Pass Thru [2016]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

In the last review of a Neil Breen movie, "I Am Here.... Now," Neil played an alien assessing the humans to seem if they were worth keeping around and decided to give them one more chance. Apparently, he changed his mind. Also, my assessment that this movie would improve upon the Breen formula was wrong as "Fateful Findings" is definitely still his best film, but this movie definitely helped us to come to an understanding of why. "Fateful Findings" has the most straightforward story while still being full of weird moments and deviations from the main story. It's Breen's "Mulholland Drive." His latest film "Pass Thru" is more like his "Inland Empire": It seems to have a plot but there are so many thrown in scenes that don't show a definite order that you have to piece together the background and why on your own.

Neil Breen, out of work bridge troll, plays "artificial intelligence from the future" who is currently slumming it in the desert, living in a shanty trailer and truck, and shooting up heroin when he isn't communicating with rock paintings and hanging out with a poorly CGI-ed tiger. Also in the desert are a bunch of immigrants with American accents who got mixed up in the heroin trade which is specifically given out to people like "the bankers," "the pimps," "the government officials," and "the CEO" (just the one). Neil lets one immigrant and her niece live in his dirty trailer and they all have some wacky hijinks that mostly involve throwing things. After a while, Neil decides he's going to do something about this messed up planet and decides to "disappear" anyone who has every harmed another. Ignoring the fact that this includes everyone, he first disappears the evil drug trade people and frees the American immigrants. Then he goes to a fancy party at a green screen mansion and kills everyone's vibe before blowing up the mansion in a beautifully crap CGI effect. His final act is to disappear the newscasters reporting on the disappearances and then to give an endless broadcast about what has been done, proving the Neil really should be on late night cable more than a film screen. In a really minor subplot, a bunch of kids who are into astronomy bring their scientist friend into the desert to look at some space phenomenon that clearly has to do with Neil's character but we aren't totally sure how. The film ends with Neil and the aunt walking through a sea of dead bodies which are actually just the same ten people duplicated over and over again.

This film hits a lot of the Breen standards, but it makes us a little worried that he's running out of ideas. Premise wise, this movie is quite similar to "I Am Here.... Now," but at least it still contains the expected weird dialogue, reused footage from different angles, bad acting, and nonsensical plot. In addition, this is truly some of the finest poor CGI we have ever seen.

Quotes:

Newscaster: "It's as if all the harmful people on the earth are disappearing!"

Rich Lady: "They don't need to know why or any reason."

Spoon Rating: 7.

The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah [2015]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Two households both alike in dignity, in fair South Dakota where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new community, where everyone loves Jesus now so our sins are washed clean. 

Yes. It has finally happened. After weeks of trying to find it online, attempts to order it directly from the website it's sold on and finding that none of the links actually worked, and then finally setting on a fairly reasonable price on eBay, we have gotten it: "The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah." And this movie delivered. It was one of those perfectly bad movies where the production value is not terrible but still makes it look like a home movie with a decent camera, the acting is bad but the actors are really trying, and the script is just insane while trying to be as earnest as possible. Truely these are the elements of the best kind of bad movie: the movie that tries so, so hard to be good, but is off in every way. With this one you can also throw in a hefty dose of preachiness and anti-Semitism to really round out the film. Talking about it won't do it justice but here it goes.

A conservative Jewish stereotype dad takes a college professor job in South Dakota where his family must live next to his very Christian boss and his family. They both have sons (Abraham and Paul) of about the same age who love Tim Tebow and Harry Potter and they become friends. The Jewish father gives his son books on the Holocaust and talks to him about preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. The Christian father gives his son books about Jews who love Jesus and talks to him about doing missionary work in his own backyard *hint, hint*. After some brief discussion about Jesus with his friend, Abe states having dreams where Jesus essentially tells him that he needs to accept him as his savior and that Harry Potter is evil. He has three dreams that are shot in the exact same way as he discusses them with Paul and a neighborhood girl, Sarah. He also speaks in tongues. Paul starts wondering if his father's "Harry Potter is okay and speaking in tongues is weird" stance is backwards and he and Sarah go to research more conservative churches. Meanwhile, Abe talks to God. Seriously. We didn't think the movie would go there but it did. 

