Xanadu [1980]

This movie musical is often referenced but seemingly seldom remembered. I actually completely confused it for the musical Starlight Express, but it turns out the only similarity really is roller skating. No, this is the one with music by the Electric Light Orchestra starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelley. 

So what's it about? The razor thin plot is about a painter who meets a muse (a literal Greek muse but named Kira and not connected to any art in particular) and a rich guy who owned a club in the 40s who also knew the muse back then when she was a singer in his band. The three of them decide to open a new club called Xanadu after the incorrectly named capital of China (it should be Xangdu, pronounced Shangdu). That's the whole film. 

There are songs and dance sequences, but they have absolutely no purpose. To explain, as a musical theater person, every song in a musical should either A.) move the plot forward or B.) provide and expression of emotions that a character is feeling to better understand them. Because this movie has almost no plot and no character development either, the songs are just songs that feel like they were written entirely independent of the film. The songs weren't horrible or anything, but they were pretty unmemorable outside of the main theme and that's only because they say "Xanadu" 100 times.

Then there's the direction, which is also weirdly bad. Halfway through the film we questioned if this was originally a stage show since the shots were so static it felt like we were in a proscenium theater. Turns out, no. The director just had no idea how to shoot dance sequences in a film. A stage version did apparently run on Broadway in 2007 and from my quick glances, that show had considerably more plot than this film.

The mythology also makes no sense. Kira comes alive from a random mural of the muses near the beach the main character hangs out by? She worked with Gene Kelley before but he somehow both does and doesn't remember her when he meets her again 35 years later? She's not supposed to fall in love, but she does with the bland artist even though neither of them seemingly have any reason to fall in love and know nothing about each other?

If I had to stretch to say something nice about the film it definitely went all out with costumes and sets, even though those sets really felt lifted from a stage show and we never got a good look at them due to the crappy direction. The roller skating thing could have been interesting but it was mostly just that some people roller skated sometimes. There was no further logic beyond that. 

Spoon Rating: 2

Birds Of Prey [1930]

After trying to find the well known Glitter and being unsuccessful in finding one that is in English and doesn't have the music cut out, we ended up on a ChatGPT list that lead us to this old one. In spite of the bad sound quality and high pitched British accents, we managed to mostly follow this weird murder and cover up story. A former cop is killed at his fancy mansion party while everyone else is at a flower show by two guys who he had originally got thrown in jail. They are very smug about how good their coverup is although their whole thing gets exposed by the girl and her fiancee on the poster. The real draw of the film is the weird line reads of which there are enough to keep you from being too bored. We wouldn't recommend it, but it wasn't too bad.

Spoon Rating: 3

Trolland [2016]

Trolland a.k.a. Trollz is an Asylum picture so we knew we were getting into a cheap and speedy knockoff territory. What we did not expect was that the animation would fall somewhere on the spectrum of Foodfight and Rapsittie Kids. Playstation 1.5, if you will. It is ugly and it is utterly hilarious. 

The plot is completely secondary to the visuals, but I will explain anyway. The story takes place at a summer camp where the groundskeeper Olaf is obsessed with catching trolls, which he believes roam the grounds. Well, they do and they are basically entirely motivated by doing pranks on humans. Our main troll, whose name I don't remember but he's voiced by Ja Rule, has a sister (voiced by T-Boz) who is determined to be the top prankster. Ja Rule doesn't think pranking is okay and ends up becoming friends with awkward human boy Hayden, who ending bullied by some kids who will soon fall down the Alt-Right pipeline. Boy and Troll team up to stop T-Boz from pranking too hard, and we get a kind of "we aren't so different" moral. Olaf decides not to capture anyone but he will continue his cryptozoologist dreams by going after Bigfoot. 

I can't convey how hilarious it is to watch this movie. The lip flaps are random, clothes do through character's bodies sometimes, no one can actually touch the grass. It's hard to believe this was made in 2016, it's so terrible to look at. The troll skin has the texture and shine of gushers. All the campers look like emo kids because they have variations on the same hair. Sarah said it looks like everyone has CP. It's an endless source of amusement. And it's not too long at only an hour and 18 minutes. I'm not trolling you; it's worth it.

Spoon Rating: 6

Moonfall [2022]

It's been a while! With me being away for most of the summer, there haven't been any movie nights but we're back. This one is a suggestion given to Adam and Sarah by some people they met at a live God Awful Movies show. Within five minutes Adam said, "Wait. This isn't a Roland Emmerich movie, is it?" and he was exactly right. According to Adam, "Roland Emmerich has just been remaking Independence Day for years." While this wasn't quite the same, it certainly felt similar. The beats of every Emmerich movie are the same, but this one managed to gradually increase in stupidity as the film went on through it's two hour (yikes) run time.

The film starts with Patrick Wilson, Halle Berry, and someone else in space when the third guy gets killed by a mysterious electronic-seeming entity. Wilson is blamed and fired, but many years later they get caught up in an issue when the moon's orbit is changing dramatically. The discovery was made by Nick Frost, a conspiracy theorist. After a lot of nonsense, the three of them end up going to the moon to try to blow up the problem only to make the discovery that the moon is full of hyper advanced technology left behind by a super intelligent race of ancient humans. They all got wiped out when the AI that ran their peaceful society decided to attack them, and those are the entities they are fighting against. While all this is going on there is a stunningly useless side plot about Wilson and Berry's families trying to survive among the extreme weather changes, but it sucks because we have no emotional investment in any of them. In the end, Frost sacrifices himself because he doesn't have kids or whatever, and a hologram of his mother tells him "you're part of the moon now" with some kind of implication that there might be a sequel. Doubt it.

