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

Project Grizzly [1996]

Sarah brought us this delightful film, the rare bad documentary. The premise itself really sells the film: a man obsessed with bears is trying to make a bear proof suit. It looks like something from a 1950s horror movie on a shoestring budget and the beginning of the film is mostly testing its durability in increasingly silly ways. The man himself, Troy Hubertise, is obviously unhinged and will often go on long rants about who knows what. He calls the bear he originally encountered Old Man and talks a lot about how bears are just like people, you know, with claws. 

The direction of the film is also pretty great in its over-the-top coolness. You kind of wonder if the director actually thinks he's making Troy look good or if he's just doing what Troy would find cool and the effect is almost sarcastic.

The first downside of the film however is the run time, which is only an hour and 15 minutes, but feels longer. How long can you really talk about a bear suit? How long can you endure this man's fantastical rants that are a bit too incoherent to be fun? The other, larger disadvantage is that he is never actually attacked by a bear while in the suit. It feels like false advertising.

 Overall, it's pretty worth it, especially the first 20 minutes or so.

Spoon Rating: 5

REWATCH: The Happening [2008]

It's been a while. First, I went to Egypt. Then I came back and we were so tired between my flight and Adam and Sarah's having two young children that we just decided to put it off for another week. But hey, we're back with a bang. 

We hadn't rewatched this one since 2018, and oh boy does it still deliver like Dominos. The script is bonkers from its premise to its unnatural dialogue, the shots are often held too long, the music does nothing to actually create a serious or suspenseful tone, and the cast is weirdly stacked with competent actors (including Alan Ruck and Jeremy Strong of Succession fame in side roles, which was very exciting for me as I'm rewatching it for the third time, back off) but none of them can do anything with the material. Mark E. Mark just furrows his brow a bunch and sounds super insincere, and it's great. It's easy to joke about while also being organically funny on its own. Highly recommend.

Spoon Rating: 9

We followed it up with an encore of Cars per request of two-year-old Jade. I had never seen it before and it's good! Just thought I'd mention.

Silk 2 [1989]

We've really had a string of stinkers for a while. This one, Silk 2, is barely worth writing about. It's a sequel to an even more boring police-in-Hawaii B movie. Basically, an art thief replaces some famous Japanese scrolls that are about to go on display at an art museum in Hawaii with fakes so he can sell the real ones on the black market. Silk is a cop who is on a mission to uncover this in between weird banter with her soon-to-die coworker, a fully nude shower scene, and super blurry sex with an art nerd who spends most of the film in the most 80s button up you've ever seen. That's it. It's only an hour and 15 minutes and it felt longer.

Spoon Rating: 2

Demons At The Door [2004]

This movie was hell, both literally and figuratively. It starts in Unnamed Islamic Nation with some archeologists (presumably) and a "terrorist" who is American before some military guys bust in and save them. One of them dramatically tears off his shirt and needs to get a new one. At this point, we thought the movie may have potential.

Apparently this thing the archeologists  were investigating was actually a door to hell and a bunch of demons get released. The next hour is just fighting demons coming out of drains who swear a lot while Nickelodeon slime pours everywhere and Insane Clown Posse music plays. Eventually we started to think the movie might actually be an attempt at comedy rather than gross-out horror, in the vein of Evil Dead, but it absolutely does not succeed. It gets stupider and less funny as it goes on. At the end our main shirt-ripper goes to hell and discovers that Satan is a little dog. Funny and clever. 

Do not waste your time.

Spoon Rating: 2