Abe decides to tell his father that he has accepted Jesus in one of the best scenes in film history. The father asks if it's a girl that has his mind occupied. He says it's a guy and the father has a gay scare. Then Abe clarifies that the guy is question is actually Jesus and his dad responds by tearing his shirt open and growling.

Abe's father sends him off to New York to be with his uncle and be in a more Jewish friendly environment in hopes that it will cure him of Jesus fever. Instead Abe drives away a rabbi, a "deprogramer," and heals his cousin's multiple sclerosis. They all convert to Abe's "Jew but with Jesus" ideology. Why anyone is still worshipping Jesus at this point when Abe is clearly the messiah is beyond me.

Abe's father and Christian dad argue about religion where Christian dad actually compares not believing Jesus is the messiah to not believing that the Holocaust happened as if one of these things is not 100% provable while the other is pure faith. Abe comes home having converted everyone and his mom and dad decide to read some literature about Jesus to try to understand their son. They walk away converts. Also, Paul convinces his dad to follow a stricter idea of the Bible. Now everyone loves Jesus and hates fun. Let's go to a Messianic church together! Also, Abe's cousin is here and being shipped with Paul! And Abe and Sarah are also being shipped because of their names! Ignore that it's creepy for parents to play matchmaker with their 12-year-olds! And let's have a bar mitzvah for everyone! "Hava Naglia" plays on repeat for eternity. We wonder why it took us three hours to watch a two hour movie and then realized it was because we stopped it so often to laugh or discuss the movie's various inaccuracies about Jewish people. If that isn't a sign of this movie's quality, then I guess you'll just have to pray to Yeshua for answers and hope he brought his megaphone to answer you with.

Quotes:
"It only takes one bad egg to ruin the egg salad."

"Think with your heart, not with your logic."

"What did your family do when you came out of the closet about Jesus?"

Spoon Rating: 7.5

Single Room Furnished [1968]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

This movie is an experience. Not every movie we watch is an experience and not every movie described as an experience is necessarily a movie that's so bad it's worth watching. Although this movie rated below the "5 and up is worth watching" threshold, it's such an experience that it won't be a complete waste of time to watch it. It is odd in a way that I can only describe as a failed Tennessee Williams play: all the melodrama and none of the substance. On the Wikipedia page the movie is described like it's a drug deal: "The feature was Jayne Mansfield's final "filmed" starring role. . . The feature was released "legally" and "officially" in 1968." Why so many quotation marks, movie? What are you hiding?

This "movie" is initially introduced by a guy who really wants you, the audience, to know that this is Jayne Mansfield's last role and a dramatic role and that you should really like it or else you are shaming the ghost of Jayne Mansfield. We are then treated to an apartment set that is definitely not on a sound stage and a snippy teen fighting with her mom about being slutty and Italian. The teen then encounters the super of the building who tells her a series of stories all featuring this one woman's decline and how she kept trying to reinvent herself. First he tells her about the woman, then called Johnnie, and how she got married young to a guy who left her six months later to join the navy because his super hot friend is having such a good time there. If we were playing Tennessee Williams Bingo this is where you would mark off "gay subtext." Johnnie has a miscarriage and renames herself Mae. Then the super tells a story of the only happy couple to live in the building, Charlie and Flo, and we have to watch their intensely awkward courtship filled with fish smells and admitting they don't know anything (side note: no characters in this movie have any education). Charlie is friendly with Mae who got knocked up by a random drifter who gave her a fake name. He feels bad and spontaneously proposes to her before realizing what a stupid idea that is and marries Flo instead. Finally, in the present, Mae is now Eileen, a prostitute in a relationship with another navy guy who wants to marry her. In a fit that shows how mentally unstable they both are, he threatens to kill her but kills himself instead. Snippy teen gets perspective. Eileen continues to wallow in crazy.