This movie gets funnier as it goes on, particularly if you don't know where it's going. The plot twists are comically dumb and the whole thing looks terrible. Adam said it looks like Grand Theft Auto 7 with the green screens that encompass all the settings. Some of the line reads are also so inexplicable or just weird lines like I mentioned above. Overall, we wish it had been shorter (that side plot should have been cut) but it was a fun time.

Spoon Rating: 5

The Apple [1980]

The Rocky Horror Picture show was a pretty influential movie, but not really as a movie or a musical. It was influential in how it kind of gave a space for weirdos and queers. It's not like people were rushing out to make dupes of it. But apparently someone did. And it's a rough ride.

This musical started being written in 1975, the same year RHPS came out and it was apparently originally in Hebrew. It would be easy to claim lost in translation when you think about how terrible the song lyrics are, but that's probably not the whole story. The plot is so thin I can explain it in one sentence: an evil record executive who runs a company called BIM that is slowly taking over the world signs a woman from a folk duo while her partner tries to get her back. In between there are songs that are almost entirely performances or character description songs without advancing the plot. The universe is supposed to be like 1984, but it's just generically dystopian with the terms of the world never defined outside of the fact that everyone has to wear a holographic triangle BIM sticker or get fined. Oh, and everyone is dressed like it's a particularly tacky drag show from the 80s. The costumes and sets were clearly where most of the ten million dollar budget went.

So what's with the title? Well, the whole film has a very on-the-nose Bible allegory going on. There's a whole sequence where the executive is dressed as the devil and the main character is given a giant apple that she is told to eat by one of the two main minions. This idea retreats for a while but then the film ends with God coming down from his Rolls Royce in the sky and rapturing a bunch of people: a literal Deus Ex Machina. 

 Is it worth it? We were kind of on the fence. It only started to feel long towards the end as we spent the first half trying to figure out what the heck was going on, and there's a good about of what. We couldn't decide. It's up to you.

Spoon Rating: 4

D War [2007]

D War aka Dragon Wars is a movie that doesn't quite know what it wants to be. It's part fantasy, part action, part martial arts, part urban fantasy, part Lord of the Rings inspired, and all mess. 

The film stars with a news reporter finding something significant to him that causes him to flashback to a discovery in an antique shop in his childhood. The guy owning the shop flashes back to Korea in 1507 to try to explain the film's lore. After over 20 minutes of explanation, we still weren't totally sure what was going on but here's what we got: every 500 years a girl is born with a birthmark tattoo that indicates that she will need to be fed to a dragon on her 20th birthday. If the bad dragon gets her, it destroys the world. If the good dragon gets her, he saves it. In modern LA this girl is Sarah, a 19-year-old who somehow can drink in bars and can't emote to save her life. The reporter finds her and tries to help her as the dragons attack. Around half the run time is dragon attacks with an evil army of creatures and seemingly immortal guys trying to get Sarah. They eventually do and take her to some kind of CGI nightmare to sacrifice her but the good guys win and the good dragons gets her spirit . . . which he apparently can just return to her after. She's fine. The stakes were even lower than we thought.

This film was pretty amusing, particularly with the lame fight scenes and very cheap-looking but probably expensive effects. We've seen better, but we haven't seen many movies with this good a scene of a guy getting hit by a car.

Spoon Rating: 4

Saturday's Warrior [1989]

This choice came about from my current semi-fixation on Mormon culture and the knowledge that this musical is a formative piece of media for Mormon millennials and probably a bit older. The title I still can't explain, it's probably something a nevermo like me isn't meant to know, but it still has a lot of Mormon content followable for heathens like us.

The film starts in the preexistence, a concept that Adam, the philosopher and religion minor, needs to know more about. A couple in the preexistence talk about how they are going to be in love on earth and promise to find each other. We also get two future missionaries destined to be companions who Sarah and I swear were the basis for Elder Price and Elder Cunningham from Book of Mormon, and a family of eight who are all yet to be born. The eldest are two twins who decided grabbing each other's thighs in a good signal and the boy twin will become are primary main character. The youngest of the family, a girl, begs the oldest brother to not forget her existence. This will be important later.

Generally the film has two or three intersecting plots. Jimmy, the eldest boy is having a crisis of faith because all his cool bad kid friends think that having a bunch of children is irresponsible and that abortion and safe sex are good. The leader of the bad kids looks like a young Rob McElheney and makes the hammiest faces and sings too quietly. Jimmy's younger sister, the girl from the couple in the beginning, says goodbye to her missionary boyfriend, discount Elder Price aka Wally, and then over the two years he's on his mission decides that maybe she doesn't want to marry him actually. Jimmy gets mad at his parents for deciding to have another kid (literally the mom says she needs to in order to film a void, which like, girl go to therapy) and during his birthday his mom has a miscarriage and Jimmy runs off to the beach with the bad kids. He ends up chatting on a bench with an artist, the guy from the couple in the beginning so his sister's future husband, and decides to return home after his twin sister has died. Artist guy ends up getting converted to Mormonism on that same bench by the Elders and they bring him back to Idaho with them. Younger sister sees Artist in the airport and they remember each other from preexistence and Elder Price is done for. He and his mission buddy decide to be roommates at BYU. 

This movie has a couple laughs for sure, but it's mostly just a not great musical. I didn't mention the songs because they are generally really unmemorable. It's filmed on a sound stage, but I'm not going to knock it for that (although should the church have more money to throw in here). The plot is insane mainly for the whole discussion about having kids. That really feels like the main thesis here. Also while the immediate conversion just feels like typical religious movie fantasy, the preexistence couple is an absolutely wild take on the romance genre that's somehow even more damaging than most films. Like you will never be truly happy until you meet the person you were predestined to be with. Yikes. I'm sure that lead to a lot of 20-year-olds getting married.

Spoon Rating: 4