Wednesday 28 January 2009

On a lighter note: The Spirit...

Despite outlining my plans to spend the month watching Oscar nominated/worthy films, I'm also likely to watch the usual trashy popcorn flicks.

So the first film I actually saw this month was Frank Miller's solo directorial debut (after working with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City) The Spirit.

I'd like to say I went into the cinema with high hopes, but I'd heard rumbling that the film was a bit of a stinker... and on the whole it is. Plodding and clunky, The Spirit could do with some major editing and much much better dialogue. However it does have it's moments (the foot scene) and undoubtedly has the best looking cast of the year (Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes and Paz Vega amongst others) so it's worth a DVD watch. I'd say the ideal viewing conditions would be on a night in with friends when you just wanna watch something fun and your not going to pay too much attention to dialogue (which is truly awful throughout) or plot. The sexy cast and ludicrous cartoon violence would be well matched with alcohol and frivolity, rather than serious concentrated viewing.

As a fan of Frank Miller's comic output, I hope this film is a blip and that he gets the chance to redeem himself, but in the end I can't give it more than a 5/10 (only half an hour into the film some of my friends wanted to leave, if that's any indication to it's quality.)


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