I have a bad movie rec. Now there are two reason to rec a bad movie. One is Mystery Science Theater level of badness and while this is mockable, I'm not sure it is worth the effort. The other is that an otherwise bad film does one thing well, and so is worth watching if you are in the mood.

My Rec: The Spirit. So many plot holes it is a chain link fence, dialog so bad it makes the worst Hulk movies seem like Shakespeare by comparison Some really good actors wasted in it,but the writing is so bad you mostly can't tell they have any acting ability. Though there is a certain fascination in Samuel L. Jackson as the villain of the piece (The Octopus). I'm pretty sure he gained ten pounds from all the scenery he chewed.

So why the rec? For pure weird-assedness. I'm sure weird and grotesque is what Miller was aiming for, and though it is a shame he sacrificed everything else to get there, he achieved it. It is weird on a number of levels.

One is causualness towards death. Not just callousness on the part of the villains, but pretty much nobody seems to take death seriously (with maybe two exceptions). For example not only does the Octopus consider his minions as disposable as kleenex, the minions have the same attitude. So when one of the minions is run over by a pretty woman villaines/sidekick, he spends his time while dying commenting to the other minion how pretty she is. Occasionally a minion about to be killed will try to talk the Octopus out of discarding him, with the earnestness of a little kid trying to wheedle a cookie he knows he won't get. Both The Spirit and The Octopus tend to die and come back to life a lot. And Sand Serif (kind of a villain/semi-hero) and the Spirit's lost love manages to blackmail someone who betrayed her into killing himself. Basically, she talks him into killing himself - I guess cause he does not take his own survival that much more seriously than the OctoMinions take theirs.

There is also the weird feel of the city - 40's style building, fashions and appearence of cars, but with modern computers and internet. Shot in black and white, I presume mainly to save money, but contributes a grotesque feel of an old noir film glimpsed in a funhouse mirror.

The characters are pretty much all grotesques too. In short: IMO worth watching for pure weirdness and grotesquery. A bad film with one feature worth watching for - provided you don't spend much on it, and don't have better to do.

Shot in black and white, I presume mainly to save money,

You can't save money by shooting in b/w anymore. It's not like there are huge batches of b/w stock lying around as everybody went to color as happened in the sixties. You actually lose money because it's harder to make overseas TV and cable deals.

Noah Baumbach talked about this when shooting Frances Ha. (Which I want to see.)

It's purely an aesthetic choice.

If they shot it in digital (as I presume they did) it's just something they fiddle with in post-production.

OK, so purely artistic choice. Still overall a bad movie. Still wonderfully weird and grotesque.

Rereading, the phrasing is ungracious. Thanks for the correction. I learned something new.

BTW, even though most of the script owed little the original comic, the character names mostly are from the Eisner comic. Which makes me wonder if 'Sand Serif" is a font geek joke.

From looking at the trailer, I thought that the B&W conversion for Frances Ha was very poorly done.

And Frank Miller is batshit insane these days.

You can still buy B&W film, but it's more expensive and nobody I've ever met in the film/TV industry likes the way it looks. Most people working in B&W are either aiming for an old-timey look (which you can't get from modern film) or a super-stylized look (which you can't get from modern film).

I got announcements that said Madison and Cliff will be in the Veronica Mars movie.

I saw that! Cliff Cliff Cliff!!!

His video was awesome.

I saw Frances Ha and really enjoyed it. It does a wonderful job of capturing the delirious, complex, claustrophobic friendship of young women. The film kinda loses its way at points but onthe whole i was quite impressed. Gerwig is lovely.