Director Glenn Miller made Zoombies and Aquarium of the Dead and writer Anna Rasmussen wrote Shark Side of the Moon. That means they are the people to create a movie where Santa (John P. Fowler) encounters three little cats — Patches, Mittens and Hairball — who create an allergic reaction that nearly ruins the holiday until the kittens jump in the sleigh and fix things. All because Julia (Nicola Lambo) wouldn’t let her son Tommy (Ezra James Colbert) keep them.

There’s also a story about how obsessed Santa conspiracy believing neighbor Marcus Bramble (Evan Boymel) grew up with Julia but another cat-inspired encounter with Santa caused them to never be friends again. Marcus looks for a video tape to copy over to prove Santa exists and nearly uses his copy of Sharknado. This is because Asylum made this movie.

There’s a moment where one of the kittens is in danger and it kind of upset me. I watch Italian cannibal movies all the time and I worried about the cats in a Christmas movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

“Truthfully, the way to go about doing a part 3, if you’re ever in that position, as I’m lucky enough to be, is to find a way that the first two weren’t done yet. You have to find a way to make sure that the story that’s emerging is still ongoing and, by the time you’ve finished 3, will be something resembling the culmination of a trilogy. It’s about, “How has the story not yet been completely told?,” and I think we’re getting there. I think we’ve really found ways to make this feel organic and new, based on what’s come before, and that’s what I’m happy about.”

Shane Black directing and co-writing (with Drew Pearce) a Marvel sequel.

Yes, it happened.

But it had to.

There were some big issues coming into this film.

First, issues between Paramount Pictures, which had distribution rights to certain Marvel properties and man, don’t get me started, and Disney, who just bought Marvel, made the release and distribution of the third Iron Man already a mess. So Disney agreed to pay Paramount $115 million to distribute the movie, giving it a big budget before anything was even started.

Then the director of the first two movies, Jon Favreau, decided not to direct it.

Star Robert Downey, who was in Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, called him in and remarked, “Bringing in Shane Black to write and direct Iron Man 3 to me is basically the only transition from Favreau to a “next thing” that Favreau and the audience and Marvel and I could ever actually sign off on.”

Black didn’t want two guys in metal suits fighting each other and also wanted it set in the real world. He was inspired by the Warren Ellis “Extremis” storyline in the comic books. Tony Stark would go on a journey where he might not even know who the villain really was. And because it was a Shane Black movie, it would be set at Christmas. I don’t even have to share the quote from Black. You probably know how he feels about the holiday.

1999: Tony Stark (Downey) meets scientist Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), the inventor of Extremis. This regenerative treatment allows people to heal from injuries that would before ruin lives. Disabled scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pierce) wants them to work for his organization Advanced Idea Mechanics, but Stark rejects him.

2012: Tony Stark is suffering from PTSD after surviving the alien invasion of New York City in The Avengers. He keeps building new Iron Man suits and remains distant from his girlfriend Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow). This makes sense, because it seems like Tony has conquered so many challenges. Now, he has to fix himself.

A series of bombings — Stark’s friend Happy (Favreau) is injured in one — set him off and he challenges the man behind them, the Mandarin, to attack him, giving away his home address. Pepper and Hansen barely survive and after flying away in a new Iron Man armor, Stark is believed dead.

Crash landing in Tennessee and helped by a young boy, Stark rebuilds his armor and learns that the attacks are the work of Extensis-powered soldiers who are part of a conspiracy to take over the U.S. government and even co-opt the armor of his friends James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), now the Iron Patriot.

The genius of the film is that the man everyone thinks is the Mandarin is really an actor named Travis Slattery, playing a role created for him. Of course, everyone who watches Marvel movies knows now that the Mandarin really exists. But it was a major reveal in this movie. The real villain is Killian (it was once going to be Hansen, but Marvel didn’t want a female villain to ruin their merchandising, I am not making that up out of thin air).

Stark must now save Pepper, protect President Matthew Ellis (William Sadler) and stop Vice President Rodriguez (Miguel Ferrer) from becoming Killian’s paid for leader, with the price being him healing his daughter.

This movie ends with every Iron Man suit being used in battle and then destroyed, but we all know that Iron Man would have to return. But if this is where the series ended, this would be the right place. People seem to get superhero fatigue, but that’s silly to me. Maybe because if you grew up reading comics, you were getting several movies a week. You didn’t have to wait years in between them. Maybe you did for bigger stories, but there was always a new Iron Man or Wolverine story. At one point, it never got old.

It feels like Marvel brings directors in now and hammers out their individuality. Instead, they should be looking to creatives like Black, who made Tony Stark a near James Bond who didn’t even need his armor to be a hero. He was going to end this by saying, “I am Tony Stark.” But man, “I am Iron Man” sounds so much cooler, right?

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Iron Man 3 here.

