I haven't had that much fun at a movie since well Snakes on a Plane and the only reason THAT was any fun was because 1) I was sitting next to Mary Timony and 2) see reason number one. (Okay, okay really it was actually a lot of fun as people were hissing and throwing rubber snakes around throughout the movie.)
But even the faux-trailers of Grindhouse were more entertaining than SoaP turned out to be. Now that I think about it, maybe Snakes on a Plane should have been limited to one of the fake trailers contained in this movie as the ultimate disappointment was in that it really wasn't bad enough.
But I digress. Really though, this movie is a blast. Tarantino may be the more skilled writer and director of the two but their love of the pure innocent glee of just going to the movies is what has tied them together over the years. I rank QT's Death Proof above Rodriquez's Planet Terror but both movies pull off exactly what they were going for.
The only negative thing I have to say about Grindhouse is the fact that the movie is playing at a multiplex near you in glorious surround sound. I've never gone to a drive through or the dingy little neighborhood theatre that Tarantino and Rodriguez are paying tribute to. Not that it dimishes from the film itself but it does kinda make me wonder what I've missed.
julie [email] said at 2:28 PM 04-08-2007: Reggie, are you okay? Lie down and have someone take your temperature, because YOU JUST WROTE A REVIEW OF GRINDHOUSE WITHOUT MENTIONING ROSARIO DAWSON. I think maybe you have a brain tumor.
jake [email] said at 5:54 PM 04-08-2007: With the caveat that I'm a huge Tarantino fan, yes, yes, this movie was awesome. It delivered on its promise completely, and gave me that "wow, maybe this is my new favorite movie" feeling from about 20 minutes in.
Go see it at a late showing, and make no plans for the next day, because it's over 3 hours and you're going to want to talk after. And you're also going to want to stay off the road.
reggie [email] said at 9:27 PM 04-08-2007: By the way, as great as this movie was. It was made even greater by the presence of the lovely Ms. Rosario Dawson (you happy Julie?)
By the way, Sidney Poitier's daughter...good gracious alive.
reggie [email] said at 11:15 PM 04-08-2007: Actually, the only actress I found to be not on the same level as everyone else was Zoe Bell. But being that she spent a good portion of the movie on the hood of a speeding vehicle, I'm more than willing to overlook that minute detail.
reggie [email] said at 10:51 AM 04-12-2007: No she was okay but I'm saying she's a stunt woman so she doesn't need to be Meryl Streep or anything. She holds her own but that's it.
carla [email] said at 2:04 AM 04-09-2007: I really liked this. I liked the Quentin Tarantino one better than the Robert Rodriguez one, though they both were entertaining.
Sydney Poitier is hottt but her character really got on my nervers, distracting from the hottness.
I'm thinking Zoe Bell is a real stunt woman which is why she may have not have been as HOTTT as all the other actresses.
reggie [email] said at 1:20 PM 04-09-2007: She is. She was Uma's stunt double in Kill Bill and I think she did some work on Xena as well.
I too prefer the Tarantino half over the Rodriguez. Some of the criticisms (if you even want to call it that) was that Tarantino's movie wasn't bad enough and that he "cheated" by making a good movie.
jake [email] said at 6:51 PM 04-09-2007: I would think the missing reel, plot holes, implausibility, script piracy, and abrupt ending would answer all of that... God bless Mr. T.
milky [email] said at 10:31 PM 04-08-2007: Me too, Reg...I knew the runtime was gonna be a problem for people. I had a blast catching the movie.
I did see a double feature at a San Antonio drive-in, the same one where Rodriguez saw a double feature that inspired him to make movies. I wish I coulda seen Grindhouse there. I agree with you about not getting the dingy experience. But, in defense of my experience, the UA Ultraplex had a busted lookin' exterior and sits next to a dead movie theater so, some atmosphere was there.
Any movie with a guy doing that to a turkey thown in for a few secs...well, it added to the fun.
reggie [email] said at 11:21 AM 04-15-2007: The theater I saw it at has 24 screens. When I saw it with Josh there were three showings within like a 50 minute timeframe.
