Grindhouse (Tarantino/Rodriguez, 2007)

[DrewReiber]

DP is a thoroughly Tarantino flick that never once goes for a "throwback" style, unless you count the film scratches and the missing reel)

Except that he nearly completely abandons the film damage within the first 20-25 minutes and the "missing reel" is nothing of the kind. He selectively removed a clip that amounted to less than 5 minutes of footage and thereby completely failed his own challenge. Planet Terror is the only feature of the two that lived up to the promises made by both directors in going for "grindhouse" authenticity.

[CSM126]

DP is a thoroughly Tarantino flick that never once goes for a "throwback" style, unless you count the film scratches and the missing reel)

Except that he nearly completely abandons the film damage within the first 20-25 minutes and the "missing reel" is nothing of the kind. He selectively removed a clip that amounted to less than 5 minutes of footage and thereby completely failed his own challenge. Planet Terror is the only feature of the two that lived up to the promises made by both directors in going for "grindhouse" authenticity.

Yes, I suppose I could have been clearer about that. I was rather surprised at how glossy and smooth DP looked (especially in its second half). And yeah, the missing reel is a rather minor edit compared to PT's missing reel, but it was still good for a laugh.

Maybe DP doesn't live up to the "Grindhouse challenge", but it is still, I think, a very good movie. I watch Tarantino films for the dialog first and the visual style second, to be honest. And I liked the dialog in DP a lot.

[THX1378]

Except that he nearly completely abandons the film damage within the first 20-25 minutes and the "missing reel" is nothing of the kind. He selectively removed a clip that amounted to less than 5 minutes of footage and thereby completely failed his own challenge. Planet Terror is the only feature of the two that lived up to the promises made by both directors in going for "grindhouse" authenticity.

Didn't anyone get that the first part of "Thunder Alley" AKA "Death Proof" *when you see the film you'll get what I just said* was a mixed print. The first part of the film the print look bad, then when you got to the fourth reel that it cleaned up because it came from a diferent print. I got a kick out of the fact that the film had been renamed, prob because "when it was first released that the film did so bad, they had to rename it, pair it up with something smashing like Planet Terror, and hope that it's going to make it's money back".

[Jeff]

For me, the Rodriguez piece is the better of the two. It has far better actors and is much, much pacier. Wish he could have done without the zombie theme, which has been done to death.

Pacier? Is paceless the opposite of pacy? If so, then it was Death Proof's was pacelessness that made it work so well for me. The abrupt tonal and tempo shifts are what made the car chases exciting.

In "Death Proof", the actors suck (except Russell), which would be fine if they didn't chatter so much.

Complaining about the bad acting in an exploitation picture is like complaining about the loose girls in a whorehouse.

I loved the ending--it was the best part.

Agreed.

[Barmy]

I agree that the "actresses" in DP were suitable for grindhouse. However, grindhouse does not typically feature endless scenes of people sitting at a table chattering. If a film has a lot of chatter, I want my actors to invest some character into their roles. The DP chicks, who ALL come from the whatEVER school of acting, decidedly do not. I would love to see an all action Tarantino film. This was his golden opportunity to do one. He didn't. In fact, this film has the LEAST action by far of any Tarantino film. You can say "oh, he was just being perverse". WhatEVER. But all is forgiven--that ending got one of my loudest laughs ever at a movie.

[Matt]

However, grindhouse does not typically feature endless scenes of people sitting at a table chattering.

I take it you've never seen a Doris Wishman or Andy Milligan film.

[Cinesimilitude]

PT got old for me shortly after it began, I think the trailers showed too much of Rodriguez' half to make it effective for me. DP was superior, not Tarantino's best work, but excellent. I loved little things like the fact that he used chartreuse as the drink of choice for shots (which happens to be my favorite shot drink) and the dialogue was excellent. my only problem with DP was Zoe Bell. she did a good job for not being an actress, but I am almost positive her words were not scripted. her character had no style, something I've come to expect from every Tarantino character. Every other role was pitch perfect, with the "kinda-cute, kinda-good-lookin, hilariously funny but not funny-lookin" being my favorite scene. I will buy Death Proof if it's released on its own. I will never buy Planet Terror. I will only ever watch that half in a theater with an audience.

Another thing I loved was Tarantino's first attempt at cinematography. the gratuitous feet shots (from my perspective, entirely welcome) and the close ups of Russell eating nachos were great, and I really loved his visual style playing off his words.

[Nothing]

Erm, Tarantino (like any other half-decent director) has always chosen the shots and framed his own movies. The DoP provides the lighting.

[Cinesimilitude]

#-o I knew that. Regardless, I liked the visual style a lot in his segment.

