After The Sacrifice Her Family Regrets [2026]

So Sarah has messed up her Facebook recommends again in the name of discovering yet another level to the vertical drama rabbit hole: AI vertical dramas. She already has a lengthy list (including some sort of Hades/Persephone retelling that I'm fully ready to be annoyed at), but since movie night was unexpected today and I just got back from a nearly six week trip, we decided to try something familiar. Very familiar in fact. 

After The Sacrifice Her Family Regrets is beat for beat the plot of our first vertical drama 30 Years Frozen, 3 Brothers Regret. So aside from AI, what makes it different? They're elves. That's it. Instead of being frozen for science for 30 years, our martyred main character sacrifices herself to be tortured by demons for 300 years to save her kingdom. She has a pet dragon instead of a dog. She gets locked in a dungeon instead of a basement. There's still a blind brother who she gives her eyes to, there's still the evil "sister" who caused the brothers to turn on the main character, there's still the moment after she wakes up when she doesn't remember them. It's the same exact film to the point of a lawsuit, if that would even be allowed here.

The debate we ended up having about this film was whether it was more enjoyable if you have seen the original film it ripped off or if it would be better to go into it cold. It's hard for us to ever know, but we did come to one conclusion: it's probably better to watch it with real actors. Ethical issues aside, the scenery-chewing is just so much more entertaining when it's real people. Sure, one of the elf brothers looks exactly like Legolas, but his emoting can be wild and he's still just a digital creation. It's more special to watch a real human try to act in these films.

Spoon Rating: 6 

Charmed To Meet You [2026] & Charmed To Meet You Too [2026]

Originally we watched these on June 22nd.

In the same vein as that Lifetime drama-esque film produced by KFC, we have two short vertical dramas produced by Crocs. They're both rom-coms with the first one about a girl putting jibbits on some guy's crocs as a way of flirting and the second one following her meeting someone else after the first guy accidentally washed off her number and couldn't find her. Don't worry. He also wears crocs. Both films were kind of dumb in the Hallmark movie kind of way but even more so because flirting with jibbits is a wildly expensive choice.

Spoon Rating: 4 

The Forbidden Dance [1990]

It's been a while since we've seen a good classic bad movie. This recommendation came from a friend of a friend, and she knew what she was talking about. This film has everything: a nonsense plot, a didactic environmentalist message, a lead actress starting her career who will go onto much better things, a shaman, an actually good theme song, mixed race John Waters, sex trafficking, and, of course, lots of gyrating. If you liked Dirty Dancing . . . this will probably still suck. It's awesome.

Our plot starts with a bunch of native people in the rain forest of Brazil dancing and doing capoeira to a song that just says "capoeira" over and over again. That's kind of the vibe of all the music that isn't the theme song. There's another song later on that's just the word "lambada" over and over again because that's the name of the dance. Suddenly their festivities are ruined by a bulldozer driven by a white man in a cowboy hat. He has bought the forest and is here to destroy it. In response, the chief's daughter, the whitest person in the village and the only one who speaks English, decides to go to LA to confront this man about him destroying her land. That seems to be about the extent of her plan, but she does bring her shaman with her who has an insane howl. The princess, Nisa, is played by Laura Harring, then know as the first Hispanic Miss USA but to us she will always be Rita in Mulholland Drive, my favorite David Lynch movie. She is found sleeping near a fountain by a Hispanic maid who gets her a job working for a rich family in Beverly Hills. They have a lazy son about her age who only cares about going to the club to dance and so after he sees her dancing in her room, he takes her out. Many racist comments from his friends and others ensue because they've apparently never seen a woman who doesn't have blond hair before. When the parents find out and discuss plans to fire her, Nisa runs away and goes into a club that she thinks might be a place she could get a dancing job but it's basically a front of a brothel and she's immediately scouted for sex trafficking. Rich Boy's friends find her there and after harassing her, Rich Boy goes there to save her. For some reason they decide that the solution to her homeland being deforested is to win a dance competition so she can use the platform to call out the company destroying her home. Did you forget that this was about saving the rain forest? Because the movie seemed to. 

