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"Grindhouse" is a passionate ode to
Mondo Culto exploitation movies from indie auteur's Robert Rodriguez
and Quentin Tarantino. Like a lot of love letters, it contains more
ardor than common sense.
Unless you live in a publicity-proof cave, you're aware that "Grindhouse"
is a double feature. Rodriguez leads off with "Planet Terror," a
whirligig parody in which nerve gas turns most of Earth's population
into pus-faced monsters. Then, after a handful of trailers for
nonexistent movies, the best of which is “Thanksgiving Day”,
Tarantino presents "Death Proof," a loving homage to '70s stalker
movies, with a stuntman who uses vintage muscle cars to kill young
women. The filmmakers so adore the energetic trash that inspired
them as teenagers that they assume camp nostalgia is enough to carry
viewers through a three-hour-plus double bill.
For film geeks who know the difference between "Macon County Line"
and "Jackson County Jail," maybe it is. For everyone else, it's
doubtful. Too often the films fail to separate what made drive-in
shockers good (unapologetic bad taste and an ability to generate
excitement on a shoestring) from what made them bad (the kind of
self-indulgence that homogenized studio products filtered out.)
One thing the production gets right is the pacing. It comes roaring
out of the gate with a preview of "Machete," a gory revenge movie
that distills 90 minutes of hard-R action and overacting into 90
seconds of pure pulp poetry. It's an ideal appetizer before
Rodriguez's first course, an apocalyptic rave-up that somehow
manages to combine pole dancing, motorcycles, brain-gobbling
mutants, high-caliber weapons and the best chili recipe in Texas.
Rodriguez captures the skittish visual vigor of cheapo movies, which
covered up shoddy sets and gaps in logic with a lot of distracting
jump cuts. Though he shot his film digitally, Rodriguez made it look
like an aged celluloid print with scratches, pops and missing
frames. And he uses the gimmick creatively. When Rose McGowan is
introduced, doing a sizzling go-go dance, Rodriguez has the film
"burn up" in the projector.
The story is demented, but so shamelessly illogical that it makes us
co-conspirators. The action unfolds in a small Texas town where
everyone seems to have an absurd, plot-advancing connection to
everyone else. McGowan and Freddie Rodriguez play ex-lovers who
rediscover their feelings in the midst of a zombie attack. Josh
Brolin and Marley Shelton are married doctors whose bad relationship
gets a lot worse, adding a murder/adultery subplot. Naveen Andrews,
wearing a gloriously tacky thrift shop wardrobe, is a mysterious
scientist who knows how to stop the plague, and is extremely
proficient with automatic weapons for a biochemist. By the time a
rescue helicopter zooms low, its rotors decapitating a score of the
stumbling undead, you're willing to go with it.
Tarantino's contribution isn't awful but by comparison it's awfully
slack. Kurt Russell is the ideal actor to play Stuntman Mike, a
homicidal lecher who stalks women in supercharged hot rods. Russell
can switch from charming to chilling with the cant of an eyebrow,
and he brings a proud history as the antihero of many a John
Carpenter thriller. Here he preys on two posses of women, first
attacking a quartet of helpless damsels in Texas, then setting his
sights on a trio of much-tougher women in Tennessee. It seems
they're on location shooting an action film themselves, and two of
them are hard-as-nails stuntwomen. They fight back in a
metal-mangling chase scene that ends in a bloody, giddy victory
dance of female empowerment.
Tarantino packs the film with his favorite things -- obscure pop
songs, close-ups of shapely female feet, cascades of colorful
dialogue -- but his segment suffers from sluggish pacing as the
characters are introduced. He eats up precious screen time with epic
swaths of girlish gossip that will have action fans impatiently
drumming their fingers. The stunts are impressive, especially an
extended sequence with real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell hanging on the
hood of a 1970 Dodge Challenger as it careens at top speed. But the
story takes forever to get out of first gear. Stunt professionals
have a motto: "Screw dialogue. Let's smash something." Tarantino
should have listened.
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PLANET TERROR:
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Directed & Written by:
Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Danny Trejo, Rose McGowan, Freddy
Rodriguez. |
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DEATH PROOF:
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Directed & Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Kurt Russell,
Rosario Dawson, Vanessa
Ferlito. |
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Length: |
191 total minutes |
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Rating:
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R for strong graphic bloody violence and gore,
pervasive language, some sexuality, nudity and
drug use. |
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GRINDHOUSE ©
2007 Dimension Films
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2024 Alternate Reality, Inc. |
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