[Noir of the Night]

Planet Terror was a lot of fun. This is what Snakes on a Plane probably should have been. It didn't reinvent the wheel,because it doesn't aim to be more than a ridiculously violent zombie film, and it succeeds. Any movie that manages to include

a kid shooting himself in the face, Tarantino's dick melting off, lesbian intrigue, and Fergie getting ripped apart by zombies

must be doing something right. Good on you, Robert Rodriguez.

Death Proof was a mess. I guess Tarantino's idea of making a movie that's both a grindhouse film and a deconstruction of a grindhouse film is kind of interesting, but the "point" he makes with the film's ending is belabored and kind of obvious. So, what we're left with is some good chase scenes and a lot of Tarantino dialogue. Usually his writing is incredibly entertaining, but I'm not sure what happened here. How Tarantino could go from some of his strongest writing in Vol. 2 to 10-minute cul-de-sac conversations about whether or not to do some car stunt eludes me. In addition, his missing reel joke was kind of lame, whereas Rodriguez's was hilarious. Kurt Russell is very good (I liked how Tarantino tried to use his character, especially in the early scenes, as a kind of metaphor for the decline of grindhouse-style filmmaking, although he kind of drops that in the second half. And if this was Tarantino's idea of what the Stuntman Mike character represents, I'm not sure what he's trying to tell us with the ending...), but Tarantino didn't even seem particularly interested in his character. This film is basically the sound of QT masturbating, and it isn't pretty. Hopefully he'll come back from it.

The trailers were arguably the most entertaining part of the whole thing, with Don't seeming the most authentic and Machete being the most entertaining. Thanksgiving got a great crowd reaction, but I'd have enjoyed it more if all of it's gruesome surprises hadn't been discussed ad nauseam in the press. Still, as far as taglines go, I don't think you can beat "There won't be any left-overs this year." (paraphrased)[/quote]

[teddyleevin]

I enjoyed every moment except the ending.

Spoiler

Stuntman Mike should have killed the girls and "won". I felt really bad for him. Kurt Russel was awesome.

[chaddoli]

Death Proof was uneven, but its high points still amounted to more than the whole of Planet Terror (which I still enjoyed). For me though, the masterpiece of this picture was Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS - which I think is by far Zombie's best film to date.

[JHunter]

I enjoyed every moment except the ending.

Spoiler

Stuntman Mike should have killed the girls and "won". I felt really bad for him. Kurt Russel was awesome.

I kind of agree here. Tarantino never really built Stuntman Mike into the boogeyman he should have been. His menace vanishes five minutes into the final action scene and we have him fleeing in terror for the rest of the film. I so thoroughly disliked the girls at that point that I was hoping the tables might turn in his favor. DEATH PROOF was a disappointment. Interestingly, about 25% of my audience walked out during the first 30-45 minutes of DP.

PLANET TERROR, on the other hand, was fantastic. Just a fun, wild ride that knew exactly what the audience was there for and how to please them. This is what I came to see in a film called GRINDHOUSE.

[exte]

Zoe fucking Bell. Period.

[portnoy]

DP is a thoroughly Tarantino flick that never once goes for a "throwback" style, unless you count the film scratches and the missing reel)

Except that he nearly completely abandons the film damage within the first 20-25 minutes and the "missing reel" is nothing of the kind. He selectively removed a clip that amounted to less than 5 minutes of footage and thereby completely failed his own challenge. Planet Terror is the only feature of the two that lived up to the promises made by both directors in going for "grindhouse" authenticity.

But he doesn't 'abandon' the film damage - actually, his use of the film damage is a lot more authentic than Rodriguez's, as the film is most damaged around reel changes. In Rodriguez's film, the film becomes distressed at moments of extreme violence or sexuality, which, while a nice effect (entirely in keeping with the sort of Oliver Stone/Tony Scott school of adopting abrupt switches in film stock quality/texture/color as a means of emphasizing trauma or distress) is not based in any sort of actual lived experience.

Also, as Rodriguez and Tarantino themselves admit, a grindhouse missing whole reels of a film was not typically part of the grindhouse experience - it was something each filmmaker did because they felt it was an amusing gag to throw in (based on Tarantino's missing a reel of an Oliver Reed-starring crime movie he owns and finding the mystery of that reel more fascinating than the reel itself) as well as something to reduce the film's overall runtime.

I'd say that while neither film is entirely authentic (though "Don't" and "Thanksgiving" definitely seem like they could be) they both succeed in their own right, and Death Proof for me - with its bold shoehorning of mid-60s Godard and Antonioni's aesthetic sensibilities into what would otherwise be silly genre pastiche - was far more interesting for me, maybe the single most formally challenging/compelling moment of Tarantino's career.

[rs98762001]

Only took in $5 million on Friday. Considerably less than expected.

[Noir of the Night]

I enjoyed every moment except the ending.

Spoiler

Stuntman Mike should have killed the girls and "won". I felt really bad for him. Kurt Russel was awesome.

