Boobah [2003] & From Hell It Came [1957]

 Last week we started with a nightmare of a children' show from Erik's younger sister's childhood called Boobah. The plot, as far as we could tell, was about these colorful, farting aliens who are trying to make sense of earth by creating little scenarios starring characters like Mr. Man, Mrs. Lady, Auntie, Grandmama, Brother, and Sister. In this installment, the humans played jump rope in wild rapture. The whole thing gave us Teletubbies vibes, which turned out to be dead on as the show was created by the same people who made Teletubbies. We were also baffled to learn that the show is meant to be an exercise show for toddlers and not just nightmare fuel for anyone over four. 

All in all, it was a wild experience that we recommend. Drugs might help (or they might induce a panic attack) but even without them we had a good time.

Spoon Rating: 6

After that, we watched a short, old horror film called From Hell It Came about a tribe in the Pacific islands burying a guy as a punishment for a crime only for him to come back as a tree monster. It was pretty boring at first, just following the white scientists there and one misogynist in particular who wants the female scientist to quit sciencing so she can be a good housewife, but once we got the tree monster and his rubbery costume, we were delighted. It wasn't really worth the wait, but at least we got something for our troubles.

Spoon Rating: 3

The National Tree [2009]

This movie was selected purely on the fact that the premise is so incredibly strange and, honestly, dumb that we decided it had to be watched. Here we have a bona fide Hallmark film about a "seventeen year old" kid who enters a contest to have his tree evaluated to be the new "national tree" after the old one was struck by lighting. What this means is that the tree his parents planted for him when he was born will be uprooted and replanted on the White House lawn. Why does this matter at all? Mostly for dead mom and father-son bonding reasons. 

The son, named Rock because a rock needed to be moved for this tree to be planted, is a vlogger on the most 2002 website possible where he's got a few international friends and an online girlfriend. After winning the contest, his curmudgeon dad decides they should take the tree himself, being really salty about the removal of the tree in general but never actually expressing his feelings to his son. They are traveling with a woman connected to a toy company sponsoring the move, who has an sir-not-appearing-in-this-film fiance and totally isn't going to be set up with the dad by the end of the film. On the cross country travel they encounter tens of people excited about the tree because I guess not much happens in those towns at all, the son maneuvers the tree through a fire, they meet up with grandma, and they meet up with the son's online girlfriend who stows away with the tree and nearly freezes to death. Once they finally make it to DC, they get the bad news: the tree is going to be cut and put in a stand, not planted. The son is ambivalent but the dad is shook by his callousness. The son has a turn around and cuffs himself to the tree, riling up the crowd, and the tree is planted.

This movie is pretty wild. The acting is funny, both from the clearly 25-year-old son trying to act childish and the dad who is just mad about everything. There are some strange camera moments to punctuate this. And again, the premise itself is so weird that it frequently becomes comical how important this tree is. Sarah asked a good question at one point: Who is this movie for? It's light on the romance and even light on the Christmas cheer and nationalism given the premise. It seems like the target audience might just be old people who want clean entertainment and who want to live in a simple time where a guy carting a tree across the US is actually worthwhile news. We wouldn't watch it again, but it was definitely worth the one time.

Spoon Rating: 5

Falling For Christmas [2022]

This post is late due to internet issues, but although this movie has been talked about a lot, there isn't really that much to say. This movie isn't even the one that comes up when you Google Image search Falling for Christmas because apparently another movie was made with that name in 2016. Sarah quickly identified the movie as a remake of Overboard, a movie no one else had seen, and it's also another of those movies that was made by Netflix but is for all intents and purposes a Hallmark movie. The main reason this movie is talked about is because it's being heralded as Lindsay Lohan's return to film.

The film is about a hotel heiress who gets amnesia after falling off a ski slope. She gets taken in by the widowed owner of a failing, rival ski lodge and learns how to do chores and fall in love. She gets her memory back and ends up moving in with the lodge owner and becoming a stepmom to his plucky daughter. That's functionally the whole film. There's a bit of a side story with her "comic relief" fiance who also got lost in the woods, and he seemingly has a happy ending too when he realizes that he's gay or bi but it's presented somewhat subtly because "Hallmark." I guess that's progress.

The film doesn't have many laugh moments. There are a lot of cliches, a random old guy who's the Santa stand-in, and very little reason for these two to fall in love. Mainly it's interesting to watch the uncanny valley of Lohan's face. After a lot of drugs and plastic surgery, she doesn't look quite how she should. She's only 36 and when her face isn't moving, she looks like a normal 36-year-old with some lip filler. The second she has an expression though, there's just something off about her. This isn't meant to be a criticism, clearly she's had a rough time, but the byproduct of this as an actor is really interesting since she has to make faces for her job. 

Overall, you probably shouldn't bother with this film; if you really like this kind of movie, there are funnier ones out there.

