Birds Of Prey [1930]

After trying to find the well known Glitter and being unsuccessful in finding one that is in English and doesn't have the music cut out, we ended up on a ChatGPT list that lead us to this old one. In spite of the bad sound quality and high pitched British accents, we managed to mostly follow this weird murder and cover up story. A former cop is killed at his fancy mansion party while everyone else is at a flower show by two guys who he had originally got thrown in jail. They are very smug about how good their coverup is although their whole thing gets exposed by the girl and her fiancee on the poster. The real draw of the film is the weird line reads of which there are enough to keep you from being too bored. We wouldn't recommend it, but it wasn't too bad.

Spoon Rating: 3

Trolland [2016]

Trolland a.k.a. Trollz is an Asylum picture so we knew we were getting into a cheap and speedy knockoff territory. What we did not expect was that the animation would fall somewhere on the spectrum of Foodfight and Rapsittie Kids. Playstation 1.5, if you will. It is ugly and it is utterly hilarious. 

The plot is completely secondary to the visuals, but I will explain anyway. The story takes place at a summer camp where the groundskeeper Olaf is obsessed with catching trolls, which he believes roam the grounds. Well, they do and they are basically entirely motivated by doing pranks on humans. Our main troll, whose name I don't remember but he's voiced by Ja Rule, has a sister (voiced by T-Boz) who is determined to be the top prankster. Ja Rule doesn't think pranking is okay and ends up becoming friends with awkward human boy Hayden, who ending bullied by some kids who will soon fall down the Alt-Right pipeline. Boy and Troll team up to stop T-Boz from pranking too hard, and we get a kind of "we aren't so different" moral. Olaf decides not to capture anyone but he will continue his cryptozoologist dreams by going after Bigfoot. 

I can't convey how hilarious it is to watch this movie. The lip flaps are random, clothes do through character's bodies sometimes, no one can actually touch the grass. It's hard to believe this was made in 2016, it's so terrible to look at. The troll skin has the texture and shine of gushers. All the campers look like emo kids because they have variations on the same hair. Sarah said it looks like everyone has CP. It's an endless source of amusement. And it's not too long at only an hour and 18 minutes. I'm not trolling you; it's worth it.

Spoon Rating: 6

Moonfall [2022]

It's been a while! With me being away for most of the summer, there haven't been any movie nights but we're back. This one is a suggestion given to Adam and Sarah by some people they met at a live God Awful Movies show. Within five minutes Adam said, "Wait. This isn't a Roland Emmerich movie, is it?" and he was exactly right. According to Adam, "Roland Emmerich has just been remaking Independence Day for years." While this wasn't quite the same, it certainly felt similar. The beats of every Emmerich movie are the same, but this one managed to gradually increase in stupidity as the film went on through it's two hour (yikes) run time.

The film starts with Patrick Wilson, Halle Berry, and someone else in space when the third guy gets killed by a mysterious electronic-seeming entity. Wilson is blamed and fired, but many years later they get caught up in an issue when the moon's orbit is changing dramatically. The discovery was made by Nick Frost, a conspiracy theorist. After a lot of nonsense, the three of them end up going to the moon to try to blow up the problem only to make the discovery that the moon is full of hyper advanced technology left behind by a super intelligent race of ancient humans. They all got wiped out when the AI that ran their peaceful society decided to attack them, and those are the entities they are fighting against. While all this is going on there is a stunningly useless side plot about Wilson and Berry's families trying to survive among the extreme weather changes, but it sucks because we have no emotional investment in any of them. In the end, Frost sacrifices himself because he doesn't have kids or whatever, and a hologram of his mother tells him "you're part of the moon now" with some kind of implication that there might be a sequel. Doubt it.

This movie gets funnier as it goes on, particularly if you don't know where it's going. The plot twists are comically dumb and the whole thing looks terrible. Adam said it looks like Grand Theft Auto 7 with the green screens that encompass all the settings. Some of the line reads are also so inexplicable or just weird lines like I mentioned above. Overall, we wish it had been shorter (that side plot should have been cut) but it was a fun time.

Spoon Rating: 5