The Day of The Triffids [1962]

We have a new occasional feature for this blog: Jade reviews. She is currently almost three, and as such, is in a similar place as grandma was later in her life when it came to thoughts on the weird stuff we watch. Jade doesn't always engage in the films, but this one definitely captured her attention for a while as it is genuinely scary to a three-year-old. To a bunch of people in their 30s, it was a delight.

This film follows two stories in a similar area. The main plot is about a Navy man waking up from eye surgery to find that most of the world has gone blind from a meteor shower the previous night. He teams up with a 12-year-old who also can see and they head off for France for some reason. They stay in a chateau that has become a refuge for the blind until a bunch of partiers crash it, and then they head off again with the owner of the chateau to Spain. While this is going on, the triffids are growing and attacking. Triffids are a type of plant that has been living on the planet for a while after arriving with a single meteor a while ago, but with the meteor shower they are now everywhere, getting taller than man, and learning how to walk. They spit poison and thirst for humans. The trio manage to escape them a bunch but in Spain they try to kill them with electrocution and then fire, but they don't succeed. In the B plot, a married marine biologist couple on a remote island are also fighting triffids and discover that the key to killing them is seawater, saving the planet. How they got there in the first place when they are in a lighthouse on a seemingly small remote island is beyond me.

This movie was a random shot from me as I was aware of it from the song "Science Fiction Double Feature" and that song mentions a lot of genuinely good films. This one was quality from the unintentional comedy view. Some of the line reads are insane, the monster costumes are so delightful, and it's an easy one to enjoy and make fun of. Now Adam wants to become an expert in evil plant movies, many of which we've already watched here including The Happening, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, the original Little Shop and now this.

Spoon Rating: 5

Jade's Review: Oh no! Plant! It's coming!

Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life [2005]

This is a Lifetime movie about a teen boy who gets addicted to online porn. The fact that it's a Lifetime movie, and therefore needs to be pretty clean, really colors the perception of this film in hilarious ways. For one, all the porn he looks at is pretty covered up. At most we maybe see a brief shot of someone in lingerie or a full body latex onesie, but a lot of it is girls in tank tops with bras peeking out. Additionally, they never mention masturbation and at one point only slightly imply it just by having him look at porn without his shirt on. It seems like maybe he wouldn't have such a porn issue if he wasn't edging himself constantly, but that's just a suggestion.

The film starts with Justin, a champion swimmer, just looking at extremely tame porn on his computer, some of which is weirdly of a girl in his high school named Monica. Apparently she's a senior and just does this? It's a bit confusing. Justin has a girlfriend named Amy who loves Jesus and therefore won't let him sex her. At one point his mom catches him looking at porn at 1AM and tells his dad that he needs to have a talk with him about it. With no specific intent to this conversation specified, the conversation is vague and basically amounts to "sex isn't love but everyone looks at porn so whatever." We were similarly confused by the issue. Of course though, his porn consummation expands. He starts looking up porn on his girlfriend's PDA and emailing it to himself, he shows porn to his little brother, and at one point alienates a potential cool friend by showing him latex porn, which makes the kid call him a freak instead of doing the normal teen thing and going, "Yo, weird" and moving on. His mom is pretty ignorant of most of this outside of the little brother thing so she starts putting parental controls on the computer before disconnecting the internet entirely. Justin will not be stopped however and he steals his parent's credit cards to pay for both internet and porn. His girlfriend checks her PDA's search history and dumps him. Eventually he hits up Monica for some free sex but can't go through with it. Unfortunately Monica is insane so she beats herself up and claims it was Justin so a bunch of her high school fanboys beat him up. The film ends with a symbolic baptism as Justin jumps into a pool and decides to start a new life.

This film is mostly funny for the reasons I said in the beginning, the fundamental issue of Lifetime trying to make a movie on this topic, but there are also a couple over-the-top acting moments or insane zooms as well. 

To take the movie seriously for a second, the movie's thesis really hinges on a slippery slope argument rather than actually interrogating the ethics of pornography. There could have been an interesting film here about if there's a way to consume porn ethically given the way the industry works or whether there might be genuine concerns if someone is consuming a lot of porn that is specifically violent or genuinely aberrant like bestiality. But no. If you want something more like that Shame is a great movie about sex addiction and Pleasure is a great movie about the porn industry. What this film is really warning against isn't porn. It's
* Staying up so late that it starts to affect your performance at school and sports.
* Using your girlfriend's tech for things she wouldn't want you to use it for.
* Showing scandalous things to your younger sibling who isn't as careful as you.
* Not correctly reading a social situation before you decide to show your new friend weird stuff.
* Stealing
* Getting involved with crazies.
* Apparently, not actually masturbating so you can clear your mind of all the dirty thoughts and be a productive member of society.

The problem isn't the porn; it's the teenage lack of impulse control.

Spoon Rating: 4

Glitter [2001]

Getting our hands on this movie was a process. In this age of digital media not always being preserved if it's not profitable, this movie was clearly deemed "not worth the effort to host and/or charge for." We had no choice but to take to the high seas and wait over a month for the film to come through. But download it did, and it was pretty worth the wait.

