Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace [1996]

This movie really made us all ask a question of sequels: is it better to make a sequel assessible to people who did not see the first movie, or is it better for a sequel to presuppose that anyone watching it is already familiar with the original? This movie definitely did the latter and as we were all unfamiliar with Lawnmower Man, this movie was an utter mystery for most of it. Adam would not give specifics on how he found this movie although whether he forgot or was protecting his sources, we don't know. Either way, this movie is a ripoff of basically every sci-fi movie that came before it and the Man himself sometimes seems like he's doing a bad Jim Carrey impression on top of that.

The plot, as far as we could piece together, is about a guy called Jobe who invented a computer chip that controls an entire virtual reality world. Some Republicans who only care about money are using him to do their dirty work but he has been corrupted and wants to destroy the world to live in the virtual world. This is a very stupid plan. There's a doctor with horrible white dude dreads who is trying to stop him with some other scientist he has romantic tension with and some kids, one of whom is a friend of Jobe and remembers him as his family's lawnmower man. We never learn if this means something other than, you know, a landscaper. The world gets saved but also Jobe goes back to normal. This is the best I can do with this plot as none of us understood it.

The movie was really mediocre. Most of our joy came from the liberal use of the verb "to jack". Often it was "jacking in" or "jacking out" but at least once it was "jacking off" and we were pleased.

Spoon Rating: 2

 

Skull Forest [2012]

We had our potato and cheese soup with a side of Len Kabasinski, the director of Fist of the Vampire coming back to our screens with Skull Forest. This is a film that gave us genuine headaches through its incredibly liberal and poor use of shaky cam and Dutch angles and was also yet another "Most Dangerous Game" rip off. Overall, not bad.

The film follows mostly four women who are hard to tell apart since three are blonde and two look like sisters and none have names. We called them The Mom, The Businesswoman, The Slut, and The Cop. Of course, we foresaw that The Mom was going to survive according to horror movie rules. On the flip side of this game we have a cast of characters who were introduced at a gala with stock music playing. We couldn't really remember most of them outside the racist stereotype native girl and the Russian sambo fighter. One of them was also the director. After a series of wacky murders, we get down to just The Mom, who at one point had to crawl naked out of a grave, and the director. The film ends right as she whacks him in the head with a shovel. 

It's a simple film and short at just an hour and 15 minutes, but it was pretty good. Laughs were had.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

A Talking Cat!?! [2013]

It's been a while since we've seen something decent so we decided to rewatch A Talking Cat!?!. Read the original review here.

Mayflower II [2020]

Part of the selling point of this film was Sarah telling us that it had a budget of only $30,000 and it took six years to make. Obviously, it looks terrible. It's also Christian. It even stars the "Jewish" couple from The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah. The real problem with this movie is that it's completely incoherent. To give a little credit, it's clear that the writers had a dystopia in mind and really wanted to show and not tell, but the end result is that we never knew what was going on at any given moment. Still, I'll try to relate the plot.

There's a guy whose brother is some kind of Christian radical in a world where all Christians have to conform to a specific view of Christianity. We are never really told what this view is. Our guy is told about a secret ship his brother has stashed away for an escape called the Mayflower II, but when the brother's prayer meeting is raided by the cops, our guy and his wife take off in the ship alone to Mars. There's a colony there, that is definitely a mashup of a college campus and a midrange hotel, but you aren't allowed to leave. We don't really know why except that it's supposed to be a prison of sorts. However, they do leave when they learn that the government is planning an attack to blame on the Christian radicals. They go to Earth to save them and they all escape in the Mayflower II ship bound for who knows where. Probably starvation realistically, but apparently this was the first of a planned trilogy.

The sheer confusion we suffered watching this really brought down the viewing experience but there was a lot of fun to be had in the cheap sets and costumes and the fact that the main actor only has one distressed face that he uses the whole film. We wouldn't recommend a watch, but at an hour and fifteen minutes it could have been worse.

Spoon Rating: 4