Spring Break
Movie Reviews
David Coley
Issue date: 4/9/07 Section: Culture
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'Grindhouse'
It's a concept that is not used near often enough: a double bill of shorter films tied together with a common theme. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, guardians of all things obscure and cultish in cinema, have taken the gimmick and executed it with as much gusto as humanly possible.
What results is a good old-fashioned night at the movies - if you can stomach it.
"Grindhouse," running more than three hours, includes two films as well as fake movie trailers and other blurbs and ads to give you the feel of a trashy "Grindhouse" movie palace of the '70s. The feature as a whole conveys that feel quite well, and both parts manage to hold their own in innovation, homage, and excitement.
'Planet Terror'
The first segment, "Planet Terror" is helmed by "Sin City" director Robert Rodriguez, and is a zombie flick that exploits all the usual conventions of the genre. It follows an outbreak of a biological weapon that turns all the citizens of a small Texas town into the walking dead. The ever-dwindling group of survivors responds with a ridiculous amount of firepower, blood and guts flying everywhere relentlessly.
It definitely gets the pitch of a zombie film right. It does it better by turning the usual bland stock characters into colorful archetypes like El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), a gunslinger with a notorious past, Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), a go-go dancer who later sports a rifle as a leg, and Dakota Block (Marley Shelton), a doctor who has to fight the zombies and her angry husband with an arsenal of anesthetics.
It's cleverly shot, mimicking a poorly edited cult film with missing reels and repeated frames. It has all the style it can handle, and lots of energy.
For me personally, that much gore for that long just tends to get old.
After a while, especially because we know where the story is going, things begin to get weary. Despite that, it's still a fun film, albeit incredibly gruesome.
'Death Proof'
The second part, "Death Proof," is written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It tells the story of Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a deranged man with an amazing car who targets and stalks young women and then commits vehicular homicide. It seems at first to be a throwback to exploitation films and other cult hits by filmmakers like Russ Meyer.
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