Grindhouse

When my brother asks me about a movie I've seen, he asks two questions. Is it good? And can I take my wife to see it? She's a little sensitive to the violence, profanity, and nudity, and doesn't really want to see a movie with too much of any of that. My answers to those questions for Grindhouse would be a definite "yes" and and even more definite "no." Grindhouse is awesome, but your kids should not see it, and if you've ever thought about not seeing a movie because it seemed too violent or bloody or anything, you should skip it too. But I'm not one of those people, so I loved it. And since the movie's split in two, I might as well discuss them seperately. But in the spirit of Quentin Tarantino movies, I'll put them out of order.


Most every movie geek worships at the altar of Tarantino, but I'm not one of them. I felt like Reservoir Dogs was his best film, and each one since has been progressively worse. They're not bad (I really loved Reservoir Dogs, so he's got a long way to fall), but they've been increasingly self-indulgent. Kill Bill could've been one really good movie, but instead it was two pointlessly long ones, because Tarantino had to prove how cool he was by cramming in as many references as he possibly could. He's a big enough name that he can get final cut on his own movies, and apparently removing scenes that don't work or derail the flow of the action is too much for an auteur such as himself.

Death Proof suffers from a similar problem, but it's an improvement in my book over Kill Bill. It's still too long and could have huge chunks of it removed easily which would improve the movie dramatically. But there's still a lot to like. The action scenes were great, the soundtrack (as always) was top notch, and Tarantino's dialogue is never boring, which is important. Had a lesser writer made an action movie which spends the vast majority of the film showing groups of girls just chatting with each other, I would've gotten so bored I'd have left the theater. But with QT at the helm, there was enough clever back-and-forth to keep me from wondering "what is the point of this?" all that much.

Despite my complaints, I did enjoy the Death Proof section. It's just that to me, it suffers in comparison to Planet Terror.


On the other hand, I am a Robert Rodriguez fanboy. I skipped the Spy Kids series, but otherwise I think each one of his films has been better than the last. El Mariachi was impressive for how cheap it was, Desperado was kinda cool but silly, Once Upon a Time in Mexico was awesomely silly, and Sin City was just brilliant.

Planet Terror is a gory, bloody, violent, hilarious movie. Rose McGowan having a peg leg made out of a machine gun does a remarkably good job of describing the movie. Full of violence, sex, and ridiculousness, but in the best possible way.

The cast mostly combines sexy young women and cool older guys who I haven't seen in a while, which by itself makes for a pretty cool cast. But throw in Lost's Naveen Andrews, ditching his fake Iraqi accent for what I assume is his natural British accent, and it's just plain great.

One thing that stuck out to me was the much publicized "aging" process that both films were put through. Planet Terror is full of specks and lines and junk all over the screen and legitimately looks like it's a reel of film being shown for the thousandth time, while Death Proof has some intentionally clunky cuts but otherwise looks almost pristine. I can only assume this is because Rodriguez shoots everything digitally, making post production effects like this easy and cheap, while Tarantino shoots on film.

A lot has been made of the fake trailers, and they're hilarious. But discussing them at all would probably count as spoilers, so my thoughts about them (and some general spoilers as well) after the jump:

Probably my favorite scene in the whole film was in the Werewolf Women of the SS trailer where Nicolas Cage showed up. I would definitely go see that one and Machete if they were real movies.

Death Proof was pretty misogynistic though... as far as I could tell, Stuntman Mike had no motive other than that he just liked killing women, and it sure seemed like the girls in the second half of Death Proof left their really cute friend in the cheerleader outfit behind to get raped by that guy. Maybe that was a reference to the sexist element of the genre they were parodying, but I thought it was kinda disturbing. I'm all for the aesthetically pleasing display of the female form, but not for that kind of degradation.