Sparks

The previews for "Sparks" looked pretty decent, and the concept was good. My only issue is that I'm a huge fan of "Watchmen", and this would appear to be a pretty good-sized copy of that. While it doesn't have the large scale effects or Hollywood firepower, it's pretty much the same story. Using the term "supers" instead of "masks", the background narration, rough time frame -- just a few takeaways.

The acting was more than I would expect from this film. While there aren't any big names in this film, the actors themselves didn't come off as "novice". As well, the film itself didn't look like it was filmed with a WalMart video camera.

I would assume that if you're a hardcore graphic novel fan, regardless of quality -- then you could probably handle this. It was a little on the "thin" side for me.

From reading other reviews on this film, I feel a lot of people have misunderstood the film and are comparing it to the more prominent superhero films. You can't compare it to Superman, Spiderman, Batman, The Avengers, Captain America. It's dark, it's moody and it's very violent. It's a true old classic-style pulp action hero film that should be taken as such. It's similar to Kick Ass, Defendor and all those films with wannabe superheroes that have no powers whatsoever. They're everyday people armed only with self-made costumes and a passion for fighting crime. I really enjoy these dark 'superhero' films and I thought it was a great indie flick.

As for Miroslav Houdek's review on this film... you can't rate a film lower than what you actually think it's worth in order to bring the rating down so that it's closer to your actual rating. That's just nonsense, manipulative and extremely unhelpful. How is it that your opinion is more valid than all of the people that have rated the film higher than you?

Anyway, go into this film with an open mind and you'll enjoy it for what it is and not for what it isn't.

I like movies. I like a bit of cheese. I'll forego big budget effects all day long if you're ready to give me a bit of fun dialogue, a neat story, even just some good facial expressions and clever timing with the cuts.

This film is just bad. I'm sorry. It's bad.

So why did it have an IMDb rating of 7.3 when I decided to give it a whirl?

To be fair, that rating is now down to 6.7 a few days later. But there were THOUSANDS of 8, 9, and 10 reviews according to the breakdown link. For a movie with, I'm sorry, very amateur acting, a derivative storyline that's half Watchmen, half Kick-Ass, and none of the goodness of either. GLOWING user reviews written and then "found useful" by dozens of others.

I... I think the producer got all his friends and family to write nice things. :( I feel sorry for him, I know it can be hard to break out into the larger world with a small budget movie, but the first thing you need is SOME QUALITY, dude. Look at Primer. Look at Pi. Look at The Man From Earth.

Similar to Sin City or Watchmen it tries to utilize a film noir approach to tell the story and you can easily recognize that it could have been a great movie. Unfortunately the directors had no idea how they were going to do it. And thru the first 3/4s of the movie I could never shake the feeling that it was somewhat incoherent. It felt like scenes were filmed in a different context and spliced together randomly in the editing room, which also made the performances of the leads appear wooden and uninspired. Only the last 20 mins were not too bad and felt like they were intended to be this way. However they don't save the rest of it at least not for me. But if you can see past its flaws and you aren't bothered by them too much it's worth watching.

It is kind of hard to write a review that would be kind to this movie. First of all, I like Noir movies, I'll give most movies a bit of thought before I decide whether I like, or don't like. Now this movie is neither an drama, an action movie nor a comedy, it's more like a bad stage play. The acting was only just above amateur (kind of), the camera work was noticeably (kind of) bad. The effects were (kind of) tacky, the dialogue was cringefully bad (not kind of), the casting was all wrong (definatly), everything, and I mean everything about this movie was kind of wrong, in fact I'll go one step further and say, it was just plain awful. There was nothing about this movie that I liked, no wait, I lie... some of the cars were pretty cool, the biscuits I had with my cup of tea were pretty good, and I liked the bit where the movies disclaimer came up at the end, yeah, that was the best bit! Hmph. I did say a few kind words about it after all.