[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
This movie came from a random guy at a party Kay went to who was also a movie enthusiast, both bad and good. After checking his credentials and finding that he was well versed in the bad movie canon, he fervently recommended this movie: "Roar." It wasn't so much that he held it up as a paragon of bad movies, but he and his wife insisted that it was an experience that needed to be watched. And they were so right.
"Roar" is a movie that was made over an eleven year period where the actors were forced to interact with dozens of untrained lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, and panthers. Noel Marshall, who directed and starred in the film, and Tippi Hedren, of "The Birds" fame and Marshall's wife, apparently discovered an abandoned plantation house full big cats while in Africa and decided to make the movie with them and their kids in it in the name with the goal of supposedly showing that they are not that dangerous. The movie ended up doing the opposite. According to the Blu-Ray box 70 cast and crew members were injured and a lot of those injuries appear on screen.
The plot of the movie is pretty thin. A guy living in a house full of big cats in the middle of nowhere in Africa has his family come to visit him. The beginning of the movie involves a visit from the guy's friend, who doesn't understand why this crazy man lives amongst the big cats. We see the crazy man break up a fight between two lions that ends in a lot of blood loss. Then a bunch of guys who think the big cats are dangerous come to his house and tigers climb into their boats and sink them. Also, everyone gets brutalized as they leave. There isn't even continuity between scenes because there was so much violence. Suddenly the crazy man has a bandaged hand or a torn shirt and we don't know why until later on we see the attack that caused it.
The guy's family goes to the house while he goes to meet them at the airport. His journey to the airport takes forever because he brings along two tigers who sink his boat. Meanwhile, his family is attacked by the cats for at least 40 minutes and they have to hide in cabinets and get chased off the roof of the house multiple times. Eventually the guy realizes he made a mistake and goes back to his house just in time for the big cats who were attacking his family to suddenly decide they are friendly. Even when they're friendly, they still gnaw arms and the actors play it off like it's no big deal.
This movie needs to be seen to be believed. In spite of not being a good movie or a bad movie necessarily, it will hold your attention for the whole time because you are nervously waiting for someone to get scalped.
Spoon Rating: 5 Forks
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
This is a weird one to write about. As consumers of the previous two "God's Not Dead" movies, there should be a lot to say about the third movie in the trilogy, "God's Not Dead: A Light In Darkness." But there kind of isn't. This movie had far fewer wild moments, and while it was still full of misunderstandings of how the world works and still seems to exist in the same universe where Christians are persecuted in America, this movie felt tired. This is the oddest film in the trilogy because it lacks that big victory for the Christians that the other two movies have. They didn't even have a scene where all the atheists and agnostics get converted. And all the people who are lapsed in their faith have really good reasons for it and no one tries to argue them. I think the franchise has given up.
The plot of this movie picks up where the last one left off, with the "cool" reverend getting arrested for refusing to turn over his sermons. He returns to the church only to have it vandalized when someone throws a brick through the basement window and this somehow leads to the death of Jude, the token black guy who only seems to say, "God is good." Those are even his last words in his mother tongue. The backstory behind the brick is that the boyfriend of a girl who is having a crisis of faith blames the church for her dumping him. Really. Then the university that the church is on the campus of decides to use eminent domain to seize the church and destory it because of the bad PR. This is the traditional "God'd Not Dead" nonsense part of the plot. Obviously, this is not a thing that can be done and churches are not only allowed but necessary on college campuses. The Reverend calls his estranged lawyer brother to help him and we get a long journey to a conclusion where they try to repair their relationship. It's more dull than anything else. The kid who threw the brick goes to jail and gets released with seemingly no involuntary manslaughter conviction. In the end there's a big protest at the church with people on both sides and the reverend appears basically to give a sermon about how it doesn't matter that they will take the church from him because peace and everyone is moved.
It's safe to say this isn't worth your time unless you saw the other two and are a passionate completionist like we are.
Spoon Rating: 2
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Adam missed his first Bad Movie Night ever so we did a rewatch of "Mac And Me", the ET ripoff that seemed to be primarily funded by product placement. The week before Kay was in London so we watched "I Am Here . . . Now", the Neil Breen movie where he's most blatantly Jesus.
Next week we will return with something new.
This movie came from a random guy at a party Kay went to who was also a movie enthusiast, both bad and good. After checking his credentials and finding that he was well versed in the bad movie canon, he fervently recommended this movie: "Roar." It wasn't so much that he held it up as a paragon of bad movies, but he and his wife insisted that it was an experience that needed to be watched. And they were so right. 
