Week Of April 4, 2007 - Wed / Fri

April 6, 2007

Grindhouse

It's a tale of two movies.

The first, Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror is, to a great extent, shit.  The second, Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof is, to a great extent, The Shit. 

Unfortunately, the Rodriquez film goes on for over 100 minutes of the 3 hour, 5 minute running time of Grindhouse.  And Tarantino, who last gave us over three hours of Kill Bill, plays it close to the vest with just around an hour of Death Proof, leaving us actually wanting more.

Of course, I am overstating how bad Planet Terror is.  There are a lot of very cool things in it, starting with Rose McGowan who plays more than the machine-gun-legged bad ass shown in the press materials and ads.  Her stripper is all kinds of ambivalent.  The problem starts when her clean, simple performance is stuck into a plot that is three times too complicated for its own good.  Planet Terror is a stripper-professional-killer-Area 51-southern-barbequed-zombie movie with a few other genres thrown in for bad measure.  Any one of these ideas might have been wonderful.  All at once is a bland milkshake, no matter how many things blow up or splatter.

Moreover, Rodriguez puts a very strong emphasis on the gimmick of the grindhouse, well past the point of diminishing returns.  It is breathtaking, really, when the Tarantino film starts, to see how much more accurately QT remembers the style of these films, relying very little on scratched film and missing frames.  And when he does dip into the grindhouse gimmick, the audience responds to it with real appreciation.  But really, it's as simple as three women talking in a car with mismatched shots and overlapping sound edits.  It feels exactly right.

There really aren't any bad performances in Planet Terror.  And the zombies are grossly cool.  But Rodriguez seems to have a touch of the disease that plagued Julie Taymor on Frida... he keeps fighting to top George Romero.  And the simple reality is, he's not in the same class.  He is like a stupendous, inventive effects master who feels compelled to direct, when what he is really great at is making things look really cool.  But it is not bubbling CG skin or dozens of exploded cars (that explode for no apparent reason) that satisfy more than a few testosteroned up members of the audience.  It is the characters. 

Freddy Rodriguez and Rose McGowan as the heroic "low lifes" fighting with and for the cops and the "high class" is a terrific dynamic.  Rodriguez, at one point, seems to want to do an homage to Assault on Precinct 13, at least visually.  Well, that old film worked, not because of cool gunplay, but because of characters.  The idea that closes Rodriguez's film, which I won't give away here, was a great idea... but it feels, again, like a reference to a whole different breed of films, which Rodriguez doesn't bother to foreshadow.  So it's just another danged gimmick. 

The classic Zombie schtick is a rag tag group brought together to fight for their survival.  And Planet Terror finally gets there.  But it takes so long and there are so many offshoots that don't feel natural that by the time we get there, we haven't made the investment we need to in order to care.  In most of these films, the gathering is the first act, the getting to know one another is the second, and the final fight is the third.  If you want to make a genre film, follow the frickin' genre... that's all I'm tryin' to say.

The three trailers for other movies are, in order of quality (best to worst), Edgar Wright's (who I always think is Edgar Winters) "Don't," Rob Zombie's "Werewolf Women of the SS," and Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving." 

Wright gets the Grindhouse spirit better than anyone but QT here and his "trailer" has both the spirit of horror and humor so well embodied by British cinema of the late 60s and early 70s.  Zombie does a really nice job of high kink kitsch with his Nazi werewolves and Udo Kier.  And Roth... he is still trying too hard and not being clever enough.  He gets some laughs in his "trailer," but they are cheap and not nearly smart enough to get my respect.

And then there is the Tarantino.

Ah.

I was not the world's biggest fan of Kill Bill, in great part because it was so incredibly indulgent with time.  It was an extremely high-styled genre film and two hours and change should have been more than enough time to tell that story.  But no.

Here, the brevity and clarity of Tarantino's idea is a great relief after the overlong Planet Terror.  It's basically a two-act story about Stuntman Mike, who has an odd fetish for young girls and fast cars, especially his death proof muscle car.  The first group of women are hanging around Austin, just having a good time.  Jordan Ladd and Sydney Portier are the recognizable faces in the segment, along with a special cameo or two... and Kurt Russell, obviously.  The second group is the more familiar faces of Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Kiwi stunt woman turned deft comedienne, Zoe Bell.  These women also shoot the shit and act like girls... but they have a different set of skills, which helps get them into trouble.  'Nuff said.  You should find out for yourself.

The centerpiece of the second section is The Car Chase, which has been vastly overrated by some people as a piece of filmmaking... but not as a piece of movie enjoyment.  Tarantino knows, as ever, how to entertain.  And it involves involving the audience.  The car chase is brilliant because we are completely invested.  And Tarantino is not afraid of breaking convention.

I was suspect when I read about how the women characters were empowered.  But sure enough, even though it gets a little too talky at one point, these are women of real character, much more so than any of the men, really.  Even Rose McGowan's small first-part turn is loaded with the power of a woman who controls her environment.  In this film, women make choices, sometimes smart, sometimes stupid.  But if they are going to be victimized, it is not for lack of smarts or choice.  And in this turn, QT emulates the T&A of grindhouse classics while adding a new, modern, and really compelling element that doesn't feel forced.

I am looking forward to seeing the third hour of Grindhouse again.  I would actually walk into a theater late (though missing McGowan's metal one-eyed trouser snake would be a shame) and be thrilled to pay to just see the Tarantino.  It is an instant classic.  Hot babes, funny conversation, edge, action, and a real thriller, right up to the standards of Duel or The Hitcher (the original).  Really great stuff.  Amongst the highlights of Tarantino's career.

Of course, a lot of people will embrace the squish of Planet Terror as somehow cooler simply because it is more dense.  But in time, we will remember Death Proof... and not just the big chase, but Kurt Russell's sensational performance and the way Rose McGowan is used and the grrrrlpower of it all.  Let the legend begin.

E Me.

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