Agreed.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Only took in $5 million on Friday. Considerably less than expected.

Ouch. Get ready for Scary Movie 5, 6 and 7, I guess.

[Dylan]

The film as a whole provoked more genuine laughter and participation from the audience than I've experienced in a theatre in years.

"Planet Terror" is something of an amalgam of many films (I saw traces of Romero, Carpenter, Cameron, O'Bannon, Gordon, and even Troma and Full Moon), complete with continuous tasteless gross-out humor, gory violence, MANY deliberate clichés, a John Carpenter-esque score, and a completely illogical storyline. I liked Rose McGowan. The audience was pretty loud for this one.

So far, it's been about 24 hours since seeing “Grindhouseâ€

[Highway 61]

I was shocked that I disliked this as much as I did. I even liked Snakes on a Plane for Christ's sake.

Really, the only part of the movie I loved was the casting: Kurt Russell, Michael Biehn, Tom Savini, Michael Parks, Bruce Willis, Danny Terjo, Udo Kier, etc. However, I'm in complete agreement with some of the other posters that the one-eighty Tarantino pulled with Russell's character was awful. If you asked me, it sucked the fun out of the whole movie, although the audience I was with loved it, so maybe I'm full of shit.

[exte]

You're not full of shit, but you and everyone else on this thread seem to be a little different. Yes, my showing had walk-outs, too, during the very long dialogue scenes Tarantino had, but if they had waited till the chase scene, I think they would've gotten their money's worth. For me, Zoe Bell's performance/character... the stuff she does in this movie... has to go down as some of the most thrilling (if short lived) stuff I've ever seen a female character do in a film, perhaps ever. Usually this is purely man's terrain. Easily you'd have Bruce Willis or Keanu Reeves or any other action star sink their teeth into this type of action and come off great.

I'd argue that not since Sigourney Weaver in Aliens have we had this much action attributed to a woman. Thank God someone finally cast a stunt person and filmed them doing their actual stunt work. In this film, it's some of the scariest bits I've ever seen on screen. I know it's just a movie, and I'm sure she was well anchored to the car, but Zoe's material was packed with the most adrenaline I've felt in a long, long time.

And then the turnaround was something I liked, actually, and appreciated. If anything, despite all the great stuff before that, it really made me perk up with excitement with what was about to happen next. I loved that Kurt Russell came off as such a pussy. It was fantastic. But really, Zoe Bell has had the fortune of her life with this movie. I don't think she could've hoped for anything more. God bless her for having been at the right place at the right time with Kill Bill. That's a straight flush of fortune, right there...

By the way, the Thanksgiving trailer was a riot at my theater. It was by far the best of the bunch, in my opinion...

[blindside8zao]

I'm so torn about whether to see this. I don't want to walk out of a theater as annoyed as I was after 300. How long is Udo Kier's part? His presence might be what sways me to see this in theaters.

[CSM126]

I'm so torn about whether to see this. I don't want to walk out of a theater as annoyed as I was after 300. How long is Udo Kier's part? His presence might be what sways me to see this in theaters.

Udo is on screen for about a second as the announcer says "co-starring Udo Kier".

[Mr Sausage]

When Russell started wailing like a 'girl' in his car while dealing with his arm, the entire theatre erupted in laughter. Then when the girls show up and Zoe Bell jumps out and begins smashing his car with a pipe, everyone doubled over.

I think perhaps what Death Proof demonstrates most is Tarantino's ability to make genuine, interesting characters with distinct and individual personalities, who can talk about trivial things and yet be absorbing. There is an energy and forcefullness to his characterization that stands in considerable contrast to the empty and dull characters in most movies, especially horror movies. You get to know everything about them without a single monologue explaining their past or a traumatic/defining event. While Tarantino did not succeed in doing this in Kill Bill, he cetainly did here. Also nice were the way many of the seemingly innocuous details of the conversations end up being plot points.

Death Proof is flawed (outside of its deliberate sense of genre flaw), and I'm not quite sure how well the structure works. I did however enjoy the movie, not just for the characterization but for a genuinely exciting car chase.

Oh, and the payoff for Freddy Rodruiguez's "I never miss" line in Planet Terror was pitch perfect.

[Barmy]

I think the person who earlier in this thread suggested that Kurt Russell's character represents "grindhouse" got it right.

The first half of DP has a 70s vibe and the girls are 70s types. You (are supposed to) want them to live. But being that they are grindhouse-era gals, they must die.

In the second half, we have careerist, boring, vanilla "women". Very 00's. Grindhouse is dead now, so Russell's character must die. Like most people (and this must have been Tarantino's intent), I wanted these women to die. Unfortunately, their survival represents the dominance of PC PG-13 Hollywood/Entertainment Weekly "culture". Kurt's death=End of Cinema.