I don't ever want to hear a thing about running time when the largest grossing movie of all time (Titanic) is a three hour movie.
jeremy [email] said at 8:40 AM 04-09-2007: I was driving home from somewhere last night, thinking that I want to see this movie. And then I was like "I wonder what Reggie thinks about this movie?!"
kaycee [email] said at 9:53 AM 04-09-2007: i am going to see it tonight... i have been itching to see it... also, it is playing in a little old theatre downtown, with busted seats and amazing popcorn... so maybe it will be a little more authentic
kaycee [email] said at 10:48 PM 04-09-2007: i just got back. im sorry... i kinda was bored during death proof. really bored, to be honest. zoe bell is a rockstar, and it all kinda hailed back to a livewire eric stanton comic...
but it just didnt do it for me. could have done without the whole first part... and the run-of-the-fuckin-mill 360 pan around the table at the coffeeshop held together by "witty" dialogue.
yawn! th edialogue was so unintelligent and after i got tired of looking at zoe, i munched loudly on my popcorn and seriously considered going for a pretend smoke break.. because i dont smoke anymore.
i loved planet terror. and i still want to do bruce willis. he is aging like a fine argentinian red. ggrroowwwll!
milky [email] said at 11:17 PM 04-09-2007: ...could have done without the whole first part... and the run-of-the-fuckin-mill 360 pan around the table at the coffeeshop held together by "witty" dialogue.
It was the 'Pulp Fiction' intro stapled to the script, substituting the genders of Jules and Vincent.
Almost as bad as the Desperado series ending Rodriguez stapled onto the end of 'Planet Terror.
Knowing they were to be formulaic "bad" movies kinda set my expectations in a realistic range. I was surprised when the experience started, though.
kaycee [email] said at 9:00 AM 04-10-2007: i'm ok with "bad movies..." i knew they were suposed to be that way... but i didnt think rodriguez and tarrantino would rip themselves off so much...
death proof referenced little quips from pulp fiction through the whole movie... i just thought that was a tacky way to get people to laugh and look around at each other like "did you get that? hah hah he said kahuna...like in (you know what)..."
and i was refering to the resovoir dogs 360 madonna's like a virgin scene... he does it in almost all his movies... if the dialogue is good i don't mind... tarrantino is famous for dialogue... but whtever the girls were blathering about was shit.
reggie [email] said at 11:03 AM 04-12-2007: Well they were actually relaying crucial information that turned out to be relevant later on.
A) from the dialogue we learn how tough and durable Zoe is. This is necessary because we already know about Stuntman Mike so it's supposed to establish Zoe as an at the very least formidable foe if not superior.
B) it's also supposed to establish that Kim has a gun. So that when she pulls it out later, it's not like "where'd she get that gun from?"
zack [email] said at 11:28 AM 04-12-2007: Yeah, I'd say that the dialogue for the first set of girls is not only badly written and delivered, it's also pretty pointless, but the second group of girls actually get a lot of their characterization and relationships to each other dealt with and out in the open from their coffee shop discourse.
jake [email] said at 5:19 PM 04-12-2007: disagreed.
(if only because the meandering dialogue for the first set made us care about them and expect more, and be shocked when their end came fast and ugly... plus it lulled us into paying less attention to the critical plot points laced into the second group's convo).
zack [email] said at 9:48 PM 04-12-2007: us=you, as I'm not sure how shitty dialogue with not a whole lot of characterization made you care about/expect more.. The only one who was even slightly interesting was butterfly, and it's not like she even got any good lines, really. Jungle Julie got most of the lines, they sucked, and her acting was awful. the other girls may as well have not existed.
reggie [email] said at 11:13 AM 04-15-2007: I still don't think Jungle Julia was as bad as an actress as you all say. I'm not saying she was Oscar calibre but I thought she was quite good. If I had to rank the performances with Death Proof I'd rank 'em like this:
1. Kurt Russell
2. Tracie Thoms
3. Wifey, I mean, Rosario Dawson
4. Rose McGowan
5. Sydney T. Poitier
I haven't seen her work in the other stuff she's done (she has quite an extensive resume so it's not like Tarantino casted just because of her name) but I just don't think she's as bad as you say.
zack [email] said at 1:33 PM 04-15-2007: I wouldn't have even put rose mcGowan on that list (just for Death Proof, she was awesome in Planet Terror), much less Sydney Poitier. Plus, Zoe Bell would be right below Kurt Russell and Tracie Thoms in my book.
reggie [email] said at 12:16 PM 04-16-2007: McGowan has kind of a thankless (and underrated) role. She basically is there to get information out of Stuntman Mike as well as reveal a bit about Jungle Julia then she's gone. She's arguably more memorable than the other girls in the first group without being spotlighted as much.
