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Yea.....

I bought "The Spirit" last night on DVD despite all the horrid reveiws. I assumed that that Millers vision might prove interesting somehow. Also I "like" cheesyness in movies sometimes, and I heard this one was over the top cheesy.

My Review.

The movie looks pretty.

Dialog was FRIGGING stupid...I could suspend my disbeleif 'just' enough to not eject the disc.

The Spirit himself....he WAS supposed to be the hero right? I really didnt notice him doing anything to justify the label "hero" in this story other than the fact he REALLY hates the octopus.

My two favorite things in the movie:

The clones.
Eva Mendes sans clothing.

Miller needs to go back to being a moderatly successful comic writer/illustrator....if this is an example of his work without he help of Zac Snyder, Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez, he sucks in film.

Ditto to all of that.

The movie was just a vehicle for putting Sam Jackson in weird costumes and situations.

That is all.

The trailers left me pretty excited. When I finally got the movie I was a bit underwhelmed... I enjoyed it, some very nice catchphrases, but the comedy element is too exagerated. Some of the special effects were horrible (the choppers firing, the little 'footsoldier') and how come his ex-wife didn't see he was her late husband?

Amongst other things, like the rookie cop. Totally got on my nerves.

Miller has one trick. If he tries to go outside of it, he falls apart.

the clones were a good laugh, but that is about all i recall.
oh, and they had mr jackson in a different costume every 37 seconds or so

Man, I'm glad I never wasted any money on it. Once I saw that the general look of it was gonna be like Sin City (MIGRAINE!!!) I decided to give it a permanent pass.

I couldn't stand Sin City or 300 so this passed my by.

Da Boss wrote:Miller has one trick. If he tries to go outside of it, he falls apart.

I would argue that Miller was never very good at that trick in the first place. The moment he dropped Klaus Janson and started inking his own stuff his work went downhill.

On occasion, Miller gets a couple of great drawings in. But sometimes, man, he's almost as bad as Rob Liefield. Sometimes worse.

His ego's definitely gotten the better of him over the years.

/Incidentally, I loved The Dark Knight Returns.

Personally, I´m a great fan of Frank Miller´s art, so I´m a bit biased. But I think The Spirit was a great movie. I did really like the dialoques - yes, they don´t make much sense but the way some of them are set in scene is art. The whole dialoque with Samuel L Jackson and Scarlet Johannson discussing while the spirit is tied to the chair is great. It´s filmed in a very interesting style, the camera always following one of them while they are walking from te left to the right, for ten minutes. This, plus all the strange nazi-stuff and the cat..... It´s so grotesque! It´s an art-movie, I think.

Jin wrote:/Incidentally, I loved The Dark Knight Returns.

Returns was great, but The Dark Knight Strikes Again was horrid.

Millars art is nice in small doses. I'm convinced he can't actually draw correct anatomy though. The real issue is why everything has to be the same grimdark setting with him. He's not particularly creative, whores and drugs. Those are basically his only tools as an author.

Yeah. MOAR HOARS! is how I sum up Frank Miller's work.
Cos Hoars are both sexy, edgy and cool.

When I was about 15 I thought Sin City was vaguely interesting, and I still like Dark Knight Returns. Everything else he's written is a pile of crap. And he's a nutjob.

Jin wrote:On occasion, Miller gets a couple of great drawings in. But sometimes, man, he's almost as bad as Rob Liefield. Sometimes worse.

His ego's definitely gotten the better of him over the years.

/Incidentally, I loved The Dark Knight Returns.

Dark Knight Returns was inked by Janson. Janson always cleaned up Miller's anatomy and line-work. Without Janson to tighten up Miller's work Miller's art has been falling apart. I've seen Frank Miller's pencils. Inker's nightmare. All the more testament to how awesome Klaus Janson is though.

Did we have to mention Rob Liefield into an art discussion? I mean it's like dragging Hitler into a political debate.

The Spirit sucked. Bad. Everything about it was terrible. The camera work was a good attempt, but done before, so just came out as a rehash. The dialogue was confused, forced, and hokey. Half the time the actors didn't even really seem to be trying (not that I blame them- I would have looked at the scripts and been like WTF???). The exaggerated action failed on an epic scale. The whole Nazi scene was so contrived and utterly pointless that it rivaled the samurai one. The only redeeming part of the movie was the mildly entertaining idiots (clones) and the hot actresses. But any National Lampoon's movie can also say that (not referring to the Vacation series but the terrible straight to video ones).

Art makes you think. This movie makes you groan.

jmurph wrote:Art makes you think. This movie makes you groan.

Yeah, you´ve got a point there. By saying ´art-movie´ I meant the visual style of the film. The film doesn´t have a any "philosophy``. But I think this is good, too, not just these "Hollywood-Ethics".

Batman the dark knight .: In a world without honor you thought we were honorable men / Night is at it´s darkest before dawn / In a chaotic world the only morale value is chance

So let me change what I said.: The Spirit isn´t "true" art with a meaning, it´s groteque/surreal fun.