We get a short training montage where we are treated to eyesore after eyesore of 80s men's fashion contrasted with 80s women's fashion that is surprisingly okay. Then suddenly we are at the competition where the only competitors seem to be Rich Boy's Racist Ex with a crunchy frizz halo and her partner who are kind of better than our leads. In spite of this, the leads win and Nisa finally has an ugly 80s hairstyle after managing to go the whole movie as the only woman with good hair. After winning but before their official performance, Nisa is kidnapped by Evil Cowboy Hat Capitalist after a tip off from the Racist Ex. He takes her to a club he seemingly plans on running, puts her onstage in her sex trafficking dress and asks her to do her sexy dance for him. We were confused why he was doing this - personal pleasure? humiliation? - but it seemed like he was just confused about her purposes in America and was offering her an audition for a dancing job. She uses the dance to seduce and trick him so she can escape with Rich Boy. They make it to their performance, which is going to be broadcast along with a band called Kid Creole (the John Waters look-alike) and The Coconuts, but Rich Boy hurts his ankle in their escape. Thankfully the shaman shows up with Nisa's father who has just arrived in America and fixes the ankle with snake venom. Sure, solve one problem with a bigger problem. Makes sense. They dance and when it's over Nisa talks about how they all need to boycott the evil company destroying her home. And no rain forest was ever destroyed again.

From the wildly different levels of conflict to the fashion to the melodrama, this film is a delight from start to finish. I will be unironically rocking out to "Lambada" by Kaoma.

Spoon Rating: 6 

My Five Aunts Have Superpowers [2026]

This Chinese vertical drama is extremely poorly named. There are five aunts (in spite of the poster only showing four) and there are superpowers, but the aunts are not the ones with them. Also somewhat amusingly, the version of this film we watched sometimes had the segments out of order and we ended up watching the very beginning at the end and it did clear up some confusion so I will explain it as it is supposed to be watched.

A guy gets an invite from one of his mom's distant cousins to move in. There's a misunderstanding that he's an intruder when he goes into the house and he gets beat up by his hot aunts. Things are resolved and in his new bedroom he finds a pair of broken glasses that activate a supercomputer that will give him superpowers every time he saves one of his aunts. Thankfully for his stats maxing, his aunts get into issues a lot. The film is mostly a series of vignettes of him using his powers to solve his aunt's issues and getting more powers: saving Doctor Aunt from a gangster who blames him for his impotence after a car accident, saving Business Aunt by finding a water stream, saving Steamer Aunt by winning a pool game, saving Teacher Aunt and Business Aunt from rape during a business meeting, sorta-not-really saving Business Aunt yet again by winning a poker match and getting a lucrative deal for her company that she just hired him at, verifying the value of a present for grandma with Business Aunt, and finally saving Biker Aunt from rape. Every man is a rapist. Every aunt has sexual tension with the main guy. After saving Biker Aunt she reveals that all the aunts are adopted so they can be together. Considering how much time he spent with Business Aunt, it wasn't clear that Biker Aunt would be the endgame but whatever, we're reaching the two hour mark. They reveal their relationship at grandma's birthday, and she is reasonably weirded out.

This was our first step into Chinese drama and honestly? The English ones were way better. This one did have a little bit of extra fun added with the bad, possibly AI, dubbing, but there were so many segments that dragged, and the episodic story was pretty unsatisfying. As a bad bonus, this film had a disgusting male-rapist-gets-raped-by-"ugly"-woman joke that I haven't seen in a film in well over a decade. Get it together, China.

Spoon Rating: 4

REWATCH: Various Shorts & The Pricemaster [2001]

Today was a special night because John, my friend and coworker, finally came to a movie night! Because we did a vertical drama last time, we decided to do a collection of shorts and favorite commercials including "Instant Adoring Boyfriend," the Game Crazy training video, a "Rainbow Sponge" compilation, "You Could Stop At Five Or Six Stores," Mike's Golf, Eagleman, Phil Davidson, Cami Secret, the Uroclub, Tiddy Bear, Booty Pop, etc. 

The highlight was a video John offered up called "The Pricemaster." To be clear, it wasn't bad but a delightful piece of performance art that immediately became a part of our obscure set of BMN phrases. The film starts with a quote from "The Medium is the Message" and a short cold open that clearly lays out that the medium is "garage sale." At this garage sale in Texas, there is a small stage for the Pricemaster: a figure clad in a red balaclava, gold mask, silver jacket, and red harem pants with Togo-esque structure. He speaks into a booming, reverb mic a few key phrases including "Make me an offer" and "I am the pricemaster." Whenever someone makes an offer, he raises it by hundreds, thousands, or millions of dollars. He also repeats those same phrases in Spanish. Sometimes he does weird, slow dance moves. No one buys anything. He is flanked by a sign that says "Thank you for shopping here. Your business is appreciated" but no business happens. It's beautiful.