I don't think don't think showiness is always indicative of being great acting. Some of the greatest performances are very often in "understatement." Not that I'd list Rose McGowan in the pantheon of great actresses, I'm just saying that line readings aren't the only sign of a quality performance.
I guess I'm looking at the level of comfort that Poitier has in that role. I have no problem believing that she's the queen of the little corner of the world that she's carved out for herself in Austin. There's not much more to her character than that. I just don't really see much room for an "awful" performance given what's required of her.
Plus she gets the award for best pop-cultural reference of the movie when she calls Stuntman Mike "Zatoichi" when he asks her if she's on a billboard or something and there's a huge Jungle Julia billboard right in front of him.
As for Ms. Bell look at her performance and then think how it would be if Uma Thurman had been cast in the role of "Zoe Bell." There'd be a huge difference right? (On top of that it would be interesting to see Thurman play the woman who was her stunt double in Kill Bill and then have Bell be Uma's stunt double for Death Proof as well.)
You praise Bell but she never has to portray any other emotion other than joy. Even in the final scene Dawson and Thoms show more rage than Bell, Bell sells it because of the physicality of that scene.
josh [email] said at 12:31 PM 04-15-2007: i didnt care about the first group. i cared about the second group, the movie would have been better if we had more time with the second group.... and maybe if we had seen mike dispatch 2 groups before, instead of just the one.
when the second group came along, i was like, "FUCK! i'm gonna have to sit through another hour of boring bullshit!"
what the movie needed was A LOT of the first group cut out. this would have made not just "death proof" but "grindhouse" a better movie to boot. it was have shortened it from 3 hours, and cut out it's worst scenes.
so much of the first group was terrible, BORING filler.
kiche [email] said at 2:09 PM 04-15-2007: i was saying no to this:
the movie would have been better if we had more time with the second group...
should have been more clear. this movie didn't need more character development it needed less. i think the second group was long enough.
by necessity the first group has to have the longest character development because the director has to prove to you that he will completely develop characters and get you connected to them and still kill them.
that way with the second group you actually wonder if anyone will die.
a third group just would have made the movie way too long. it's way too long as is. by the second group you knew what was up.
there was all sorts of shit that should have been on the editing room floor with the first group. the movie was too long with lots of pointless crap in it. that stuff needed to be removed. it didn't need more.
tarantino should have edited back in the lap dance scene if he wanted to make it longer.
josh [email] said at 2:20 PM 04-15-2007: i dont think tarantino needed to do anything to prove to us he'd kill characters... maybe if this was not part of a double feature, but after just having el Wray die only ten minutes before, we know in the world of Grindhouse, anyone can die.
that said, they are breaking these movies up, so ultimately maybe that's true... but as a double feature, spending time with characters just to prove that QT can kill anyone is a waste.
also note that i didnt say we should have more character development scenes with the second group, i said i'd like to spend more time with them - hijinx and so forth.
I think what the movie needed, more than anything, was more Stuntman Mike badassery. That would have been entertaining, made the chase more effective, and made Mike's ultimate comeuppance even more sweet.
zack [email] said at 11:10 AM 04-12-2007: Just want to point out that referencing Big Kahuna Burger and Red Apple Cigarettes aren't so much funny references to his other movies, but more examples of QT's world-building that he always engages in. Same as with having the sheriff and Son #1 (what up, Chan Clan??) show up talking about Stuntman Mike, it's not just to be cute because they were in Kill Bill, it's because QT wants to draw a conclusive line between his various films that places them all in the same "world".
