REWATCH: Showgirls [1995]

We had extra time at Bad Movie Night this week so we decided to do a rewatch of "Showgirls." It seems hard to believe that it has been three years since we last watched this movie but I can't find evidence that we watched it more recently than 2015 so there you go. 

At this point we have watched this movie enough times that we can quote the significant moments, so we spent a lot of time speculating about how one might try to fix this movie (not that it needs to be fixed really; it's a masterpiece). To us the biggest plot hole seems to be the fact that Nomi has so many things handed to her seemingly because people immediately like her or want to have sex with her. However, she is not likeable . . . at all. Or sexy. She's mostly just violent and bitchy. So we tried to imagine this movie with Nomi as an actual likeable character, maybe even with a character arc, and decided this would solve at least half of the problems with the film. The question remains though: is Nomi unlikeable because of how she's written or how she's acted? Either way this wouldn't fix everything since the dialogue is a mess and there are more plot holes than just Nomi but still, it's a fun thought experiment.

I literally cannot top what I wrote about "Showgirls" last time so read my older review here complete with GIFs.

Spoon Rating: 9 or 10

Mankillers [1987]

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

"Mankillers" is written and directed by Richard A. Prior of the wonderful film "Deadly Prey" so you know there are a few things you can expect right away: pantslessness and angry dudes that have gotta die. Of course, as the title should indicate, this is an exploitation film so this time we gets ladies without pants instead of men without pants, regardless of how much they should be wearing pants while crawling on sandy ground. Ouch.

The plot shows its simplicity from the first scene when two groups of men meet to exchange "stuff" for "merchandise." We speculated heavily about what these two things were until we discovered "stuff" was drugs and "merchandise" was women for trafficking. One of the dudes involved in this was an undercover agent who defected to the bad side and tried to kill his female partner. Said female partner is taken out of retirement to form a squad that will take him and the other traffickers down. Not too strangely, she asks for an all-female team. Strangely, she wants them to all be women culled from a maximum security prison who will get an option of a shortened sentence if they live and succeed. The ladies are given short-shorts and artfully torn shirts to train in and we get to hear the one inspirational 80s montage song that they paid for over and over again. The last half hour of the movie involves the mankillers actually killing men and rescuing the trafficked girls who are way more clothed than they are. At one point, McKenna, the leader is kidnapped by the bad guy and the red head who is on death row shows that she has had a change of heart in her commitment to the team and leads the group to save her.

The strange thing about this movie as an explotation film is that there is no real nudity. At one point while running a girl's breasts came out fo her shirt but it was clearly an accident that was kept in. Somehow though the perpetual bralessness and super short shorts made the movie feel more obscene than a film with blatant nudity.

Overall, it was decent. It was no "Deadly Prey" but it was definitely worth a watch.

Spoon Rating: 6

Rollergator [1996]

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

In the great pantheon of bad movies involving reptiles our experiences have tended towards the negative. "Repligator" and "Theodore Rex" were some of the most painful to sit through of all the movies we've watched. Only "Tammy And The T-Rex" stands alone as being more along the lines of delightfully crap. So you can imagine the hesitation to watch "Rollergator." And that hesitation should have been enough to stop us, but no. Adam is out two dollars and we all have wasted an hour and twenty minutes of our lives.

What's it about? A talking baby alligator, who occasionally raps, becomes friends with a girl who never covers her midriff and she tries to protect him from the carnival that wants to put him on display and a ninja. These two things might be connected. It's supposed to be a kid's movie but because the lead actress spends so much time partially naked, it just as easily could have turned into a "Howard The Duck" type relationship, which we were all dreading. Also, it has Joe Estevez, one of the lesser known members of the Sheen-Estevez Hollywood dynasty. He's a bad guy with a desk made of children's floor tiles.

Aside from the plot and acting, which were expectedly abysmal, the movie was also mostly shot in gator-cam and the sound was horrendous. Aside from simply not being able to hear the dialogue clearly (there was no boom mic to enter scenes at least?), the whole movie had this underscore of a folksy guitar that was unceasing. Every once in a while you would get used to it and be able to ignore it but once you noticed it again, you wished for death.

We checked out IMDb when we were done and saw such reviews as, "Not so much a movie as it is a recording" and "colossally miscalculated waste of air and space." Amazon had such reviews as "Does this violate the Geneva Convention?" and "The ceaseless folksy guitar is so malignant that not even Rifftrax's many excellent jokes can make this film watchable" and a sarcastic "This is so fly!"

Watch at your own risk.

Spoon Rating: 1 (but a slotted spoon)

God's Not Dead 2 [2016]

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

After the madness of "God's Not Dead" last week, we had to experience the sequel and not just because we bought them in a two pack. Curiously, the main character from the first movie, Josh Wheton, is mentioned but does not appear and we get a new main, a history teacher named Grace. The useless subplots and all their characters are back however, I guess to anchor the stories in the same universe. And i do this universe is the most apt name.

