A Groom For Christmas [2024]

Nollywood or Christmas? Why pick? This movie is really just a Hallmark movie in Nigeria so it has all the conventions and silliness you would expect from that.

The plot centers around Lotanna, a lawyer who's secretly in love with Adaeze, his best friend and a mechanic who picks the worst men. The film starts with Lotanna skipping out on game night with his silly friend who's always eating in his office to comfort Adaeze after a breakup with beer and dish washing. Before Christmas, Lotanna goes away on a three week trip and in the meantime Adaeze meets his cousin, Nebolisa, a surgeon who has been living in Paris the last 14 years but has come home to meet a nice Nigerian girl. They hit it off way too quickly and by the time Lotanna comes back, Nebolisa is proposing on Christmas with plans for a wedding on New Year's Day. This is insane behavior, and even if Lotanna wasn't speaking from a place of secret love, he is perfectly in the right to question his friend and cousin's choices. As the minutes were ticking down, we were really looking for the gap to allow this wedding to stop. In movies like this you usually have the fiance turning into a jerk, but Nebolisa is a good dude the whole time. We wondered if there might be a class difference element coming in, but Lotanna's mom/Nebolisa's aunt is super supportive the whole time. We even wondered if classism might be why Lotanna didn't admit his feelings since his mom is trying to set him up with a law student (seemingly his mom is a professor), but this isn't mentioned either. Basically Lotanna never admitted his feelings out of sheer fear of rejection. Honestly, it does make sense in a while since they have been friends for ten years and that admission could ruin a beautiful friendship, but if you are having a breakdown at the thought of her finding someone else, you maybe were always going to lose. Either way, at the wedding Lotanna shows up to support his friend and Nebolisa says he can't marry Adaeze because he knows he's not the one. Lotanna and Adaeze end up together and thankfully don't get married immediately on the spot. Everyone is happy expect Nebolisa, I guess, but he'll be fine probably.

As I mentioned earlier, this film has a lot of Hallmark level silliness and contrivances but with the wonderful Nollywood addition of incongruous music. Overall, a fun, barely Christmas vibe, outside of some terrible caroling. 

Spoon Rating: 6 

One Of Us Likes You [2025] & Fated To Miss: The Luna In his Dreams [2024]

As our picks get more obscure, my ability to find good images for them starts to wane. Our first short film of the night was "One Of Us Like You." After an awkward meeting between a girl who curiously can't find her house and a guy who seemingly has multiple personalities, a date ensues. Her entire backstory is a little off, and he is constantly switching between Eli (the normal, nerdy guy who likes her), a morning routine filming pick up artist, a stereotypical anxiety-ridden glasses wearer, and eventually fourth personality based described as jerkass. She's completely cool with his DID, but then reveals that she was his online friend who disappeared one day. Apparently he finds this too weird and kicks her out. Months later he has a new girlfriend who is annoying and he has gone back to making friends online, seemingly talking to the girl he rejected for stalking him.

This film had a couple funny moments but wasn't really bad enough. Just odd.

Spoon Rating: 3

Our second film, however, was an absolute banger of a vertical drama. Titled on YouTube as "Forced Love: True Love Is Around" but actually called Fated to Miss: The Luna In His Dreams, this is a werewolf romance where no one ever turns into a wolf. Two young werewolves named Snow and Silver make a blood pact to be together when they find each other again as they run away from a hunter. Years later, Daniel Bloodthrone, Alpha of his clan, is engaged to marry Amelia Hurricano, who is adopted and her dad hates her and wants to marry her off. Neither of them want this because they are looking for their true loves, Snow and Silver respectively. How long can a misunderstanding trope go on for you ask? Oh, so much longer than is reasonable. 

Right before the wedding, Amelia is tortured by a girl named Lilith who wants Daniel, and Lilith gets her blood oath ring in the process. Both Lilith and Daniel's beta, Leon, are in love with Daniel and want to break up the marriage. Over time, Daniel and Amelia organically fall in love, deciding to forget about their true loves and blood oaths and just bang. For a second, everything is perfect as they realize they were Snow and Silver all along, until Lilith shows up spouting memories that Snow had and wearing Snow's blood oath ring. Daniel, being the stupidest man on the planet, is now confused about whether Amelia or Lilith is actually Snow. Amelia is very rightfully pissed. She has an altercation with Lilith that ends with Lilith stabbing her in the collarbone and killing Elizabeth, Amelia's maid and friend, which rightfully drives Amelia to rage. This is broken up by Leon confessing his feelings for Daniel, who is again confused, and then Leon himself because he knows he can never be with Daniel. 

Later, Amelia and Daniel bump into each other at Elizabeth's grave and Daniel begs Amelia to take him back. And for once in one of these vertical dramas, we get acting that feels real as Amelia dumps him, says she can't trust him, and tells him to grow up. Daniel responds by stabbing himself, a very mature counterpoint. Amelia basically says, "Here's a tissue to stop the bleeding, and I'll go get a doctor, but I'm out." She leaves him and nine months later gives birth to a girl. A true happy ending. 

This was excellent. It had all the hallmarks of a vertical drama - the weird acting, the melodrama, the poor editing - but it has the added benefits of dumb werewolf lore and a main character who turned out to actually be a genuinely reasonable person who won't put up with a stupid man's shit. What a win.

