Death Machines [1976]

Unable to resist a bad martial arts movie, Adam offered up this one for the night and it's kind of hard to place it. 

First of all, this movie kind of lacks a central character, or at least it does until a bit too far into the movie. It may be tempting to say the film is based around the "death machines" a trio of three men who are supposed to be great hitmen and never speak, but they don't take up much screen time aside from when the white one has a fight in a religious diner for no reason. The "death machines" are under the control of a man with a giant beard who is only in the very beginning and sort of directed by a different guy and a woman with a terrible wig who seems to be struggling with English. Whenever we are in the woman's house, the audio violence of the soundtrack is real. The machines are given an assignment and some killing happens. Then they take out a martial arts instructor and his whole class with one survivor who kind of become the POV character although we're already halfway through the movie. He doesn't actually do anything aside from be sad and date his nurse. This film is so hard to parse. 

Aside from the vaguely nonsense plot, the acting is bad, the soundtrack is absurd, and the fight scenes can get comical. We got a good amount of laughs from all this, but the plot did start to really drag towards the end. At least we had baby Jade to amuse us during the boring parts.

Spoon Rating: 3.5

Hollow Man II [2006]

I have not seen the original Hollow Man but apparently it doesn't matter. This movie was clearly made as a quick cash grab that only required Christian Slater to be on set for one day. 

Basically, he's invisible and out for revenge against the doctor who did this to him, but we don't even really learn the backstory until more than halfway through the film. We spent the whole first half not really sure why anything was happening at all. The lead is Peter Facinelli a.k.a. not Tom Cruise a.k.a. the doctor dad from Twilight. Both his character and the doctor character are incredibly dumb and make consistently stupid decisions throughout the film while having the barest amount of romantic tension. They do manage against the odds to take down ghost!Slater but with our lead having to become invisible in the process. It feels sort of like a sequel set up but that clearly wasn't going to happen. In the end, we got a few laughs from the invisible prank-like behavior but it was a lot of groaning.

Spoon Rating: 2.5

In Gramps' Shoes [2014]

From the director of The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah, we have this complete narcissism-fest. Written and starring (but only co-directed) by Donald James Parker, a Christian who wants to really spread his anti-LGBT, anti-Semitic, and many other anti themed branded of Christianity, tells a story about a family with the best grandfather ever (him, obviously). 

The film starts with a woman called her estranged father and asking for money because even though she lives in a very clean, bland middle class house, she's apparently in deep trouble. Gramps moves into the house and bonds quickly with the 13 (but definitely played by at least a 16) year old daughter. However, the 16-year-old son hates him, especially after he beats him and his friends in a race and tells him to get a job. Gramps starts bringing them to church and teaching them about the evils of Harry Potter and oh, god this movie is so boring for so much of it. It's shot so poorly and paced so slowly that you can space out for a while and not miss anything. But then you black back in during the last twenty minutes or so and stuff gets weird. The daughter's ex-husband shows up drunk and Gramps beats him up, getting shot and dying in the process like the good martyr he is. The family all talks about him and the son wins a track meet and gets the good Christian girl love interest to go to prom with him. End of Gramps' running shoes.

This movie would have been a lot more tolerable if it wasn't nearly two hours. It had a few laughs, but it isn't quite as worth your time as the other things we've watched from him.

Spoon Rating: 3

Monkey Shines: An Experiment In Fear [1988]

This is a George Romero movie. Yes, that George Romero. Not everything he did was good, but this movie definitely had an interesting progression from "normal film that's neither boring nor interesting" to "why is this happening."

After two butt shots before the minute mark, our protagonist gets hit by a semi (something that was literally called by Adam) and becomes quadriplegic. His girlfriend leaves him for his doctor, a weirdly young Stanley Tucci, and he now has to live with an annoying nurse and her bird. After a suicide attempt, our protag's weird friend who is injecting monkeys with human brain shavings contacts a woman he knows who trains monkeys to help people like our protag. The friend donates the monkey he's experimenting on, Ella, to the cause. At first things are great. Ella is good at her job and the two get along while our protag is also developing a romance with Ella's trainer. Then Ella kills the nurse's bird after the bird attacks our protag. Suddenly Ella and our protag are psychically linked for some reason and Ella is now killing people he doesn't like including his ex and Tucci, his mom, and eventually just anyone in his life. The protag ends up killing her by basically biting her and whipping her around. Because disability in movies is often shitty, the film ends with the protag fully recovered and dating the monkey trainer as if he couldn't have a fulfilling life without a full recovery.

