An Actual Movie Review!

I am aware that I have not actually written anything about an actual film here since - February? pretty much. It is time, I suppose to address this - eventually with a roundup post, but right now, let's start with the most recent film I've seen, Grindhouse. With stars - 1-5, weighted down, so that **= a perfectly decent film, *** being unreservedly good...

Grindhouse: **** - or, if you prefer: Planet Terror ***/Death Proof **** - it's odd that the reviews of this I've read almost all end up pitting the two films against each other. Maybe it's just the accident of what I've read - but: TalkingMoviezzz loves the Rodriguez and hates the QT - Walter Chaw dismisses the RR and loves the Tarantino - and Ryland Walker Knight loathes Planet Terror and adores Death Proof. Only Stephanie Zacharek at Salon praises both. Me? Annoying as he is (and his fans can be worse), I can't help loving Tarantino's film - Rodriguez on the other hand has always struck me as a bit of a hack, and definitely less than meets the eye. So I went in with those expectations - and found myself, instead, completely enjoying Planet Terror. It strikes me as a big budget version of films like Killer Klowns from Outer Space (which I was, of course, inspired to rewatch, after seeing Grindhouse) - an affectionate parody, that stays pretty close to the style and structure of the films it is parodying. That is - the story, the situation, is really pastiche - the characters, dialogue, details (like the tiny motorcycle the hero rides in Planet Terror) provide the parody. It's a hoot - goes down easy, fun and funny... but that's it.

But Death Proof... not when I was watching it, so much: it starts slow, it wanders and drags, and has way too much of Tarantino's signature pop culture blather, and most of that feels like filler... when Kurt Russell turns up, the thing starts to come alive, building to a rather shocking halfway point... Then starts over. 4 more women, sitting around talking - talk talk talk talk talk. Eventually, they head off to test drive a '70 dodge challenger with a white paint job - more talk first! but once they're in the car... The film goes off like a shot. And keeps going off, through the last third (or whatever it is) of the film - a long and really fucking great car chase, with stunts to make Jacky Chan or Buster Keaton proud. And the thing is, it keeps going off after it's done - it sticks in your head. The visceral thrill of it, the imagery of it - but also the artistry of it, the structure, its relationship to the films it refers to. It's got the mix of abrupt nihilism and moralism of an old fashioned exploitation picture, with charismatic villains and annoying, rather unpleasant "good guys" - it's got sudden swerves of tone and style, it's got freeze frames... It's also got a decidedly dualistic structure: split into a first half and second half, that reflect one another; then the second half is split into halves - the talking half/the driving half; then the car chase is split in two (black chaes white, white chases black) - right down to the 2 freeze frame endings.... (All of that, of course, as the second half of a double film.) Tarantino has always loved the patterns he can make out of stories, sometimes more than the stories themselves - this one maybe indulges in the patterns to the point where the stories dissolve - along with a lot of the humanity his films usually smuggle in through the back door.... The talking scenes don't do much - they occupy space in the film - they count off the number of reels you have to cover to get to the car chases.... But that, really, is true to the point of the exercise - the strange, slightly absurd scenes that pace the action in these kinds of films.... It is a strange film, and a pretty wonderful one, when you think about it.