Billie Frank a.k.a. Mariah Carey, in a black and white flashback, is put in a group home after her alcoholic singer mother accidentally burns down their house with a lit cigarette. The two friends she makes there go on to form a dance crew with her and they are all discovered at a club and hired as backups for a singer who sucks played by Padma Lakshmi. The producer, played by Terrence Howard, discovered that Billie can sing really well and pulls a Singin' In The Rain, using her voice instead, which both singers are weirdly cool with. After a performance, a DJ named Dice realizes it's Billie singing and decides he's going to make her a star. He offers $100,000 to buy out her contract but never pays it. Over the next hour or so they fall in love and move in together while we have Billie recording songs but no full album, shooting a video that gets awkward, and getting criticized for showing too much skin by Dice who drinks and becomes more unhinged. She leaves him to go back to her friends who got left behind and records a song with Eric Benet who seemed like a potential romantic rival but surprisingly isn't. Before her big sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden, confusing since she still doesn't even have a full album, she breaks into Dice's house a leaves a little message for him. He is shot by Terrance Howard's character right after for not paying up, and Billie goes onstage right after learning of his death. On the drive home she opens a letter from Dice that says he found her mom and she's sober and living in Maryland so Billie just hauls herself there still in her performance dress and the film ends with her crying in her mom's arms. 

First of all, this movie's plot is insane. It's not over-the-top or anything, but we have a story that somehow has no real character arcs and no clear themes. The movie's timeline even feels like it takes place over just a few months. The movie seems to want us to root for Billie and Dice, but Dice kind of sucks. It wants us to feel happy that Billie found her mom at the end, but it's not like her journey feels as motivated by that as it should. Sure, her mom was a singer, but Dice seems to want to make her famous with her being completely indifferent. It feels like Billie was written as blandly as possible to not ruin any idea about Carey and maybe also so her acting would be perfectly fine and unchallenging. 

Aside from the plot, the editing and costumes are jarring. The film speeds up and slows down all the time, and the cinematography is crap. The first ten minutes are in black and white because we have to know it's the past. The movie takes place in the 80s, but occasionally the costumes are straight out of the late 90s/early 2000s. Billie one time wears low-rise flare jeans and a tank top with a rhinestone message on the front like every girl in my middle school. Also, seemingly to justify the title, Billie always has a random streak of glitter somewhere on her body in all her performances or official outings. This is never explained or even commented on. 

Then there are the side characters. There are two producers early on who have distinct creep vibes but they turn out to be barely in the film (kind of thankfully because we were all fearing a Showgirls moment if you know what I mean). The best bad character though is the music video director who is both kind of racist and very misogynistic in the most unsubtle way. We could have had more of his nonsense.

Overall, yeah, it sparkled for all the right reasons.

Spoon Rating: 6

Devil Story [1986]

This post is late, but I don't know if we could have coherently Devil Story a week ago. Somewhere in rural France or Florida, same thing really, a couple's car breaks down and they have to stay in a opulent palace. They are warned about the madness around and the girl experiences it herself, wandering around outside in a see-though nightgown and rain boats. There's a witch and her disfigured Nazi son who want to raise their dead daughter/sister. Meanwhile a guy who lives in the palace spends the whole night trying to kill a horse that he believes is that devil's horse. He uses thousands of shells in pursuit of nothing. The nightgown-rainboot girl falls into a grave at one point, and a mummy is risen that chooses the raised dead girl as a mate. There's also some kind of shipwreck that might be haunted. If this recap feels kind of disjointed, imagine watching it.

Actually don't imagine watching it. Go watch it. It was honestly really funny, and pretty short too. We got a ton of laughs and wut moments.

Spoon Rating: 7

Rounders [1998]

This film came as a recommendation from my coworker who has good taste in movies and whose girlfriend is a professional dealer at a nearby casino. Normally, something has to go fundamentally wrong to have a film fall into the bad movie category when you have a cast like this. It's basically a who's who of the late 90s: Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Malkovich, Turturro, Bond Girl Famke Janssen. But as we well know, a good cast cannot save a bad movie: only market it. Hell, in this case it was a slight contributing factor. Basically, this film boils down to two sides: the baffling and the hilarious. 

To start with the baffling, the basic plot of this movie is that Damon is a law student and underground poker player who is totally not addicted to the game and has sworn off it after losing a bunch of money to sketchy Russian, Malkovich (put a pin in that). He goes to pick up his high school friend, Worm, played by Norton, from prison to find that he is severely in debt from his own poker playing. Damon agrees to get back into the game to help his friend, which we are supposed to see as noble. The movie absolutely frames every choice Damon makes as righteous even though the fact that he genuinely should seek help is obvious to anyone who has ever known any kind of addict. But see, he was just helping his friend! But see, he doesn't take advantage when his friend cheats! Pay no attention to how his law education is tanking and his rich girlfriend has left him. It's fine. Of course, he eventually beats the Russian at the end, pays off the debts and leaves for Vegas because why cure an addiction when you can monetize it? Oh yeah, and the film dabbles in neo-noir aesthetics with monologuing from Damon and smoky, yellow cinematography normally reserved for racist depictions of South America. 

Now for the hilarious. This movie has two absolutely incredible characters: Damon's law professor and Malkovich the Russian. The law professor was a sneak hit because after Damon helps him win a game against his colleagues, the guy gives a monologue in a bar about how he's the family failure because he became a law professor instead of a rabbi. The moral of the story boils down to "do what feels right to you," an outright encouragement of Damon's gambling habit. Later on his doubles down on his message by lending Damon $10,000 of the $15,000 he needs. Insane.

The other winning character is Malkovich's, a Russian gambler and club owner nicknamed KGB. His accent is the most delightfully strange thing and his mannerisms are an endlessly source of fun. He has a quirk of divination by Oreo cookie that we all started adopting as we happened to have Oreos for dessert tonight. The glorious fate of it all. The one downside is that he is only briefly in the beginning and then wraps us up with about 10 perfect minutes at the end. He should have been in more of it.

In spite of the topic of this movie and its two hour run time, it somehow felt like it had no stakes. At one point Damon and Norton get beat up for cheating, but there are no clear threats from lenders and relatively few consequences given the money they are dealing with. A question we often ask on movie night: who was the film for exactly? As far as we can tell, people who will see anything with a cast like this. And us, Oreo psychics that we are.

Spoon Rating: 4

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