We can't really recommend this movie because it's almost two hours and doesn't really start to get good until the halfway point but the acting from midpoint on is peak. The main actor is relatively inoffensive in calm scenes but once he's supposed to get vengeful and kind of possessed by the monkey, his acting becomes insane. The deaths are comical too, particularly Ella's. Actually Ella may be the best actor in the whole film. Good for her.

Spoon Rating: 3

Cellular [2004]

It is entirely possible that everyone had already seen this. I had definitely seen this in my freshman year of college with my friend Alex. Sarah started thinking she had seen it about halfway through. By the end, Adam wasn't entirely sure that he hadn't see it either. Anyway, it's not bad. It's not good really, but it's pretty functional as an action film that won't make you think.

Kim Basinger is a science teacher in a house that a teacher definitely can't afford who gets kidnapped. She hot wires a landline and manages to call Chris Evans who then goes on a crime spree in an effort to help her. He is unable to prevent the kidnapping of her son and husband, but he does get his hands on the thing the kidnappers are after: a video of them robbing and killing some drug dealers. They're cops. But because this is a movie William H. Macy is a good cop who helps Chris Evans take down those bad cops instead of keeping quiet after he finds out what his coworkers did. ACAB.

As I said before, it's not bad but it's nothing special. It's got a really long third act and a very silly end credit sequence involving people looking at their phones. Adam was mad that Jessica Biel was only in it for a few minutes, but otherwise we were mostly just fine with it.

Spoon Rating: 2/10
Star Rating: 2/5

Grizzly II: Revenge [1983]

There is definitely more of a story to this movie, but I guess I just don't know how to find it. Here's what we do know: this is a sequel to Grizzly, theoretically, that was never fully put together but someone saved it after realizing that the opening scene of dumb teens getting murdered by a bear features unknowns George Clooney, Laura Dern, and Charlie Sheen. I wonder what ever happened to them. In more substantial roles we also have Nurse Ratchett, Gimli son of Gloin, and a cameo by Wormtail. And if you think the actor situation here is odd, let me tell you that it's really in line with the overall oddness of this movie. 

This movie is only an hour and 15 minutes and is clearly pieced together in a lot of places. It follows three stories: that of some poachers who killed a baby bear and pissed off the mother and are out to get her; that of a park ranger, bear expert, and John Rhys-Davies (a French Canadian hunter with possible indigenous roots) trying to stop the bear; and that of Louise Fletcher trying to host a rock festival in a national park (it makes no sense; just go with it). There's also a subplot with the park ranger's daughter getting banged by some musician or something. The film cuts between these three plots and none of them do much. Almost everyone dies at the end including the bear who gets electrocuted by the music equipment. 

What's interesting about this film is the hack job it became. There's some truly egregious ADR, some clearly modern scenes spliced in to try to lengthen the movie or add continuity, and the acting, including the bear, is not good. Although the tiring concert scenes towards the end are mostly boring, this film does have a lot to offer.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

King Of The Lost World [2005]

We haven't watched a ton of Asylum films, but we've dabbled. Unfortunately, we didn't know this was one until the start at which point we all groaned a bit. They are usually utterly devoid of sense in a frustrating way but can occasionally provide a poorly CGIed laugh moment. I guess. Mostly this one was just frustrating.

The plot is supposed to be loosely based of Conan Doyle's The Lost World but they threw a giant ape in there to try to capitalized on the fact that Jackson's King Kong had just come out. The plot follows a couple survivors of a plane crash on a seemingly deserted island who have absolutely no idea how to live. Right away one is killed by a giant spider and by killed I mean instantly wrapped up in web like Frodo in Return of the King but when they rip it open he has already been reduced to a skeleton (with an eyeball? okay). The island also has giant scorpions, which it's worth noting are less dangerous than small scorpions, and one stabs a guy backwards. The ape appears twice and is very blurry. The crew is then captured by some other survivors who went feral after like two days and they use a nuclear weapon to destroy the ape somehow not destroying the whole island. The film ends with one guy and two girls from the original crew still miraculously alive and not radiated to death but also still completely stuck on the island with no way out or plan. I guess the scriptwriter gave up.

This film gave us about two laughs from the CGI but it's really not worth your time. Instead we fantasized about a fighting match between all the women of the King Kong films. Fay Wray has no chance, Naomi Watts would be the best fighter, but Jessica Lange would fight dirty and try to gouge your eyes out.

Spoon Rating: 2