thought it “would be useful in conveying the fantastical nature of the material, capturing the emotions of CGI characters, and appealing to a family audience.

He also made The Nutcracker, a ballet, with no ballet sequences because, because he believed “ballet cannot work in cinema very well.”

It was primarily financed by VEB.RF, a Russian state development corporation chaired by Vladimir Putin, and at the time was the most expensive Russian film ever.

In 1920s Vienna, Mary (Elle Fanning) and her brother Max (Aaron Michael Drozin) are being babysat by their Uncle Albert (Nathan Lane) while her parents Joseph (Richard E. Grant) and Louise (Yulia Vysotskaya) go to a Christmas Eve party.

That’s Uncle Albert Einstein.

Einstein gives the kids a dollhouse and a nutcracker by the name of NC (Charlie Rowe, voiced by Shirley Henderson) who soon comes to life and introduces her to his friends Gielgud (Peter Elliott and Daniel Peacock, voiced by Alan Cox), Sticks (Africa Nile) and Tinker (Hugh Sachs). They climb to the top of the Christmas tree and meet the Snow Fairy (also Vysotskaya), who informs the children that NC is really Prince Nicholas Charles, who has been deposed by The Rat King (John Turturro) and his mother, The Rat Queen (Frances de la Tour) and turned from a boy into a nutcracker. He’s a real boy again, but not for long, because when he comes back home, he’s transformed and we learn that the rats are, well, all Nazis.

Look at that line again. A kid movie with Nazi rats — like Art Spiegelman’s Maus — that’s an adaption of the Nutcracker with no dancing and lyrics by Tim Rice that was funded by Vladimir Putin and it’s in 3D.

Roger Ebert said it best: “From what dark night of the soul emerged the wretched idea for The Nutcracker in 3D? Who considered it even remotely a plausible idea for a movie? It begins with an awkward approximation of the story behind the Tchaikovsky ballet, and then turns it into a war by the Nutcracker Prince against the Holocaust.”

Roger Ebert, suffering from cancer, had to spent time in his slowly dwindling life watching this movie.

A Nazi movie, yes, but set in 1920. This movie has destroyed my mind.

Let me just get this all out of my head.

The Rat King says that he will create an empire that will last a thousand years, as well as a scene where he electrocutes his pet shark. In a movie for children. For Christmas. About The Nutcracker. Yet also the rat people are also shown as being persecuted. Why am I wondering so much about the politics of a 3D CGI rat movie? Should I leave the house and finish my Christmas shopping?