The funny thing about this is that he shares some of his characters with Rodriguez' Planet Terror (and vice versa), which means that at some point the Bride and Jules Winnfield will be killing zombies. I have no doubt that they will survive the coming zombie plague.
jake [email] said at 12:57 PM 04-12-2007: I completely agree with the world building, but I think there's a certain amount of "parallel universe" action with the shared characters. The Bride gets killed in 10 years by whatshername's daughter, not by zpmbies. Maybe California has a big quake and all the zombies fall into the sea?
jake [email] said at 5:07 PM 04-12-2007: After I thought about it, I like the idea of Beatrix ruling the undead legion as the zombie queen, and then her own daughter working with Nikki to take her down.
jake [email] said at 1:00 PM 04-12-2007: I'm sorry you didn't dig it, Kaycee.
I was actually fascinated by Tarantino reinterpreting his infamous "like a virgin" scene in an unabashedly feminist movie.
kiche [email] said at 12:20 PM 04-12-2007: i saw this movie last night and thought it was fucking amazing.
i'm totally with kaycee on death proof. yak, yak, good god. get to the point. the scene with the first set of girls in the bar, where the two guys were discussing how to make a move on them, i was thinking "god am i bored to tears. i've just watched so much dull shit." this whole subplot went nowhere.
reggie, i totally disagree with you. quentin tarantino did not cheat. he aped the bad z-grade 70s exploitation movie TOO MUCH. this whole dull assed character development that goes nowhere with long subplots that should have been left on the editing room floor are a staple of those films.
the problem is that they are dull and are just filler around the money scenes to extend the film to feature length. the talky character development in the second set of girls could have been edited down too.
that said, i am up in the air about which movie was better. last night i was thinking planet terror was the better film, because at no point during the movie was i bored, or did i find what was happening on screen to be not intensely interesting. but thinking about it today, i think i was too hard on death proof. sure, the "character development" scenes were way too long and just incredibly dull; but when the rubber hits the road, damn, does he deliver.
kurt russell delivers a great performance in the movie too. you go from liking him/feeling sorry for him/ to hating him and wanting to see him die as he pleads for his life.
jake [email] said at 1:29 PM 04-12-2007: Too right about the Death Proof "cheapness"/ripoff. I loved it for that. I also appreciated the decompressed plot... I was ready for a less frenetic pace after Planet Terror and the previews.
On the Kurt Russell cycle, you left out the stage where I creamed my jeans wanting to fuck him (or see him fully letch out and make the beast with two backs with Rose McGowan).
kiche [email] said at 2:01 PM 04-12-2007: yeah, also supposedly rodriguez filmed the segments that were missing from his movie as well.
i'm sort of glad they cut both. i don't think i could have taken much more boring nonviolent scenes in death proof. i was itching in my seat for the action to start.
and i'm figuring that the cut scenes in planet terror weren't up to snuff.
there's talk of releasing them as seperate movies in europe. if they do this, i'm betting the missing reels will be put back in. if they were included in the american release of grindhouse the movie would have been way to long. it already clocked in at 3 hours with those scenes missing.
josh [email] said at 3:45 PM 04-12-2007: "talk"? they are being released as seperate movies in every other market but here, and there is talk of releasing them that way here since grindhouse made less than half what was predicted in it's opening weekend.
josh [email] said at 12:37 PM 04-15-2007: north america (possibly minus mexico) is all one film market, i believe.
i'm going, by the way, from a statement from Harvey Weinstein when he says they are to be released as 2 movies in every other market but north america.
zack [email] said at 2:14 PM 04-12-2007: yeah, it shows up in the trailer. I am hoping to see it in ful at some point, 'cause "butterfly" was kind of hot as fuck.
reggie [email] said at 11:19 AM 04-15-2007: reggie, i totally disagree with you. quentin tarantino did not cheat. he aped the bad z-grade 70s exploitation movie TOO MUCH. this whole dull assed character development that goes nowhere with long subplots that should have been left on the editing room floor are a staple of those films.
First of all, I didn't say he "cheats." Re-read my statement homez I said: Some of the criticisms (if you even want to call it that) was that Tarantino's movie wasn't bad enough and that he "cheated" by making a good movie.