Spoon Rating: 8 

Selfless Love [2022]

We have found a new world of bad movies to explore: Nollywood. Sure, we've watched Hollywood films that suck but want your eyes on them and will use violence and explosions to do it. We've watched Bollywood movies that are out to entertain you with every genre at once in three hours of unrelenting activity of all kinds. But now we have Nollywood and on the basis of one film, they are also out to entertain you no matter what but specifically with insane interpersonal drama. This movie is the Nigerian The Room.

In the very first scene we get a woman putting together a plate and then another woman entering and getting mad at her for eating her food. That's the start. That's how we are introduced to the main conflict. The eater is Rebecca and the cook is Aurelia. Aurelia is married to Rebecca's brother, Maxwell, a man with no backbone and a permanent kicked puppy expression while the women around him are upset and he does nothing to help. Shortly after this intro to our mains, Stella, Maxwell's cousin, moves in so Rebecca has a partner in crime. They convince Maxwell that Aurelia has demons and needs an exorcism, which they do on the balcony of their razor-wire protected compound. Maxwell kowtows to Rebecca because she raised him like a mother and he feels in debt to her so he is seemingly bankrolling all three women out of a sense of duty. Max then goes away for a while and Aurelia finds out that after three years of trying, she's finally pregnant. She doesn't tell Rebecca because she wants it to be a surprise for Maxwell so Rebecca just thinks she's being lazy and makes her life hell. Aurelia has a miscarriage and again, doesn't tell Maxwell so there's even more of a strain between them. She asks Maxwell to make Stella leave and he tries but, of course, Rebecca flips out. Eventually Maxwell stands up to Rebecca and she responds by immediately stabbing herself in the stomach. The doctor, a friend of Max, tells him about the miscarriage that was caused by Rebecca, and Maxwell finally decides to kick out his sister and chose his wife. The film ends with Rebecca and Stella getting mugged and Aurelia is pregnant again.

Recounting the events really doesn't do this film justice: it is insane. The face acting on Rebecca and Stella alone is worth it. This movie is so over the top in its drama that you are never bored. The music stings are abrupt and the background score sounds full Casio aside from the one song with lyrics that they paid for so they play it a minimum of four times. There are establishing shots as scene transitions when there are only three locations in the whole film (the house and the area in front of it, an alley where the priestess lives, and the doctor office). Minus the sex scenes, it really is The Room with a different plot. Please watch it. We will be looking into more Nollywood films for sure.

Spoon Rating: 8 

You Only Live Twice [1967]

I am by no means a connoisseur of James Bond movies, but I've seen a few in my day. I know the earlier ones are more silly while the later ones are more serious. I know that while the movies never had great representation of women, they definitely start bad and get better. I've heard that depictions of racial groups could be really cringe at best and outright racist at worst. This movie has all those bad qualities, while also just being kind of odd in harder to define ways. There are some unique [derogatory] editing moments, a plot that only starts to make sense later, the origins of many an Austin Powers joke, and on top of all that, the script is written by Roald Dahl. You'd hardly guess considering the lack of traumatized children.

The film starts with an unidentified spaceship eating another spaceship and crashing to Earth. The Americans think it's the Russians. The British don't give a fuck. Apparently it landed in the sea of Japan so it's off to Japan. But first, James Bond fakes his death in the most convoluted and unreal way that involves a sea burial. Hence the title of the film: YOLT.

The first 40 minutes of the movie are kind of random and not too weird outside of a scene where a mini-helicopter is constructed with quick cuts and then there's a heli fight that feels like the film's equivalent of pod racing. Bond meets with a bunch of people in quirky offices and pretends to be someone else, easily now as everyone thinks he's dead, and sleeps with some women who will eventually all get killed. After he finds his Japanese hook-up though, we get women in bikinis doing rubdowns, the reveal of ninjas, the goal of turning James Bond Japanese (he just looks like a different white guy), marrying him off to a Japanese agent who spends most of the movie in a white bikini after she's out of her kimono, and hiding him in a remote fishing village. The location of the village means he sees helicopters flying into a volcano and goes to investigate.

It turns out that the evil spaceship was launched by Spectre, the head of which is the character Dr. Evil was based off of, stroking cat and all. This man has a lair in a volcano with a shitty monorail and a flesh-eating piranha pit. This movie is not serious, and outside of wanting to start a war between the US and Russia, the motivations are unclear.

Bond escapes the lair and solves the mystery. At least the cat is okay.

Spoon Rating: 5

Ax 'Em [1992]

This film may have some of the worst sound we've had at least for a while. Probably a by-product of the home movie quality. The plot was very similar in vibe to Sledgehammer from a few weeks ago: a bunch of college kids rent a cabin and a ghost-zombie of the murderer who lived there comes for them. At one point we got a subplot where two guys enter a house to look for help when their car breaks down and the black friend correctly nopes out of there immediately while the white friend becomes a target. No one really dies, including the murderer.

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

Slipstream [2005]

Not to be confused with any other films of the same name as this is actually the third most searched film called Slipstream. This film is apparently the worst time travel movie and it doesn't come by that title lightly. At an hour and half run time, this film manages to feel like it's going nowhere slowly and then it literally goes nowhere. Amazing. 

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 

John Henry [2020]

This movie is a real unicorn of bad movies. A lot of the time with bad movies we can find something to like about it outside of the unintentionally funny parts, but rarely do we ever walk away from a bad movie talking about how the cinematography and direction were actually really nice. That's the case here however. With such interesting use of color and angle I assumed the director had a history in making music videos but at least according to IMDb, nope. He just has a good eye. Unfortunately, he also wrote the script and he does not have a way with plots or dialogue in the way that he does with camera work.

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, kills 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