After a fine sampling of local brew and a hearty lunch, Saturday was on its merry way to the ultimate cinematical viewing for the year so far in Grindhouse. Although there was a paltry showing at the weekend box office, that really belies the quality of the film and I really question why it could be that no one would pony up and march out to what is the most entertaining 3 hours of film to date.
Seriously, 3 hours!
What you have here is a film spliced together with baleen wire by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino in a sort of love letter to the movies of their youth and no doubt to the movies that inspired them to make their films of such flavor. My theory, Easter weekend was a bad weekend to release the gorefest of utter tastelessness that we witnessed on celluloid. And that's most likely a compliment coming from yours truly.
A double feature, just like the days of old, Grindhouse is in two parts a zombie movie and an automotive thriller intermissioned by some tongue-in-cheek coming attractions only the minds of Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, and Eli Roth could imagine. Rodriguez' flick, Planet Terror, is the zombie flick in question, which is less zombie than it is biological atrocity. One can tell that Rodriguez really lived and breathed this stuff when he was younger and it pays out with buckets of graphically horrifying karo syrup. Limbs are lost, decapitations abound, and more than a few times I found myself squirming a bit, but at the same time I couldn't help laughing at how ridiculous the entire thing really was. Underneath all of it, however, is a true love for those low-budget cheese-fests I expected to see splattered onscreen. Grade A.
I'll say little of the trailers in between, but I will say that I will never look at poultry the same way again.
Switching the proverbial gear (no pun intended), Tarantino really does up quite a film in the second act. It slows things down a bit much, to tell the truth, but the majority of it is really QT doing what he does best in setting up one heck of a payoff. There is such buildup in all the dialog-heavy scenery of Death Proof that one really starts to question if Tarantino was being over-indulgent, but you truly get lost in the words enough to not mind. While Rodriguez does a great service in a classic Grindhouse monstrosity, Tarantino deconstructs it plainfully. It's gratuitous, yes, but there's more heart and soul here than I ever expected. What's more, it contains one of the most heart-pumping car chases onscreen within the last decade. Many props to the actresses in this film and a special thumbs up to a very game Kurt Russell, something tells me him and Tarantino have more work yet to do.
So in all, I loved it loved it loved it. It was unnecessary, stupid, hilarious, lascivious, exploitative, deliberate, bloody, raunchy, vapid, and glorious at the same time. Most awesome.
Overall Score: 4 out of 5 stars.
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2 comments:
hrm.. not quite the review i got from ian but you almost convince me to go watch it.
I got the feeling Ian wasn't into it as much and during the middle of the film, I was a bit deflated.
Upon further reflection and review, however, it stands up quite well and I ended up really enjoying it in the long run.
It might be too gory for you though ;)
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