Who payed the critics

Boring, long, and too preachy.

Beautiful, moving film.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Let's first see what for instance Wikipedia has to say about Existentialism. It is a term that has been applied to the work of a number of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers who took the human subject — not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual and his or her conditions of existence — as a starting point for philosophical thought. Existential philosophy is the explicit conceptual manifestation of an existential attitude that begins with a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.(Spark) starts off with a young couple in the desert, with a dead car, and a creepy boy comes along. It's almost a theme in the horror movies. However this one is about the ups and downs of that couple (so nervous jobless guy, and his calm dreamy girl), plus their short living among some provincial characters; especially the superficially nice, deeply missed up boy. You, according to a long history of horror movies, will wait all the time for the monster to get out. But, surprisingly, it doesn't show up unless in the third act. Instead we watch some characters, doing what seem as meaningless things, being themselves, and that was the movie's point.It has its positive sides. For one it doesn't want to be cheap, therefore it dealt with its characters, the desert's ones for that matter, as humans, not monsters as most of the horror flicks deal with the strangers in front of the urban leads. In fact, it touches the evil inside of them, and the lead as well, to make us see it, along with its range; the love of possession, being a coward and a thief (the lead), and the latent violence, being a thief and a killer (the kid). See how the kid kills himself desperately at the end. It's not the police or one of the leads as the action, thriller, or horror movies used to wrap it up heroically. Another side which is somehow profound. We followed a half red Indian boy (the original owner of the land before the white man), with the black guy (the long-time slave of the white man), having different kinds of fuss towards the white man (mostly the mechanic here). But look at the way these once-victims think and react. They both suffer a true straying and irritability. They have a lot of anger that drives them in the wrong way. So the title, Spark, should refer to the testy nature of these 2, implying that their anger could be old, but their extremism sure leads them to dark endings.However, all of that is portrayed in a bit poor movie; with zero budget and mute cinematography. There is plot hole concerning the way how that boy knew the identity of the killer of his mother. I felt a dramatic emptiness, yet that, with a lethargic editing, could be meant to express the existential spirit of the movie. The casting and the acting were what I can safely call perfect. It's a story of love that never completes. A character study to some extent. And an existential movie, masquerading as possible horror. But it had to be more artistic to get more attention and attraction. I only "loved" the last scene, with the message of "He died" told by a dream by the sea. So I believe not many would be encouraged to stand it wholly, and really a few wouldn't describe it as pointless at the end !

I'm about half way through this right now. I watched it based on the intriguing plot summary that a hapless African American couple would find themselves unfairly besieged in a small town. Instead this story seems to be about how going into a small community and acting like a jackass will make everyone mad at you. I was already aware of that.Screen writing 101: Make us like, identify with and root for your main character. The male lead in this movie has managed to be such a jerk to so many people so quickly that I'm hoping this movie ends with him getting killed. Maybe that dog he maimed will crawl back into town and chew on his face? I hope, however, that the female lead finishes her trip to LA and meets a nice gentleman there who knows more than just cuss words and treats people with a little bit of respect.

I like small town/road movies and this was free on encore so I thought I'd give this a go and for the first half of the movie, it was simmering along nicely as Terrence Howard played the angry black man stuck in a desert town wanting to get his car repaired, feeling racist undertones in the all white town. But then the plot goes haywire as he becomes involved in the murder of the mechanic who was fixing his car, it all gets a bit silly and pointless and then at the end, his girlfriend wakes up on a beach and you don't even know what happened to him!One to avoid unless you like confusing movies with lots of plot holes.

Director Garret Williams expands on his short film of 1996 of the same title. Not having seen the first one, we took a chance at the newest version when it showed up on cable recently. Basically, the main interest was the presence of Terrence Howard, one of our most talented young actors working currently in films."Spark" falls into the category of road movie since its principals, Byron and Nina are traveling by car from Chicago to Los Angeles, where they plan to settle down. A lot of things happen to this pair along the way. Worst of all is the mistake they make in befriending Mooney, who is a loose canon and who plays heavily in the development of the story.Terrence Howard had been acting for a while, so this is not his first job, yet, the actor doesn't seem to have the the same 'spark' that marks his better appearances in the cinema. He was still a few years away from "Hustle & Flow", perhaps his best work, so far. His Byron is an enigma the way it comes on the screen, following Mr. Williams' direction, or maybe the way the character was conceived. Brendan Sexton III does good work as Mooney.A film for fans of this talented actor that will watch Mr. Howard in anything he appears.