Spoon Rating: 2.5

Blood Beat [1983]

This film is very poorly represented by its poster. There was no sex in the movie. The vibe of this movie is some sort of combination of Things and Hereditary but without the humor of the former or the quality of the latter. Frequently something would happen in this film and we would all look at each other in the hope that someone understood what happened but no one ever did. The lore of this movie is kind of nonexistent, and the film kind of feels like an attempt at justifying someone's purpose of samurai armor.

The plot is about a woman's two kids coming home for Christmas with their significant others. She's a painter who refuses to marry her boyfriend, and her son's girlfriend thinks she can read her mind. There's some deer hunting. Sometimes the girlfriend freaks out and has visions of a samurai. People start dying. This samurai seems to have something to do with the mom, but it's not clear. It might give her the ability to paint or just possess her to make its own paintings? The samurai is defeated kind of easily by her two kids who may have magic powers that they got from her. That's the end.

We only really got two brief laughs. Mostly we were confused.

Spoon Rating: 2

Killpoint [1984]

Gonna be honest here: I definitely watched this movie and I definitely don't know what it's about. Some guy named Night Hawk stole guns? Some guy named Marx killed a prostitute? I literally couldn't follow it and even the Wikipedia summary is only two sentences long. And that's not because it's badly written (but it is). It's because every once in a while an absolutely wild scene would happen and I would forget everything else that happened before it. Most of those scenes involved Cameron Mitchell talking to or about his tiny black poodle who mysteriously disappears 3/4 of the way through the movie. Some of them were just scenes of Leo Fong, staring dead eyed into the camera, not a trace of acting attempt made. There were some moments of downtime and some lengthy, very poorly choreographed fight scenes, but ultimately the crazy energy of this movie was pretty consistent throughout. I liked it, but I already don't remember it.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

Sorceress [1982]

This movie asks the question, what if Andy Sidaris played Dungeons and Dragons? 

The plot is kind of hard to follow for basic logic reasons. An evil sorcerer goes after the mother of his children in order to sacrifice their first born to a god who gives him power. The surprise is that she had twins and won't tell him who the older one is. The twins are given connection powers by a wizard or something and then they are raised as boys (for no discernible reason) by some peasants. They encounter a Pan-like man and a red-bearded viking who take them to a Middle Eastern style brothel where they meet some blonde guy to help them. They are captured shortly after and the guys who caught them do a spell to see which is older. The older one is taken to an Egyptian style palace with the blonde guy as her consort, given soma (yeah, like from Brave New World), and then set up for the sacrifice. There's a final battle. The good guys win and it's kind of implied that the blonde guy gets both twins?

This movie is lame. Most of the film operates under the "rule of cool." There's a lot of boobs peeking through absolutely hideous costumes. The lore doesn't really make sense. The acting and fighting are unconvincing. There's gotta be better fantasy out there.

Spoon Rating: 2

Standing Ovation [2010]

There needs to be a name for the genre of films that seem like Disney Channel Original movies but aren't. Popstar was the last movie we saw like this and, honestly, this kind of movie is actually a win, far more than actual DCOM since those actually have some standards. This time we have Standing Ovation, a movie that combines the inappropriateness of Popstar with the absolutely nonsense of something like Deadly Lessons. It was a ride.

On paper, this film is pretty basic. It's about a quintet of preteens call The Ovations who are trying to win a singing competition against their rivals, The Wiggies, a quintet of high school seniors or something who look 23 and are all the adopted daughters (or sugar babies?) of a rich wig manufacturer. There's also an annoying "little sister" character who is no one's sister but is trying to join both groups and her voice is like nails on a chalkboard. The main girl of The Ovations, Brittany, is struggling with trying to keep her Irish grandfather from gambling away what little money they have while her songwriter brother is off giving his songs away to The Wiggies. Brittany meets a girl named Joey who definitely has mafia connections and agrees to be her manager. She's also 12 by the way. Joey has her own mission to get revenge on the man who robbed her family, leading to her father's early death. Again. she is 12. I honestly hesitate to say much more about the plot because part of what makes this movie so off the wall is how many times it genuinely surprises you, often with Joey. It's kind of like if Step Up was combined with a bad neo-noir. It's also a musical and while the dancing is fine and the production of the music is pretty okay generic pop, the lyrics of some of these songs are just pathetic or curious. The boy groups sings a song about how Beyonce, Britney, Rhianna, and Whitney all want them in their dreams but they're saving themselves for you, girl. Oh, and the wigs are bad but The Wiggies all wear pretty cute 50s throwback clothes to make up for it.

This movie genuinely shocked us with a lot of moments while still having the most predictable last 15 minutes ever. Adam might have hit the nail on the head with the assessment that the movie feels a bit like it was written to have adult characters initially but then they changed it to kids for marketing purposes. Or the writer is secretly a bit inappropriately fascinated by little girls, if you get what I'm saying. But hey, the writing is bad (fat jokes and gross out humor: why), the camera work is occasionally hilarious, and it's full of cringe or WTF. I wouldn't really want to watch it again myself, but I definitely would to watch someone else's reaction. Give it a go.

Spoon Rating: 6