Movie Crush Monday: Little C and The Spirit

Hello readers,
We hope you had a good Thanksgiving and that you have now woken up from your turkey comas to resume normal life. CT's movie crush post last week was perfect in that it gave me the opportunity to either go for a Joss Whedon movie or to follow Chiwetel Ejiofor to the seasonally appropriate Love Actually. I'm doing neither, because readers, it's time. Time to discuss a movie that was not a commercial success but that was still so much fun that I bought a copy as soon as it went on sale. A movie that while deeply flawed, was stylistically perfect. I followed Sarah Paulson from Serenity to The Spirit.

Now I know some of you are sharpening your wit, ready to throw angry judgements my way. You are, as usual wrong about this. The real problem with this movie is that people watched it expecting Sin City. It has many of the same people attached, it's visual style was similar. It was a fair expectation. But the comic that this was based on was a fun film noir style comic (It was also in the beginning of it's run fairly racist but so was Superman so...) If everyone had gone in assuming that there was going to be a touch of goofy, they wouldn't have been so thrown by Samuel L. Jackson chewing the scenery. 

Also, Scarlett Johansson was fricken delightful

The story is simple enough, the same hero origins and vague revenge plot pops up all the time in comic book movies. What this movie managed that not even Sin City pulled off was a perfect visual style. Every frame of the movie read like a comic book. They shot the whole thing green screen and animated in everything, including the snow in one scene. The result is so stunning that I had trouble paying attention to the actual goings on of the film for the first half hour. It's rare to see such dedication to a style. 

So while I will allow that this movie has some flaws, It's also got four separate kick ass female characters with backstories and unique motivations. And while it pains me to make this comparison, not even The Avengers had that. Frank Miller has a deep love for a woman who can kick ass to protect herself and is fully willing to throw someone else under the bus if it serves her interest. They're all over his comic books, and all over this movie. Do they still dress skimpily at times? Yes. But I would again argue that the costume choices are in place to serve the visual style. 

So if you're willing to not take this movie so seriously, give it a try. 

Happy Watching,

Little C