Infinite [2021]

Ever wanted to watch a movie that's The Matrix meets The Old Guard but really terrible? No? Well, it does exists if you want it and it's called Infinite. This movie was discovered by Adam and Sarah when they went to a live production of a bad movie podcast Sarah follows. In spite of it having all the vibes of a big budget movie, no one seems to have heard of it, and with good reason.

This film is about a crew of people living who remember all their past lives. Some would like to destroy the world because their weariness at living so long and some want to help the world with all their skills that they have acquired from remembering everything. In spite of both these philosophies, the film is just an action movie with the two sides fighting specifically through Mark Wahlburg on the good guy side and a pretty unrecognizable Chiwetal Ejiofor on the bad guy side. Ejiofor's character has invented a device to destroy the world and Wahlburg has to find and destroy it. That's pretty much it. It is hiding in a very predictable place. Also, the film has no real stakes since they're all kind of immortal.

This film is okay. The premise is presented in the silliest way possible and there are some great moments of hammy acting or insanity, specifically when a motorcycle is driven off a cliff and onto the wing of a plane. Overall, it's probably more worth it if you have professional bad movie podcasters roasting it.

Spoon Rating: 3

The Day of The Triffids [1962]

We have a new occasional feature for this blog: Jade reviews. She is currently almost three, and as such, is in a similar place as grandma was later in her life when it came to thoughts on the weird stuff we watch. Jade doesn't always engage in the films, but this one definitely captured her attention for a while as it is genuinely scary to a three-year-old. To a bunch of people in their 30s, it was a delight.

This film follows two stories in a similar area. The main plot is about a Navy man waking up from eye surgery to find that most of the world has gone blind from a meteor shower the previous night. He teams up with a 12-year-old who also can see and they head off for France for some reason. They stay in a chateau that has become a refuge for the blind until a bunch of partiers crash it, and then they head off again with the owner of the chateau to Spain. While this is going on, the triffids are growing and attacking. Triffids are a type of plant that has been living on the planet for a while after arriving with a single meteor a while ago, but with the meteor shower they are now everywhere, getting taller than man, and learning how to walk. They spit poison and thirst for humans. The trio manage to escape them a bunch but in Spain they try to kill them with electrocution and then fire, but they don't succeed. In the B plot, a married marine biologist couple on a remote island are also fighting triffids and discover that the key to killing them is seawater, saving the planet. How they got there in the first place when they are in a lighthouse on a seemingly small remote island is beyond me.

This movie was a random shot from me as I was aware of it from the song "Science Fiction Double Feature" and that song mentions a lot of genuinely good films. This one was quality from the unintentional comedy view. Some of the line reads are insane, the monster costumes are so delightful, and it's an easy one to enjoy and make fun of. Now Adam wants to become an expert in evil plant movies, many of which we've already watched here including The Happening, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, the original Little Shop and now this.

Spoon Rating: 5

Jade's Review: Oh no! Plant! It's coming!

Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life [2005]

This is a Lifetime movie about a teen boy who gets addicted to online porn. The fact that it's a Lifetime movie, and therefore needs to be pretty clean, really colors the perception of this film in hilarious ways. For one, all the porn he looks at is pretty covered up. At most we maybe see a brief shot of someone in lingerie or a full body latex onesie, but a lot of it is girls in tank tops with bras peeking out. Additionally, they never mention masturbation and at one point only slightly imply it just by having him look at porn without his shirt on. It seems like maybe he wouldn't have such a porn issue if he wasn't edging himself constantly, but that's just a suggestion.

The film starts with Justin, a champion swimmer, just looking at extremely tame porn on his computer, some of which is weirdly of a girl in his high school named Monica. Apparently she's a senior and just does this? It's a bit confusing. Justin has a girlfriend named Amy who loves Jesus and therefore won't let him sex her. At one point his mom catches him looking at porn at 1AM and tells his dad that he needs to have a talk with him about it. With no specific intent to this conversation specified, the conversation is vague and basically amounts to "sex isn't love but everyone looks at porn so whatever." We were similarly confused by the issue. Of course though, his porn consummation expands. He starts looking up porn on his girlfriend's PDA and emailing it to himself, he shows porn to his little brother, and at one point alienates a potential cool friend by showing him latex porn, which makes the kid call him a freak instead of doing the normal teen thing and going, "Yo, weird" and moving on. His mom is pretty ignorant of most of this outside of the little brother thing so she starts putting parental controls on the computer before disconnecting the internet entirely. Justin will not be stopped however and he steals his parent's credit cards to pay for both internet and porn. His girlfriend checks her PDA's search history and dumps him. Eventually he hits up Monica for some free sex but can't go through with it. Unfortunately Monica is insane so she beats herself up and claims it was Justin so a bunch of her high school fanboys beat him up. The film ends with a symbolic baptism as Justin jumps into a pool and decides to start a new life.

This film is mostly funny for the reasons I said in the beginning, the fundamental issue of Lifetime trying to make a movie on this topic, but there are also a couple over-the-top acting moments or insane zooms as well. 

