While the specifics of the plot were basically impossible to follow because we couldn't hear anything, we did get a lot of laughs from scenes that we genuinely didn't know if they were supposed to be funny or not. Even Jade, who is afraid of basically everything being four years old, was laughing.
Spoon Rating: 3
The film is centered around a theoretical physicist who has invented a time machine that only works in ten minute increments. The FBI wants to get him for it so they attempt to at a bank where he is extremely unsuccessfully hitting on the teller and using the machine to try again. In the process, the bank is robbed by a bunch of British robbers. One of the FBI agents is shot and his partner/lover cuffs herself to the physicist so they can go after the bad guys. Hi-jinks kind of ensue as the lead robber's girlfriend is shot and the three mains end up in disguise on a plane where the lead robber is trying to escape and using them as collateral or something. The plane is about to crash, killing everyone, when the physicist manages to make the machine go beyond ten minutes and we literally go back to the start so everything can go right: physicist gets a date with the teller, the FBI agents cement their love for each other, and the robbers decide not to rob because lead robber knows it will end badly. Completely pointless.
The weak plot is actually well supplemented by some terrible acting that ranges from bland to "my, this scenery is delicious," dumb looking special effects (particular shout out to the mannequin who blew up), and a director who is trying so hard to make the movie artistic and deep but only has a few tricks up his sleeve and they are mostly rotating shots and slow motion. Get wrecked people with motion sickness! We were a bit divided on whether this one is worth watching, but we ultimately decided to give it that little push. Third is popularity but first in our hearts.
Spoon Rating: 5
The movie is called John Henry but it has almost nothing to do with the folk legend. In fact, it has about as much to do with the folk legend as the Shaq movie we watched a few weeks ago, Steel. Henry is a strong black guy with a big hammer. That's it. The whole theme about technology versus man? Absent completely. In fact, this movie feels most like a Tarantino film and that really seems to be the inspiration. The plot revolves around a gang that dresses in white. A Honduran woman is rescued from the gang by her half brother who is American and who she got kidnapped from when she came to the US to meet him. This woman, Berta, ends up at John's house and hangs out with him and his dad. John already has beef with this gang because the film starts with one of the gang members running over his dog, but it is then way too slowly reveled that John used to be in the gang himself and that the current leader is his cousin played by Ludacris. Ludacris has a metal jaw because John accidentally shot him when trying to leave the gang many years ago. The gang member bust into John's house, kill his dad, and rekidnap Berta, and the film ends with a final standoff between the cousins. The music implies that John died, because the folk John Henry died, but it's left ambiguous.
This film's plot is so thin that it could have been a half hour. However, in between the lack of plot we get those aforementioned nice shots and some of the funniest music stings we've seen in a while. Most of the film's music was far too on the nose and that final standoff was scored exactly like a spaghetti Western, really pulling that Tarantino comparison. Probably the best scene in the movie was also rather Tarantino-esque: two guys on a stakeout just start having the most random conversation ever about the movie Human Centipede and black recidivism. A My Dinner With Andre style film about them would have been way better than this. Honestly, you should watch this one at least once.
Spoon Rating: 5