This movie is clearly trying to teach something or at least get to the heart of the lives of regular people. If only the writer knew anything about how humans communicate. Aside from strange dialogue and the Home Depot sound stage set, the acting is peculiar (yes, Jayne too; my apologies to her ghost), and the direction is really strange. A lot of the time it's shot like a stage play but sometimes the camera will go off in a random direction while someone is talking.

Also, there's more than one room. And furnished is a generous word to use for most of them.

Quotes:
"Take your stinking boat and throw it in the ocean!"

"Where does he get off playing dollhouse with real life human dolls?"  

"The world smells like BEER."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Strange."

Spoon Rating: 4

1990: The Bronx Warriors [1982]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

There is a grand tradition in the bad movie world of Italian rip-offs of Hollywood movies. While seemingly not as common now as it was in the 80s, you still get parodies of the concept like "Italian Spiderman." These knock-offs often have the same basic idea as the original but a lower budget and very strange acting choices. Italian rip-offs aren't always bad, though. "A Fistful of Dollars" was pretty much an unauthorized remake of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" and both are really great, iconic films. This movie is not one of those exceptions. 

If you want the plot, combine "Mad Max" with "Escape From New York" with "The Warriors." In the super futuristic world of 1990, the Bronx has become a gang controlled wasteland that the law can't touch. A girl who is supposed to be 17 but looks about 30, runs away from Manhattan to the Bronx to hide from her inheritance of a sketchy company that controls everything. She meets up with a motorcycle gang and starts dating the head of the gang, Trash, a guy who is only capable of wearing the tightest pants and 70% of a shirt and looks like an Italian Hayden Christensen in face and acting ability. Trash and his collection of hair metal band rejects become involved in a gang war staged to try to get that supposedly teenage girl back to her family. Motorcycle gang teams up with a Rolls Royce gang and they fight other, more evil gangs like the Zombies and a "Mortal Kombat" boss. Eventually, the cops, or a cop gang, shows up and tries to off everyone while the leader of the cops cackles like the villain he is. The ending is unclear.

While this movie had some comically over-the-top moments, a lot of the time we were spacing out and trying to gather the plot afterwards. The dialogue is odd and fixated on butts for some reason, the editing leads to illogical cuts, the aesthetic of the movie is more "Return to Oz" than "Mad Max," and, as can be expected of Iow-budget Italian films, it's strangely dubbed. 

Quotes:
"It could be a pile of shit out of someone's asshole!"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I agree with everyone else."

Spoon Rating: 3

The Masked Saint [2016]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

We are continuing to fail in our efforts to acquire "The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah" but we haven't given up hope entirely. Today we had to default to this film after an attempt to watch a different film about Christian time travelers fell through, but this was a solid back up. "The Masked Saint" is based on a true story of a wrestler who's also a preacher and how he tried to turn around a failing church in the Midwest while also beating up dudes on the side. This movie really wants you to know that Jesus and going around punching people are not mutually exclusive and that somehow they can come together for the greater good . . . or something. The message isn't totally clear.

Our main character, whose name I don't remember so I'm just going to call him The Masked Saint, even though that makes him sound both conceited and dead, is a wrestler who gets very injured during a fight with his nemesis who doesn't play by the rules, The Reaper. He takes this as a sign to retire and moves to a nowhere town to try to save the church there. After going door to door and having everyone very reasonably shut him out and a failure of a speech where he said 'faith' twenty times, things start to turn around when he starts sticking up for people like the town battered housewife and the town prostitute. With the help of a black lady lifted from the Stephen King "Magical Black Person" handbook, he remembers his former glory as The Masked Saint and uses this as inspiration for both his church and a side career of vigilante justice. This alienates him from his family and congregation, I guess because fighting bad guys leaves little time for writing sermons. He redeems himself with a cage match against The Reaper where the fighting is planned and televised and therefore more appropriate than stopping criminals. Everyone suddenly likes him again. I'm not totally sure this movie had an arc of any sort; people just feels things and then they don't. 

Overall this movie is pretty amusing. It's got a decent production value and the acting is mostly earnest and not comically exaggerated or poor but the weak writing and the odd premise make for so many strange moments that you will definitely laugh. 

