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

Rounders [1998]

This film came as a recommendation from my coworker who has good taste in movies and whose girlfriend is a professional dealer at a nearby casino. Normally, something has to go fundamentally wrong to have a film fall into the bad movie category when you have a cast like this. It's basically a who's who of the late 90s: Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Malkovich, Turturro, Bond Girl Famke Janssen. But as we well know, a good cast cannot save a bad movie: only market it. Hell, in this case it was a slight contributing factor. Basically, this film boils down to two sides: the baffling and the hilarious. 

To start with the baffling, the basic plot of this movie is that Damon is a law student and underground poker player who is totally not addicted to the game and has sworn off it after losing a bunch of money to sketchy Russian, Malkovich (put a pin in that). He goes to pick up his high school friend, Worm, played by Norton, from prison to find that he is severely in debt from his own poker playing. Damon agrees to get back into the game to help his friend, which we are supposed to see as noble. The movie absolutely frames every choice Damon makes as righteous even though the fact that he genuinely should seek help is obvious to anyone who has ever known any kind of addict. But see, he was just helping his friend! But see, he doesn't take advantage when his friend cheats! Pay no attention to how his law education is tanking and his rich girlfriend has left him. It's fine. Of course, he eventually beats the Russian at the end, pays off the debts and leaves for Vegas because why cure an addiction when you can monetize it? Oh yeah, and the film dabbles in neo-noir aesthetics with monologuing from Damon and smoky, yellow cinematography normally reserved for racist depictions of South America. 

Now for the hilarious. This movie has two absolutely incredible characters: Damon's law professor and Malkovich the Russian. The law professor was a sneak hit because after Damon helps him win a game against his colleagues, the guy gives a monologue in a bar about how he's the family failure because he became a law professor instead of a rabbi. The moral of the story boils down to "do what feels right to you," an outright encouragement of Damon's gambling habit. Later on his doubles down on his message by lending Damon $10,000 of the $15,000 he needs. Insane.

The other winning character is Malkovich's, a Russian gambler and club owner nicknamed KGB. His accent is the most delightfully strange thing and his mannerisms are an endlessly source of fun. He has a quirk of divination by Oreo cookie that we all started adopting as we happened to have Oreos for dessert tonight. The glorious fate of it all. The one downside is that he is only briefly in the beginning and then wraps us up with about 10 perfect minutes at the end. He should have been in more of it.

In spite of the topic of this movie and its two hour run time, it somehow felt like it had no stakes. At one point Damon and Norton get beat up for cheating, but there are no clear threats from lenders and relatively few consequences given the money they are dealing with. A question we often ask on movie night: who was the film for exactly? As far as we can tell, people who will see anything with a cast like this. And us, Oreo psychics that we are.

Spoon Rating: 4

Xanadu [1980]

This movie musical is often referenced but seemingly seldom remembered. I actually completely confused it for the musical Starlight Express, but it turns out the only similarity really is roller skating. No, this is the one with music by the Electric Light Orchestra starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelley. 

So what's it about? The razor thin plot is about a painter who meets a muse (a literal Greek muse but named Kira and not connected to any art in particular) and a rich guy who owned a club in the 40s who also knew the muse back then when she was a singer in his band. The three of them decide to open a new club called Xanadu after the incorrectly named capital of China (it should be Xangdu, pronounced Shangdu). That's the whole film. 

There are songs and dance sequences, but they have absolutely no purpose. To explain, as a musical theater person, every song in a musical should either A.) move the plot forward or B.) provide and expression of emotions that a character is feeling to better understand them. Because this movie has almost no plot and no character development either, the songs are just songs that feel like they were written entirely independent of the film. The songs weren't horrible or anything, but they were pretty unmemorable outside of the main theme and that's only because they say "Xanadu" 100 times.

Then there's the direction, which is also weirdly bad. Halfway through the film we questioned if this was originally a stage show since the shots were so static it felt like we were in a proscenium theater. Turns out, no. The director just had no idea how to shoot dance sequences in a film. A stage version did apparently run on Broadway in 2007 and from my quick glances, that show had considerably more plot than this film.

The mythology also makes no sense. Kira comes alive from a random mural of the muses near the beach the main character hangs out by? She worked with Gene Kelley before but he somehow both does and doesn't remember her when he meets her again 35 years later? She's not supposed to fall in love, but she does with the bland artist even though neither of them seemingly have any reason to fall in love and know nothing about each other?