Story Time. There's a teen book by David Levithan called "Boy Meets Boy." The story is a pretty standard gay romantic comedy in every way except for the universe it exists in. Instead of happening in the world as we know it, a world of heteronormativity, the book takes place in this one town that is especially LGBT+ friendly where phrases like "the drag queen quarterback" and "the three straight members of the boys lacrosse team" set the viibe of the town. As long as you can accept the conventions of this queer utopia universe, the book is a fun little read, but if you think that the book exists in the world as we know it, you may just find it unbelievable and hard to get into. I mention this because I think the idea is similar for the "God's Not Dead" movies. The movies exist in a world, or maybe just town, that is separate from the rest of the world, and you have to accept the conventions of this town in order for the film to work. Of course, in this case the thing that is different about this town is a distinct hosility towards Christianity that is supported and upheld by fervent, evil atheists.

The main plot surrounds a non scandal in which Grace is teaching about Martin Luther King Jr. and a student who is finding Jesus in the wake of her brother's death asks a question that compares MLK to Jesus. Grace answers the question in a totally public school friendly way, quoting scripture with citation to "the author of the book of Matthew" and treating Jesus as a historical figure. AND YET, this somehow turns into a huge situation where Grace is accused of preaching in the classroom and instead of just accepting that she made a mistake and moving on, or alternatively arguing that she didn't do anything against policy (because she didn't and for the reference, the writer of this blog is a very secular public school teacher), she decides to take the situation to court to "fight for her beliefs." What exactly she's fighting for makes no sense whatsoever. The rest of the movie is focused on the trial, and it is impossible to tell what the stance of the two sides are because the goal here seems to change constantly. The opposition is, ridiculously, the ACLU because in this universe the ACLU is the bad guy and no one wants to take Grace's case except a young libertarian lawyer (who miraculously doesn't go through a conversion by the end). In the real world the ACLU would be all over supporting Grace but whatever. Somehow the end conclusion of the film is proving again that God's not dead because . . . they proved that Jesus was a historical figure. Okay, movie. Also, the film ends with another Newsboys concert and then an after credit scene of the comic preacher getting arrested for not producing his sermons during the case. Set up for the third one!

We played Christian movie Bingo. Adam got Bingo first, followed by Keith, then Kay, and then Sarah. We literally all won there were so many stereotypes.

God's Not Dead [2014]

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

After "Last Ounce of Courage" this was inevitable really. "God's Not Dead" is a wildly popular Christian movie with far too many sequels and more to come. As connoisseurs of Christian movies, we wanted to find a reason for why this particular Christian movie has so captivated its target audience. It's higher quality production value wise than a lot of the Christian movies we saw for one thing. It has actors who people have heard of even though they are basically C-list at this point (Kevin Sorbo aka Hercules and Dean Cain aka Superman). It also features the Newsboys who are apparently a really popular Christian rock band. Really though, the reason this movie seems to be so popular is the premise of the main plot: a fervently atheist philosophy professor goes up against a fervently Christian freshman. I have written before about how Christian movies always want to set up the Christians as persecuted people, but I think the idea of setting most of the film in the world of academia makes more sense than usual in a way. Colleges are seen as liberal (see: godless) places, hostile to religion. While this is the marketing of colleges, like the marketing of America, this idea is false. To quote Adam, an actual philosophy student, "Philosophy classes are actually overwhelming tolerant of every single person's stupid ideas." I could actually just write a whole post about how over-the-top evil the philosophy professor is or about how every single character in the movie builds their theories on fallacy, but this post would be way too long. However, I do have pictures of our logical fallacy Bingo cards. The writer of this blog won. Next week we will be watching "God's Not Dead 2" with Christian movie Bingo.

The main plot centers around a college freshman, Josh Wheton (not to be confused with Joss Whedon). At his registration for his general education classes, he is warned by a student helping him not to take the philosophy class he is taking, after seeing his cross necklace. We find out why pretty quickly. The professor has a bunch of names written on a white board, which we immediately noted as not being a list of all philosophers. 

Turns out it was actually a list of atheists, which he was using as justification for why atheism is better. He then makes all the students write "God is dead" on a piece of paper. Josh refuses and they argue, which concludes with the professor saying he must give three speeches to the class defending his position. By the third, the whole class is on the "god's not dead" bandwagon. Of course, you find out that the professor used to be a Christian before he lost his faith and got angry. The movie ends in the most cheesy and forced way possible. The professor gets hit by a car driven by a reverend who begs him to accept god in his dying moments, which he does.

