DVD: The Spirit, For retail and rental, (Lionsgate)

Frank Miller's adaptation of Will Eisner's 1940s comic strip series is a stylised pulp fiction pastiche, much like Miller's previous film, Sin City.

Unlike Sin City, though, it's an unwatchable folly that might make sense to its director, but not to anyone else. Queasily obsessed by suicide, comic industry in-jokes, and Nazi fetish gear, The Spirit is a plotless parade of inane banter, leaden action, and pantomime acting from Samuel L Jackson and Eva Mendes.