It's a rare achievement to be successful in Hollywood without getting tainted by it's stench, but somehow both Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have managed it, which in an odd sort of way gives hope to those who someday dream to make movies and not have The Man come in and screw them over. Sure, most of Tarantino's movies are within the same genre, but he seems to have the respect and love of the Hollywood crowd, and Rodriguez? Well, he's got such a range of titles, from childhood fare like Spy Kids to more adult fare like Sin City, but he's been able to make them his own, and if you ever see a Rodriguez movie, you know that it's a Rodriguez movie; He's got a signature style that nobody has been able to duplicate.
However, where these two meet in the middle, is their love of cinema, particularly bad cinema. And by bad, I don't mean awful bad, but good bad. The bad that you don't feel horrible about enjoying, Like Mystery Science Theater 3000. Of course, Tarantino has a much deeper love of bad cinema, but there's no question that both creators have a depth to their knowledge of movies, and I doubt there are any successful creators in Hollywood that can match them.
From that shared love came the birth of Grindhouse, an old school double feature complete with seventies era transition titles and several exploitation style trailers. So, unlike most films that cost eight bucks to see, you get two films for the price of one, and about 3 and a half hours of entertainment.
Of course, these movies aren't even close to family friendly, but they're perfect for the frat boy in all (or some of us), Grindhouse is good, dumb fun. The two features, Rodriguez' pseudo-zombie flick Planet Terror (Featuring Bruce Willis, among others), and Tarantino's muscle car action flick Death Proof (starring Kurt Russell), are definitely not high art, but they are art – homages to the movies that plagued theaters in the seventies, complete with “missing reels”, extra grain, pops and hiss.
Planet Terror is the epitome of dumb fun. Lots of gratuitous gore, throwaway one liners, and cheesy performances. Any other movie like this would get played late at night on the local UHF station, but that's what makes this movie great. And did I mention there was a chick who, after losing a leg to zombies, replaces it with a Machine Gun? Any movie with a chick with a machine gun leg as the star is okay in my book.
I wasn't as impressed with Death Proof. I guess since Planet Terror moved at a breakneck speed, Death Proof plodded along, with a lot of classic Tarantino dialogue, and a sparse series of action sequences. Granted, this was probably all done on purpose, but it didn't make the movie any better. For all of its plodding along though, the final sequence involving some Texas backroads and two classic muscle cars was well worth it.
The bad stuff in this movie is expected. There are expletives constantly throughout the dialogue. There's a lot of blood and gore, and a few sparse moments of nudity. But like I said, these things are expected. Nobody going into these films should be surprised. But, these are seriously dumb fun movies, they provide escape from the real world for a while, but they're the equivalent to soda pop, just empty calories.
But, just like Soda Pop, these movies taste pretty good going down.
**** (out of 5)
Music Featured in Podcast:
It's Love by Kings X - From The Best of Kings X
Underneath by Starflyer 59 - From Old
