Grindhouse (B-) Oh, you knew I was gonna love this one, I mean, COME ON! Seriously, what's not to like? Hot girls like Rose McGowan and Zoe Bell, cameos from Bruce Willis and Kurt Russell, zombies, head-explody, entrails, car-crashes, teen-age cheerleaders split-landing on a knife, (youch!) psycho-killers fornicating a turkey with Grandma's head on the other end, soul-music soundtrack, American muscle cars...Yep.
Movies like the ones 'Grindhouse' pays homage to are intended as disposable trash, b-level is where the best of 'em winds up, and as for how low they can go... Well, down in the depths with the whale shit would not be an unfair assessment. Thing is, what we have here is the pure, unadulterated stuff of movies, the cheap thrills and, though I hate to use this phrase, 'guilty pleasures' that stuff like this can give us. So let me look at these two movies-in-one, and yadder on about 'em...
In Robert Rodriguez's 'Planet Terror', it's a plot you've seen a million times since 'Night of the Living Dead'. A secret military base lets a zombie-creating chemical loose, and the denizens of a nearby Texas town are infected. It's up to a few plucky misfits to band together to save the day, and themselves! For what it's worth, it's pretty entertaining as it is, so much so that you won't find yourself wondering, "Hey, how DID Rose McGowan fire her Leg-gun, anyways?", for about an hour after you leave the theater... Bonus points for having Marley Shelton's character's kid shoot himself with her gun after she specifically warned him to be careful with it.
As for QT's contribution, 'Death-Proof', you'll be glad to use the first half hour of this to go for a smoke and/or bathroom break. The story: Kurt Russell plays a washed-up stuntman who gets his jollies by crashing his muscle cars into other cars full of cute hipster chicks. Trouble abounds when he picks the wrong set of girls to harass... While the car chase/crash scenes are exciting, the scenes with the girls talking (and talking...and talking...and talking...) go on more than they really need to. It's like Tarantino's trying to prove how much he 'understands women'. Well, maybe he genuinely enjoys listening to women, at least more than, say, Joe Esterhaus. It's just that women in the audience are less likely to nod their heads and go, "It's like he's eavesdropping on me and my girlfriends!", then go, "Get to the fuckin' car chase, already!" Bonus points: Russell's eating the nachos, Russell shooting US a look before he goes on his initial rampage, Stunt woman Zoe Bell's eventual fate-"I'MOK!!". One minor personal technical quibble: Why use a Challenger to play 'ship's mast' when you've already got a perfectly good Mustang Mach I? The Challengers are fuckin' boats...
Little Miss Sunshine (C+) Okay indie comedy depicting a family's trip to their daughter's entry into a little girl's beauty pageant. It's more concerned with showing us how 'indie' a movie it is than depicting genuine characters, though. (Spoiler:) Older dead relatives dying on a road trip is the most overused cliche in the road trip genre; once they lose Alan Arkin, the movie just plods from point to point. I couldn't get a handle on his character, either.
First, he's the grouchy bully who flips out over his daughter-in-law's takeout chicken, then he's giving his granddaughter Movie Pep Talk #1. Worth a few laughs, overall. Mainly for Greg Kinnear's over-ambitious, under-achieving dad, and Steve Catrell's depressed gay scholar.
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