Neil Breen is an auteur. And it doesn’t matter if you hate every single one of his movies, but you have to admit that he’s putting everything there is up there on the screen and I don’t feel like it’s an act. You’re getting all of him, no matter what that is.

His movies often revolve around the same themes. The government has been corrupted by rich people. Breen is the lead and he has been given near-omnipotent powers that will allow him to either save the world or destroy it. Also: He falls in love at the age of seven and it should last forever, except he’s either separated from this love of his life or she’s murdered. He has some crisis of faith and screams by himself for several scenes, but never forgets to remind us how many medals he’s won or how good he is at what he does or that no one can stop him.

He’s crowdfunded a lot of his movies, but before that, he was using money from real estate or being an architect to make them happen. He told Influx, “So, the myth was created years ago that I’m this wealthy real estate guy, which is not the truth.  I kept that real estate license active for only a year.  I have never made any serious money through real estate.  So, what I’m getting at is that this myth of real estate mega guy has been perpetuated for no reason.”

But as much as I’d love to speak to Breen and learn all about his movies, maybe I also feel like having them speak for themselves. They really defy any sort of convention or box. I don’t even know if I can put all of the ideas in this movie into one article, but really, should I? I just want you to experience this movie with the open mind and heart that I did.

Dylan (Breen) met Leah, the love of his life, when he was a child, but she had to move away. Before that, they found a black rock hidden in a chest and he kept it with him for the rest of his life. As an adult, he’s become a famous author with just one book but is nearly killed in a car accident. His friend when he was a child ends up being the nurse that treats him and he comes back to life with a mission: he’s going to hack into every corrupt government computer in the world and release the answers to who is on the take. Along the way, the system will addict his wife Emily to drugs, his best friend Jim will be killed by his wife Andy and it will be explained as a suicide, said best friend’s daughter will continually try to have sex with him and he will fall back in love with Leah. Literally, the moment that they kiss, Emily dies of an overdose.

There are so many scenes of Dylan screaming at computers and let me tell you, I relate. I have never hacked one by spilling coffee all over it, but I am not Neil Breen either. I can also explain the ending as much as I can and you still won’t be ready for it.

The thing about Breen’s movies is that wherever he stumbles as a filmmaker, there’s no chance of his work becoming boring or trite. They are infinitely his own vision, however alien that may seem to the rest of humanity that gets to watch these films. Every film is a miracle just for being completed and the fact that he’s made several and that they all present such a cinematic universe of sorts without falling into parody — they feel parody-proof — or him becoming self-aware. I hope that Breen keeps on making his films, because we need people like him that exist to make movies because, well, they just plan love making movies. It’s a dream. Even if that dream is to portray twin secret agents who know who controls the world or God walking to Las Vegas sure he’s going to destroy the world.

Former child star Dollars (Lucas Till) and Martine turned fitness infomercial star The Lobo (Jason Trost, who directed and wrote this) are about to make the new season of their reality show, Pussy Police, in Thailand. They have a new member in their crew, Turbo (Scout Taylor-Compton, once Laurie Strode), who may seem innocent but who may be able to drink and drug both of them into a coma.

The truth is that the network is sick of their egos and demands, so they strand them in Thailand in the hopes that they won’t make it back for the actual new season. Also: Lobo has a treasure map from his father which he hopes will lead them to enough jewels to get them back to the U.S. and their show.

I’d love to know where the true story part of this comes in. That said, it’s a fun one, as you go from laughing at these two party guys into learning their insecurities and why they act this way before starting to root for them. It takes a lot of talent to find the brains and emotion in a movie about partying until you throw up, then drink a beer, then throw up again.

You can watch this on Tubi. There’s also a sequel series, Cornona House, that you can watch on YouTube.

Casey Bowman has taken over the Kōga ninja dojo and married Namiko Takeda, who is due to give birth to their first child. Well, was, as this movie fridges her and she dies when muggers — who attacked Casey earlier in the day — murder her. After her funeral, a former student named Nakabara (Kane Kosugi) gives him the offer of moving to Thailand, but Casey is trying to figure out his own path. That path starts by finding the muggers and killing them.

Casey ends up going to Bangkok, where he meets with Nakabara and begins training with him. But death follows and it’s revealed that Casey’s teacher — and Namiko’s father — Sensei Takeda once was one of the top three students with Nakabara’s father and Isamu, who was killed by Takeda in his ascension to being the top ninja. Now, Isamu’s son Goro has become the leader of a drug cartel and may have been the one to kill Namiko. Of course Casey is being fooled and used as a weapon, which means that the two men are going to have to fight to the death.

Directed by Isaac Florentine and written by Boaz Davidson, this movie gave me such great happiness, as if Cannon had never gone away. This would be the movie that they would be making, all action, minimal story and even a wacky cab driver.

You can watch this on Tubi.