If I had to stretch to say something nice about the film it definitely went all out with costumes and sets, even though those sets really felt lifted from a stage show and we never got a good look at them due to the crappy direction. The roller skating thing could have been interesting but it was mostly just that some people roller skated sometimes. There was no further logic beyond that. 

Spoon Rating: 2

Birds Of Prey [1930]

After trying to find the well known Glitter and being unsuccessful in finding one that is in English and doesn't have the music cut out, we ended up on a ChatGPT list that lead us to this old one. In spite of the bad sound quality and high pitched British accents, we managed to mostly follow this weird murder and cover up story. A former cop is killed at his fancy mansion party while everyone else is at a flower show by two guys who he had originally got thrown in jail. They are very smug about how good their coverup is although their whole thing gets exposed by the girl and her fiancee on the poster. The real draw of the film is the weird line reads of which there are enough to keep you from being too bored. We wouldn't recommend it, but it wasn't too bad.

Spoon Rating: 3

Trolland [2016]

Trolland a.k.a. Trollz is an Asylum picture so we knew we were getting into a cheap and speedy knockoff territory. What we did not expect was that the animation would fall somewhere on the spectrum of Foodfight and Rapsittie Kids. Playstation 1.5, if you will. It is ugly and it is utterly hilarious. 

The plot is completely secondary to the visuals, but I will explain anyway. The story takes place at a summer camp where the groundskeeper Olaf is obsessed with catching trolls, which he believes roam the grounds. Well, they do and they are basically entirely motivated by doing pranks on humans. Our main troll, whose name I don't remember but he's voiced by Ja Rule, has a sister (voiced by T-Boz) who is determined to be the top prankster. Ja Rule doesn't think pranking is okay and ends up becoming friends with awkward human boy Hayden, who ending bullied by some kids who will soon fall down the Alt-Right pipeline. Boy and Troll team up to stop T-Boz from pranking too hard, and we get a kind of "we aren't so different" moral. Olaf decides not to capture anyone but he will continue his cryptozoologist dreams by going after Bigfoot. 

I can't convey how hilarious it is to watch this movie. The lip flaps are random, clothes do through character's bodies sometimes, no one can actually touch the grass. It's hard to believe this was made in 2016, it's so terrible to look at. The troll skin has the texture and shine of gushers. All the campers look like emo kids because they have variations on the same hair. Sarah said it looks like everyone has CP. It's an endless source of amusement. And it's not too long at only an hour and 18 minutes. I'm not trolling you; it's worth it.

Spoon Rating: 6

Moonfall [2022]

It's been a while! With me being away for most of the summer, there haven't been any movie nights but we're back. This one is a suggestion given to Adam and Sarah by some people they met at a live God Awful Movies show. Within five minutes Adam said, "Wait. This isn't a Roland Emmerich movie, is it?" and he was exactly right. According to Adam, "Roland Emmerich has just been remaking Independence Day for years." While this wasn't quite the same, it certainly felt similar. The beats of every Emmerich movie are the same, but this one managed to gradually increase in stupidity as the film went on through it's two hour (yikes) run time.

The film starts with Patrick Wilson, Halle Berry, and someone else in space when the third guy gets killed by a mysterious electronic-seeming entity. Wilson is blamed and fired, but many years later they get caught up in an issue when the moon's orbit is changing dramatically. The discovery was made by Nick Frost, a conspiracy theorist. After a lot of nonsense, the three of them end up going to the moon to try to blow up the problem only to make the discovery that the moon is full of hyper advanced technology left behind by a super intelligent race of ancient humans. They all got wiped out when the AI that ran their peaceful society decided to attack them, and those are the entities they are fighting against. While all this is going on there is a stunningly useless side plot about Wilson and Berry's families trying to survive among the extreme weather changes, but it sucks because we have no emotional investment in any of them. In the end, Frost sacrifices himself because he doesn't have kids or whatever, and a hologram of his mother tells him "you're part of the moon now" with some kind of implication that there might be a sequel. Doubt it.

This movie gets funnier as it goes on, particularly if you don't know where it's going. The plot twists are comically dumb and the whole thing looks terrible. Adam said it looks like Grand Theft Auto 7 with the green screens that encompass all the settings. Some of the line reads are also so inexplicable or just weird lines like I mentioned above. Overall, we wish it had been shorter (that side plot should have been cut) but it was a fun time.

Spoon Rating: 5