I'm talking about some of the reviews I read at Rotten Tomato and Metacritic.
I'm not in agreement with those, I think he did exactly what Tarantino always does which flip the script on the genre conventions we're all familiar with.
josh [email] said at 1:44 PM 04-15-2007: i think the people who were saying he cheated were saying his camerawork and so forth was "too good", not his movie over all.
i do agree that they should not have spent $67 million (plus $30 million in marketing) on this movie. i don't actually quite understand HOW they spent that much. they should have established a $10 million dollar cap for each movie or something... as it is, this movie is a big hit to the Weinstein company. i'm sure foreign rights sales will help but as of right now they are about $90 million dollars in the red for Grindhouse.
reggie [email] said at 11:20 AM 04-16-2007: I guess opening up against a Will Ferrell-Jon Heder movie doesn't help matters either.
But I do wonder if mainstream moviegoers "get" what Grindhouse is all about. I mean yes it is directed at a niche audience but I just wonder if people just want their horror to be mean-spirited like your Saws, Hostels and Hills Have Eyeses.
If Death Proof was released by itself and done as a straight up horror film (and not an homage) only with more gore, more deaths and less wit it would probably be a success. I mean if you're a producer and some whipper-snapper screenwriter came up to you and pitched Saw meets Fast & Furious, how could you NOT jump on that?
Maybe open the movie small in NY and LA and Austin (they'd better open it in Austin since Rodriguez calls it home and Tarantino has adopted the city as well) at a series of midnight screenings. Make going to see it an event. Then move it to a few other major markets (Boston, Philly, DC/Bmore) the same way.
josh [email] said at 11:57 AM 04-16-2007: i think the main problem was they sold it purely based on RR & QT's name and spent the majority of the commercials run time talking about what a grindhouse is... instead of showing story elements. the story element they highlighted the most, the gun-leg, was pretty stupid looking when not viewed in the context of the movie itself. i would have left that out, myself.
kiche [email] said at 1:13 PM 04-12-2007: also, on the wikipedia page for grindhouse there are claims that some of the trailers to the movies are going to be made into actual films. particularly "machete" and "don't".
also, there is a trailer only shown in canada called "hobo with a shotgun" which may be made into a film.
zack [email] said at 2:13 PM 04-12-2007: Machete is going to be straight to DVD. Rodriguez apparently shot enough stuff for the trailer that he's got like 45 minutes of footage to make the movie with.
hobo with a shotgun:
kiche [email] said at 4:45 PM 04-12-2007: supposedly machete is already made.
it is truly sad that they probably won't make any of these films because the world would be a much richer place with the movies "hobo with a shotgun" and "werewolf women of the ss".
(yes, i know there were no plans to make werewolf women of the ss, but damn that should be a movie)
josh [email] said at 12:39 PM 04-15-2007: machete is not already made, but RR has 45 minutes worth of footage already. also the character machete has appeared in other RR films, i believe... the spy kids movies i think?
jake [email] said at 5:17 PM 04-12-2007: I hope the book's not closed on the financial success. Obviously the opening weekend was disappointing but it seems predictable going up against Will Farrell. Hopefully Grindhouse has legs over the next two months as more people get around to seeing it.
kiche [email] said at 8:43 PM 04-12-2007: i sort of like that it's not doing well.
if it did well, we'd have to deal with shit like mtv making references to it and jerry falwell types saying they are going to start a more "grindhouse" ministry. that last one stretches it, but you know what i mean. it'd just enter our mainstream culture in a really tacky way that would cheapen it terribly.
josh [email] said at 3:49 PM 04-12-2007: i liked death proof more overall, but planet terror was probably more entertaining throughout. but nothing in planet terror was as awesome as the car chase in death proof.
reggie [email] said at 6:26 PM 04-16-2007: That's about the best review I've read. Also, and completely unrelated or maybe somewhat related, I read an old interview with QT in which he expressed a fondness for David Hasselhoff and I was thinking how awesome would this movie have been with Hasselhoff in the Stuntman Mike role.