This isn't the only plot, although it is the most prominent. There are subplots all over the place that loosely connect to the two mains. The professor's girlfriend is a Christian who is  taking care of her dying mother and getting made fun of by her boyfriend and his educated friends so she dumps him. A Chinese student in the class calls his dad a lot to talk about how he is starting to like god in spite of his communist background. Josh's reverend has a guy come over from somewhere in Africa to . . . hang out and talk about god? I don't know. A liberal blogger who is in a bad relationship with her business boyfriend finds out she has cancer and finds god. And finally, in the most painful subplot, a Muslim girl secretly listens to Bible audiobooks and is kicked out of her house by her overbearing father. In the end, everyone goes to a Newsboys concert and texts everyone they know about how god is not dead. Oh, and some "Duck Dynasty" people are in it.

Overall, this movie isn't really funny but it is fascinating. The way non-Christian characters are presented is so exaggerated that it's practically parody, albeit with a solely judgement and mean-spirited lense. But then, the creators of this movie have probably never met an atheist or secular person.

Spoon Rating: 5

Hard Target [1993]

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

If you happen to be an unusually diligent reader of these posts, you may have noticed that there wasn't a post two Mondays ago. This wasn't a mistake but actually the result of the writer of this blog being on vacation in New Orleans. The movie that night was a rewatch of "Russian Terminator" which we watched over five years ago so the writer did not remember it enough to write anything about it. 

We were going to watch "God's Not Dead" tonight but it's currently in the mail so we decided to bet on what seemed to be a sure thing: the first American movie by John Woo starring Jean Claude Van Damme. It's basically "The Most Dangerous Game" set in New Orleans. It was a good bet.

A perpetrually surprised looking woman goes to New Orleans looking for her father who left when she was young only to find out that he died mysteriously the day before. She almost gets mugged by some guys who Van Damme beats up for her. Turns out he is a Cajun native (with the greasiest mullet in America) so she pays him to lead her around the city and help her solve the mystery of her father's death. They stumble upon a company set up by some foreigners where rich people can pay to hunt poor people who will get $10,000 if they can make it ten miles to the Mississippi without dying. When the foreigners realize Van Damme is onto them, a third of the movie becomes an extended fight scene that takes place mostly in a warehouse full of old Mardi Gras floats. Oh, and at one point they meet up with Van Damme's uncle who is the guy from the diabetes commercial.

This movie is actually quite funny and most of that is thanks to John Woo and whoever edited this film. The direction and editing decisions are WILD. There are Woo trademarks like doves in the background and dual guns and a POV shot for an arrow, but there are also great awkward still frame moments, weird wipes and dissolves, and just tons of poorly timed cuts. 

The biggest downside of this movie is that Van Damme doesn't wrestle a gator. We still totally won New Orleans bingo though.

Spoon Rating: 6

Last Ounce Of Courage [2012]

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

America and Christianity: two questionable tastes that are often paired with little regard for sense. Christian movies we have watched in the past have usually had a sprinkling of patriotism, but never have we seen something quite this blatant. The American angle is so strong that we almost thought we were watching a war movie originally. I mean, look at that cover on the right. It certainly doesn't scream, "Christian movie" so much as it screams, "ex-veteran biker" who actually is our main character and narrator. Oh, and a holy martyr representing all persecuted Christians in America. What, you ask? Who are these persecuted Christians since Christianity is actually the dominant religion in America and Christians have tons of cultural capital? Let me explain "Last Ounce Of Courage".

The film starts by talking about a soldier going off to war and dying, leaving behind his wife and baby son. The story is told by his father, an ex-veteran and fervent Christian. For whatever reason, 14 years later this man, who is a pharmacist, biker, and mayor, and separately a crew of high school students decide that the town needs more Jesus. They stop saying "Happy Holidays" and start saying "Merry Christmas." They fight to keep decorations on a Christmas tree. The kids change their secular winter play about aliens to be the nativity story, which isn't actually a stretch since the play is literally just a version of the story down to actually using "Silent Night" in the play with changed lyrics. Our main martyr fights against the evil secular powers on the platform of freedom. He pretty deliberately gets arrested for putting up a cross and is applauded like a hero. The kids put on their play and somehow no one is sad they didn't get to see a play about winter aliens. Most strangely, the soldier's son, who has had nothing really to do for most of the film, comes on stage to play the video of his father dying in the war to prove . . . something. Something other than, "I own a snuff film that surely would have been seized by customs." The audience cries as he holds an American flag. Christmas is saved. Kirk Cameron would be pleased.

This movie elicited a lot of groaning, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It was amusing in a trainwreck kind of way. The kind of Christians who watch this kind of movie want so much to be punished for their beliefs (I hear the "God's Not Dead" series has a similar bend) and it's kind of sad. It wasn't always laugh-out-loud funny, but it's pretty worth the watch.

Spoon Rating: 5