To take the movie seriously for a second, the movie's thesis really hinges on a slippery slope argument rather than actually interrogating the ethics of pornography. There could have been an interesting film here about if there's a way to consume porn ethically given the way the industry works or whether there might be genuine concerns if someone is consuming a lot of porn that is specifically violent or genuinely aberrant like bestiality. But no. If you want something more like that Shame is a great movie about sex addiction and Pleasure is a great movie about the porn industry. What this film is really warning against isn't porn. It's
* Staying up so late that it starts to affect your performance at school and sports.
* Using your girlfriend's tech for things she wouldn't want you to use it for.
* Showing scandalous things to your younger sibling who isn't as careful as you.
* Not correctly reading a social situation before you decide to show your new friend weird stuff.
* Stealing
* Getting involved with crazies.
* Apparently, not actually masturbating so you can clear your mind of all the dirty thoughts and be a productive member of society.

The problem isn't the porn; it's the teenage lack of impulse control.

Spoon Rating: 4

Glitter [2001]

Getting our hands on this movie was a process. In this age of digital media not always being preserved if it's not profitable, this movie was clearly deemed "not worth the effort to host and/or charge for." We had no choice but to take to the high seas and wait over a month for the film to come through. But download it did, and it was pretty worth the wait.

Billie Frank a.k.a. Mariah Carey, in a black and white flashback, is put in a group home after her alcoholic singer mother accidentally burns down their house with a lit cigarette. The two friends she makes there go on to form a dance crew with her and they are all discovered at a club and hired as backups for a singer who sucks played by Padma Lakshmi. The producer, played by Terrence Howard, discovered that Billie can sing really well and pulls a Singin' In The Rain, using her voice instead, which both singers are weirdly cool with. After a performance, a DJ named Dice realizes it's Billie singing and decides he's going to make her a star. He offers $100,000 to buy out her contract but never pays it. Over the next hour or so they fall in love and move in together while we have Billie recording songs but no full album, shooting a video that gets awkward, and getting criticized for showing too much skin by Dice who drinks and becomes more unhinged. She leaves him to go back to her friends who got left behind and records a song with Eric Benet who seemed like a potential romantic rival but surprisingly isn't. Before her big sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden, confusing since she still doesn't even have a full album, she breaks into Dice's house a leaves a little message for him. He is shot by Terrance Howard's character right after for not paying up, and Billie goes onstage right after learning of his death. On the drive home she opens a letter from Dice that says he found her mom and she's sober and living in Maryland so Billie just hauls herself there still in her performance dress and the film ends with her crying in her mom's arms. 

First of all, this movie's plot is insane. It's not over-the-top or anything, but we have a story that somehow has no real character arcs and no clear themes. The movie's timeline even feels like it takes place over just a few months. The movie seems to want us to root for Billie and Dice, but Dice kind of sucks. It wants us to feel happy that Billie found her mom at the end, but it's not like her journey feels as motivated by that as it should. Sure, her mom was a singer, but Dice seems to want to make her famous with her being completely indifferent. It feels like Billie was written as blandly as possible to not ruin any idea about Carey and maybe also so her acting would be perfectly fine and unchallenging. 

Aside from the plot, the editing and costumes are jarring. The film speeds up and slows down all the time, and the cinematography is crap. The first ten minutes are in black and white because we have to know it's the past. The movie takes place in the 80s, but occasionally the costumes are straight out of the late 90s/early 2000s. Billie one time wears low-rise flare jeans and a tank top with a rhinestone message on the front like every girl in my middle school. Also, seemingly to justify the title, Billie always has a random streak of glitter somewhere on her body in all her performances or official outings. This is never explained or even commented on. 

Then there are the side characters. There are two producers early on who have distinct creep vibes but they turn out to be barely in the film (kind of thankfully because we were all fearing a Showgirls moment if you know what I mean). The best bad character though is the music video director who is both kind of racist and very misogynistic in the most unsubtle way. We could have had more of his nonsense.

Overall, yeah, it sparkled for all the right reasons.

Spoon Rating: 6

Devil Story [1986]

This post is late, but I don't know if we could have coherently Devil Story a week ago. Somewhere in rural France or Florida, same thing really, a couple's car breaks down and they have to stay in a opulent palace. They are warned about the madness around and the girl experiences it herself, wandering around outside in a see-though nightgown and rain boats. There's a witch and her disfigured Nazi son who want to raise their dead daughter/sister. Meanwhile a guy who lives in the palace spends the whole night trying to kill a horse that he believes is that devil's horse. He uses thousands of shells in pursuit of nothing. The nightgown-rainboot girl falls into a grave at one point, and a mummy is risen that chooses the raised dead girl as a mate. There's also some kind of shipwreck that might be haunted. If this recap feels kind of disjointed, imagine watching it.

Actually don't imagine watching it. Go watch it. It was honestly really funny, and pretty short too. We got a ton of laughs and wut moments.

Spoon Rating: 7