Quotes:

Robber: "Who are you?"
Saint: "The good guy!" *punches him in the face*

Spoon Rating: 5

Beowulf [2007]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Blame Kay for this one. The original goal of the evening had been to watch a wildly anti-Semetic Christian movie Sarah heard about on a podcast but, in the absense of the internet, Kay had another suggestion. The possibility of watching "Beowulf" had been a vague threat for years but with the fact that Kay is currently teaching the poem to a bunch of high school seniors it made perfect sense to suck it up and finally watch this beast. Before getting into the plot, it should be noted that one of the absolute worst things about this movie is apparent immediately and actually caused Sarah to stop watching this movie after five minutes when she tried to watch it a few years ago: this movie is animated and it looks terrible. All the characters are made to look like the actors but with dead eyes and a lack of expression. This movie lives in the uncanny valley. It was also clearly made to be 3D so random things are thrown at the screen constantly.

If you've read the poem before, think that times 100 Hollywoods. Hrothgar, king of the Danes, has a slight problem with an unholy demon named Grendel, played by a burnt Crispin Glover, who breaks into his mead hall and eats a bunch of his warriors. Thankfully, Beowulf, the awesomest guy ever oh my god, lives just across the way in Geatland and comes to his aid. He decides to fight Grendel barehanded (and naked for some reason) because GLORY. Unfreth, a hater played by the ultimate hater John Malkovich, is unconvinced. After offing Grendel and proving he's the real deal, Baewulf ventures into Grendel's lair to fight Grendel's mother who for some reason has been reimagined from a hag into a naked, gold-covered Angelina Jolie. They bang so he can make up for killing her son by giving her a new son and she promises a kingdom in return. The terms of the deal are a bit sketchy but he doesn't really think about it until Hrothgar falls comically to his death and he becomes the new king. A few decades later when Beowulf is older but still banging a teenager in addition to Hrothgar's former wife, a dragon attacks who was the result of him banging Grendel's mom. He kills it and dies in the process. Wiglaf, the loyalest bro in history, weeps. 

This movie was very obviously made in a post-"300" world. Beowulf says, "I am Beowulf" at least five times which lead all of us to an "I'm Spartacus!"-like frenzy. It's very silly and will make you cringe if you know the original but it's not without some enjoyable moments once you get past the early Playstation Two graphics and obvious 3D pandering moments.

BMN Quotes:
Unferth: "I don't like the smell of this, my lord."
Keith: "Something's rotten in Denmark."

Quotes:
*Hrothgar blatantly falls off the railing*
"He must have fallen!"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was okay."

Spoon Rating: 4

Chopping Mall [1986]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

There should have been a movie night on Halloween. There should have been a good movie night actually. Unfortunately, Sarah ended up in the hospital after an allergic reaction and Kay had the flu so no one was ready to party. At least we managed to pick up Bad Movie Night again the week after with "Chopping Mall," a clear winner from the title. In the same way that "The Skateboard Kid" epitomized the 90s aesthetic, this movie WAS the 80s. It was also a ripoff of "Dawn Of The Dead" and "Repo Cop" in the form of waist-high robot mall cops that are about as intimidating as a dalek wearing a flower crown.

A new mall, 80s church, has a great solution to the problem of shoplifters: a crew of robots that will stun anyone who doesn't flash a valid employee ID. There's no way this could go wrong, right? After hours, a quadruple date goes on that involves the three of the four established couples having sex in display beds while the two people on a blind date watched "Attack of the Crab Monsters." Since we have fairly recently watched "Attack of the Crab Monsters," we immediately predicted the rest of the movie to follow a similar pattern to that one. Somehow a thunder storm causes the robots to become killing machines and they go after the fornicators. The least likable couple dies first: dude gets his throat destroyed, girl gets her head blown up. Then comes the stupid couple. The survivors confuse the robots with mannequins but it doesn't solve everything. The married couple dies heroically since they weren't sinning as much. The final girl sets the last robot on fire and the bad movie watchers come out alive. As well they should.

Overall this movie is very silly and adheres very strictly to the three act formula but the actual worst thing about it: no chopping. None whatsoever. These robots shoot lasers and pinch but they don't ever chop. 

Spoon Rating: 3