Grindhouse

Scratch what I said about The Host being the funnest time I've had at a movie theatre in a very long time. This is the most fun I've had at a movie theatre ever. Seriously though. If you haven't seen this movie yet (which is a ridiculous notion, because everyone with any taste saw it on opening night,) do it now.

The "grindhouse" double feature kicks off with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. There's actually not too much you can say about the first movie. It relishes in the simple pleasures of gross-outs, hot women, zombies, and LOTS of guns, and is entertaining from the very first scene. Everything about it is intentionally awful. The actors are walking clichés, the effects are messy, and a reel goes missing during a sex scene involving a 1-legged woman. In simpler terms, it's a big freakin' pile of pure awesome.

Rose McGowan, as Cherry Darling, is really a perfect leading lady. I imagine she went through hell walking like she has only one leg for the majority of the movie, but damn does it pay off. Admittedly, I was expecting her to have a machine gun leg for a lot longer, but without it she's still a delightfully odd screen presence (and not in the awful Zooey Deschanel way), so you can live without it. With this movie and her upcoming role as Susan Cabot in the biopic Black Oasis, you never know - she could become this generation's Janette Scott.



After a couple of choice fake movie trailers ("If you're thinking about going into the basement...Don't. Don't. Dont."), we're plunged into Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. No matter you're personal qualms about Tarantino, you've gotta admit he really knows how to make movies. In Reservoir Dogs, he single-handedly conceived a new way of screenwriting. In Pulp Fiction, he practically re-invented the twisted narrative. In Kill Bill, he transformed a spaghetti-western/kung-fu mashup into an epic commentary on how far you'd go for the ones you love.

Now similarly in Death Proof, he pulls the rug from underneath the audience a couple times over. You think you're in for the schlock that you just saw in Planet Terror, but with car chases, and black women instead of zombies and machine guns. But instead you get a sly embrace of femininity disguised as a slightly misogynist concept (psychotic man kills random girls with his "death-proof" car just for the fun of it.) Sort of like American Psycho or something. The first act concerns one bunch of beautiful, young, vulnerable women and introduces us to reclusive, mysterious Stuntman Mike. We soon find out that Mike's hobbies include murdering ladies like them, and you can pretty much figure out where that storyline goes. And then the second batch of divas are introduced (Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, Zoe Bell) and a whole lot of snappy Tarantino dialogue ensues, followed by an insane, draining car chase between them and the crazy Stuntman Mike (scene of the year!) It was a smart choice to put his movie second, because it's far ahead of Rodriguez's attempt.

Overall, Grindhouse is probably the movie event of the year - a one-of-a-kind experience that you'll probably never have the chance to see again. Surely, the DVD version won't have the trailers, the missing reels or the poor quality of film. So I urge you to go see this while it's still in theatres (and maybe help it out at the box office).

Planet Terror: B
Death Proof: B+/A-