End of line

Tron

(1982)

Sensibilities and visual style harking back to Metropolis and forward to The Matrix, but delightfully goofy where those are often ponderously serious. Also, I finally know now where Haman in the Jewbilee episode of South Park comes from!

With great power . . .

Super

(2011)

This deeply disturbed and deeply disturbing film is admirable on at least one count: it compromises on its distinctive vision twice at most, arguably in the scene involving Zach Gilford (which appears to have taken a reshoot to undercut its lethality) and definitely in the goofily Pollyanna-ish coda. That may sound like a lot of compromise, but trust me: most renditions of this sort of vigilante tale would bend a lot of principles to make us like Frank (Rainn Wilson), and they would have made Libby (Ellen Page) a lot less psychotic and a lot less interesting. It's a mess of a film, and one I'll never see again (and wouldn't have seen this once but for the timing of a Showtime free trial), but I'm glad to have seen it once.