No spoons but probably 4/5 stars. 

Falling For My Ex's Mafia Dad [2026]

We'll stop the vertical dramas when they stop delivering and honestly, there's no slowing down this crazy train.

The literal second line of the film was something about the main character, Fay,  being a virgin so you know exactly where this one stands. A psych grad student catches her boyfriend making out with a male waiter and dumps him, only to interview his mafia boss father in prison later that day. The boss, named Kent, gets out and then basically forces an engagement between Fay and his son (who he doesn't know is gay) in spite of the fact that he very obviously wants to screw her. This engagement is forced because he discovers she is the biological daughter of some other boss and this alliance will be good for him. This throws her into the mafia world, but most specifically, the world of her and Kent dancing around each other forever. He even whips her as part of an "interrogation" and they're both into it. Finally the son gets caught with his secret boyfriend, he is not good at hiding, and there's a valid reason for the engagement to be called off even though the son still wants it on because he won't inherit the fortune without producing an heir. In turn, Kent offers Fay a mistress contract for 5 million and she agonizes over it. We all were confused how this was not just the best of all worlds - sex with the guy she wants to sex and a bunch of money - but that was where the virgin thing comes in again. Thankfully, Fay's stripper sister is on our side and Fay gives in and we get some softcore and very light BDSM. Some convoluted mafia stuff happens and the film ends with Fay resolving to leave after Kent ripped up their contract but she crumples to the floor saying, "I love him" and we get a To Be Continued. Why does she love him? Honestly who knows? He has proven himself to be a terrible person, which was all the more reason to us why she should just have transactional sex with him.

This film was hilarious. So many lines were insane. The actors were all the same general age but they put grey in the lead guy's hair to unsuccessfully make him look older. Note: I thought he was from 30 Years Frozen, 3 Brothers Regret but apparently he was from Pregnant By My Tough Daddy CEO so I was right that we've seen him before but I had the wrong film. Everyone's got issues that could probably be solved very simply but they don't so the plot just circles a drain for a while until it decides to end. 

Will we watch the sequel? Absolutely, but I don't think it could top this. 

Spoon Rating: 8 

The Secret Cinema [1968], Mercury Men Attack on Earth [2026], The House In The Middle [1954], Why Study Home Economics? [1955], and The Haunted Lamp

 This night was a series of shorts so let's go through them quickly!

The Secret Cinema is a short film that is basically proto-Truman Show. A woman named Jane finds out that she life is being made into a multi-part movie series and that she's being manipulated by her boyfriend, boss, coworker, and therapist to make the show more interesting. She ends up in an asylum with the implication that the therapist is going to turn the camera on the coworker next.

The acting was camp but didn't exactly feel like it was always supposed to be.

Spoon Rating: 3

The highlight of the night was Mercury Men Attack on Earth a film that was more than half AI and completely the vision of a man who looks and acts like Tommy Wiseau but with the eye for direction and effects of Neil Breen. Truly a valuable discovery for us. The film is just: aliens try to take over Earth and this one dude in India saves the world. Also, it's overly racist, poorly dubbed and written, and again, mostly AI. Nonstop what. A must watch.

Spoon Rating: 9
 

This 1950s propaganda film insists that if you keep your house clean, well painted, and attractive, it will literally save your property if it is attacked by nuclear weapons. I guess those tests in the Arizona desert don't lie. I mean, you'll be toast but at least your house will still be standing on its completely uninhabitable land, right? 

Spoon Rating: 5
 

While on the topic of 1950s conservatism, let us ask why we should study home economics? While this movie does try ever so slightly to not push gender roles and a prescribed future, the answer really does boil down to "you will be married with kids one day so you should learn this stuff and your mom only has so much time to teach you." The unfortunate thing is, the majority of the lessons described in the video actually would be valuable for both men and women to learn just to exist as responsible humans one day and it seems like most parents don't bother to or don't know how to teach them.

Spoon Rating: 2

The final, very short film which I don't have a photo for was just a quick and intentionally silly horror film that looked like a student film. No shade to the makers. It was neither bad nor good.