Hot chicks sell movies. And
although she isn’t quite Angelina-calibre I will still see anything starring
Scarlett Johansson (even
The Nanny Diaries)
which is why I was initially stoked on Frank Miller’s
The
Spirit
— which also features Eva
Mendes, Sarah Paulson, Jamie King and Paz Vega. It’s a hot-chick-athon and it
opens this Friday at the Village 8.
Unfortuantely, hot chicks are
the only thing
The Spirit
has
going for it. Frank Miller (who was a writer on
Robocop 2
but is much better known for
Sin City
and
300
,
adaptations of his popular comic books) makes his solo directing debut here and
while some of the monochromatic visuals are interesting the rest of the flick
fails miserably.
The Spirit is an ex-cop who
dies and comes back as some sort of immortal. Sworn to protect Central City, he
mostly just swoops around, narrating directly to the camera and messing with
various dames. Sam Jackson bug-eyes his way through the role of arch nemesis
The Octopus (despite having only 4 limbs). Certain action sequences of
The
Spirit
are pretty cool and the chicks
are all hot but the dialogue is so poorly over-dramafied (over-dramafigated?)
and the plot is so scrambled it needs to be spoon-fed by bad guys pacing about
and clarifying what is supposed to be going on through dialogue. While
The
Spirit
, and the women therein, will
certainly look better on the big screen, this is a renter at best.
More cute women hit the
screen in
Bride Wars
in which Anne
Hathaway and Kate Hudson play best friends attempting to ruin each other’s
weddings because they happen to be booked for the same date. Hathaway’s last
flick,
Rachel Getting Married
is
an exception but generally I like to stay away from any sort of wedding movie,
and here’s why:
Muriel’s Wedding
— sucked.
My Best Friend’s Wedding —
sucked even more.
The Wedding Planner —
J Lo and McConaughey, still sucked.
27 Dresses
— give me a break. My
Big Fat Greek Wedding
— kill me now.
Four Weddings and a Funeral
— makes me wish the funeral was my own.
The
Wedding Singer
— Okay, this one
was decent, as was
Father of the Bride
but consider those the exceptions that prove the rule. Wedding movies
are not for me, and could they be any more predictable? There’s no press
screenings of
Bride Wars
but I can
tell you right now they hug it out at the end. What a load of crap.
If I’m starting to sound like
a grouchy old man just check out
Gran Torino
, also opening Friday, in which Clint Eastwood plays a
really crotchety Korean War Vet named Walt Kowalski who’s just lost his wife and
isn’t all that happy with the immigrant families moving into his old
neighbourhood. Walt is a rough, tough, elderly-Dirty-Harry kind of guy who has
no problem dropping racist lingo into his everyday conversation as he literally
growls his way through the early part of the film.
When a young Korean boy gets
caught attempting to steal Walt’s prized 1972 Gran Torino things begin to
change. The boy must work off his debt to Walt and wouldn’t you know it, they
both learn some new things by the (surprising) final act.
Gran Torino
, which Clint also directed, is a slow and steady
drama, and a bit heavy-handed at times but it’s still a well-crafted movie
about racial tolerance, where a hard-nosed conservative like Walt can realize
“I have more in common with these gooks than I do with my own family.” The hot
chick factor is low but Eastwood’s last movie was
Changeling
, which starred Angelina, so Clint gets a pass.
