REWATCH: The Room [2003]

As is often something of an initiation for the uninformed, we decided that it was necessary to do a rewatch of the classic The Room as we had a guest tonight. Well versed in the sci-fi channel's attempts at film making but woefully inexperienced when it comes to the paragons of the genre, Scott came to movie night with skepticism but an open mind. It did take a while to try to convince him we weren't watching a porno and even then we weren't entirely successful. Fair. 

Every time we watch this film, it seems to take even longer because of how often we have to pause it. This time it was slightly less because of diverging conversation and more because of the arrival of Adam and Sarah's daughter, Jade, who really stole the show with an intermission performance of causing herself to throw up in a desperate effort to eat more bread and then slipping on her own vomit. 

Either way, this time the sub conversation did keep coming back to the idea that a polycule really would have solved all the issues of the film. And it would still fully support what seems to be one of the attempted themes: if everyone in the world loved each other, the world would be a better place. Tommy/Johnny should probably have just taken his own advice here and gotten in on the Mark/Lisa action. Denny would probably be down too.

Also, it was apparently decided that Kay is Adam and Sarah's Denny (or like, an actually platonic Mark).

Run Like Hell [1995]

The influence of The Road Warrior on bad movies cannot be overstated and this film is another one of those. However, interestingly, this film also borrows a bit from the third Mad Max movie Beyond Thunderdome and seems almost like it was predicting a bit of the future of franchise with a little bit of a Fury Road vibe. You know, if Fury Road was exploitative, had little world building, and was mostly just a martial arts movie.

In this dystopia all single women are imprisoned. Why? Unclear. It seems to have something to do with a lack of resources, but if overpopulation is the problem shouldn't you be more worried about married women? Either way, these women seem to be only given a thong and makeup while in prison aside from a few lucky ones who get bras and yes, obviously they get abused sometimes by Robert Z'Dar, the most famous person in this. One day four women escape and the film basically follows them wandering through the desert and shooting opponents. There's a couple they encounter with no real explanation. There's a ninja who helps them. There's some fight-to-the-death ring that briefly appears. They fight some android guys. Really it's unclear what the point of any of it is, but there sure is a large cast of people who mostly only get about five minutes of screen time. The film ends on a cliffhanger that Z'Dar is going to go after the escaped women, but we probably wouldn't watch a sequel even if there is one.

This film was okay. The plot was pretty boring, but there were a lot of solid acting moments and general silliness. Adam suggested that Stella Speed from Roller Blade Seven should show up and save them and honestly if the film had even more RBS vibes it would have been a lot better.

Spoon Rating: 3.5

Chain Reaction [1996]

This movie was so boring, oh my god. So boring we can't even give it a spoon rating. It's getting a star rating instead and it's like one star out of five. It's referred to as a "science fiction action thriller" and it's none of these things. It's just Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz running around for almost two hours. There's some science that could help the environment. Some people want the people to have it and some don't. They get blamed for trying to leak it. Cue lots of running. 

Don't bother.

Spoon Rating: 1

Future War [1997]

Have you ever through that combining The Terminator with Jurassic Park starring Jean-Claude Van Damme would be the best movie ever? Someone did and the result is Future War. They couldn't actually afford Van Damme but they did manage to get a knockoff Van Damme to be our protagonist and an actual Robert Z'Dar to play a cyborg.

The movie stars in medias res with basically no clear context for what is actually going on except that everyone is wearing a lot of plaid so it's definitely the 90s or possibly just rural Canada. We get a bit of a vague voiceover from the token female character and then we get screen text that confusingly tells us that cyborgs from another planet have gone back in time to get dinosaurs and also to enslave humans. One human slave has managed to get to earth, as well as some dinosaurs and cyborgs, and he's our hero. He encounters a nun who's a former prostitute and drug dealer who's having a crisis of faith. The rest of the film is really just them and a few others fighting dinos and cyborgs. 

The film is overall not the worst. The dinosaurs look hilarious and a lot of the props do too. One guy uses a camera made out of a painted cardboard box. The acting is pretty terrible, and there were a few times when reactions or movements were so weird that we had to watch them again. The movie also isn't too long at only an hour and 20 minutes. It's not worth your time, but it wasn't too painful.

Spoon Rating: 3

If you want to talk pain, after the film we decided to do a taste test of different "healthy" Oreo knockoffs.

 

To save you some time:

• The Leos and Highkey were the best with ratings of 12/15 but for different reasons. The Leos were most consistent but the Highkey had the best cream and dunkability.
• The Catalina Crunch were okay at 11/15.
• The Protifit were pretty bad at 8/15 but they had a distinct coffee taste that might appeal to some.
• The Smart Cookies weren't even finished by some of us and tasted like a worse version of the Protifit with a 5/15.
• And the Complete Cremes were absolutely unpalatable with a 3/15. They were torture.
• Our control group of Oreos were obviously a 15/15, but they are objectively not good for you.
  

Alien Factor [1978]

This was one of those films that would have gotten a good score if the score was only base don the last twenty minutes of the film. It's not overwhelmingly boring, helped by its mercifully short run time of an hour and 17 minutes, but a lot of the film involved people aimlessly walking through the works while the world's most grating synth played ambiguous sounds in the background.

A spaceship lands that just looks like a fallen piece of some kind of factory building and we get three aliens that we called "armor boi," "meat boi," and "fur boi." Armor Boi is the least gross looking but is killed halfway through. What do they want? Who knows? But one of them does manage to make a bunch of people in town look like mummies. At the end we find out one of them (Meat Boi, I think) was actually wearing a human suit the whole film and then he goes back to his planet or something.

The main appeal of this film is the costumes, which are pretty darn fun. There's also a scene where a girl goes randomly into the woods with gasoline to kill the aliens but when one shows up the guy she bumped into just throws the can instead of actually dosing the alien. That was funny. Mostly this movie just made me wonder why so many writer-directors make sci-fi movies with no real script. Adam hypothesized: "It's because they don't know anyone who can do martial arts." Maybe he's right.

Spoon Rating: 2.5