grindhouse

A short review:

First of all, the fake trailers are awesome. In order from best to worse, Machete (Robert Rodriguez), Don't (Edgar Wright), Thanksgiving (Eli Roth), and Werewolf Women of the SS (Rob Zombie).

Planet Terror, 4/5 stars. No significant improvements necessary.

Planet Terror is basically the first three minutes of Desperado made into an entire movie. It's fantastic and worth the ticket price alone. The best way to explain it is that it is a movie designed specifically for an audience that is into the premise of watching movies that are ridiculous. Add a few musical numbers and you have an experience very similar to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's a movie seemingly crafted by the loudest, most entertaining story-teller at your favorite pub.

Nothing else to say. Almost everything about the movie works. Double bill this with Sin City instead of Death Proof, and you have perhaps the best group-oriented movie night ever imagined.

Death Proof, 2/5 stars. Heavily flawed.

Where to start? Planet Terror is cool by its very nature, while Death Proof tries so very hard to be cool by association. Tarantino wants so badly to make it known that his movie was filmed in Austin. The only way this man seems to know how to write a movie is to name-drop at least once every ten lines of dialogue. He's the annoying guy from high school who liked bands you've never heard of specifcally because you've never heard of them.

This time, he picked the wrong place to go about this nonsense: Austin, Texas. See, I live in Austin and it's very clear that Tarantino only hangs out with the wealthy pseudo-hippies on South Congress.

- A restaurant called Guero's Taco Bar is featured prominently. Their tacos really aren't that good. There are much better choices within a few minutes in any direction. However, it's the place that trendy people who live in that part of town go because it's "hip".

- One scene features girls in a stupid conversation driving to Guero's Taco Bar. However, everytime the camera shifts, the view out the window is an entirely different part of downtown Austin in different directions. We were literally unable to control our laughter because we thought that was the joke. Sadly, we realized after a few minutes that no, the conversation was supposed to be interesting and you weren't supposed to realize that the car was going in crazy circles.

- The Texas Chili Parlor has no parking lot or porch. It's just a little building wedged between some other run down buildings. I know the Chili Parlor probably got a ton of money from the filming, but the one funny thought I had was that people are going to come in from out of town now and think it's a place you go to get trashed, smoke out, and pick up chicks. Wrong. It's a place you go for chili. It's a restaurant, not a shot bar.

The stuntwoman in the second half of Death Proof is cool, but by then it's too late to save the movie. With perhaps half the footage cut out, this might have made a decent short film.