Grindhouse

Starring: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton Directed by: Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino Runtime: 189 min. Rated: R Release date: April 6, 2007 - More Info
READER RATINGS:
8.7 OVERALL	Smart . . . . . . . . 9 Sexy . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Funny . . . . . . . . 8.8

The Hooksexup Review

The elaborate nostalgia exercise has become commonplace in American cinema, as movie-mad directors strive to replicate/deconstruct the work of a beloved idol (as in Todd Haynes' tender Sirk homage Far From Heaven) or play by the antiquated rules of a favorite genre (e.g., The Good German, Steven Soderbergh's unfairly maligned riff on postwar Hollywood). But Grindhouse, the latest collaboration by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, may be the first film ever designed to recreate a particular moviegoing experience. In addition to getting two feature films for the price of one — both of them distressed to resemble prints that have been kicking around the drive-in circuit for a year or more, complete with scratches, flutters and hilariously timed "missing reels" — we're treated to vintage interstitials (including an ad for a restaurant "located next door to this theater") and a passel of fake trailers. If your multiplex has stadium seating, you may want to park yourself on the floor to get the full effect.

That said, actual grindhouse fare was virtually never this accomplished. Rodriguez's Planet Terror, a tongue-in-cheek, hypodermic-in-eye, machine-gun-in-leg zombie flick starring Freddy Rodriguez, Rose McGowan and Marley Shelton, does offer some of the juvenile gross-out antics associated with cheap '70s horror knockoffs, including exploding infected pustules and a jumbo-sized sack of severed testicles. But the film's eccentric characters, its knowing performances and (especially) its muscular compositions evince the wit and sophistication of early John Carpenter — in essence, this is Assault on Precinct 13 with the hungry undead in lieu of pissed-off gangbangers. Too bad Tarantino-the-actor breaks the spell in the final half hour, stinking up the joint as usual with a pathetically affected stab at machismo.

Behind the camera, thankfully, Tarantino remains some kind of weirdly stunted prodigy. His contribution, Death Proof, in which Kurt Russell plays a charming homicidal maniac with the self-applied moniker Stuntman Mike, ostensibly pays loving tribute to car-chase epics like Vanishing Point (overtly referenced multiple times) and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. But while the film does climax with one of the most Hooksexup-rattling automotive assaults in recent memory — in which we learn why even a real-life professional stuntperson (Zoë Bell as herself) should refrain from playing a game called "ship's mast" — most of Death Proof is devoted to scenes of lovely, voluble young women (Rosario Dawson, Sydney Poitier, Vanessa Ferlito) just chillin'. Some will complain that Tarantino overindulges his yen for profanely digressive conversation — not to mention his foot fetish — but the abrupt shifts from mundane to mayhem are calibrated with a sadistic precision worthy of Hitchcock at his most playful. This is the director's most formally audacious work since Pulp Fiction, and arguably his finest. — Mike D'Angelo

Other Reviews

LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
"Grindhouse is ultimately less about a fixed time or place than about a state of mind — a democracy of cinephilia in which a well-executed blowjob or beheading can be, in its way, as thrilling as a David Lean landscape or an Eisensteinian montage."
Read full review

Village Voice
Nathan Lee
"As nostalgia trips go, at least this one goes all the way. You can practically taste the mold and smell the celluloid. . . Go wasted, go stoned, go without your parents' permission. In paying homage to an obsolete form of movie culture, Grindhouse delivers a dropkick to ours."
Read full review

Variety
Todd McCarthy
"Lovingly resurrects a disreputable but cultishly embraced form of era-specific film production and exhibition. A pair of pictures devoted to re-creating their progenitors' grubby aesthetics and visceral kicks, but with vastly greater budgets, higher-end actors and a patina of hipster cool, they part company when it comes to talent and freshness."
Read full review

The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
"Nicely straddles the line between tongue-in-cheek spoof and genuine homage to the outrageous vitality and extreme situations moviemakers once crammed into cheap genre films that demanded sex, action and gore. The only things missing are sticky floors and a guy snoring in the seventh row."
Read full review

Los Angeles Times
Dennis Lim
"Grindhouse is a full-blooded attempt to summon up a bygone age of cinematic sleaze. Or, to put it more cynically, it's an exploitation bonanza in which the most effectively exploited element is the marketing concept."
Read full review

Slate
Dana Stevens
"It's tough to imagine how, or whether, Grindhouse will find an audience, given its behemoth running time and incessant referencing of pop-cultural trivia that will be alien to anyone under 30 and plenty of people much older than that. But you don't need to be an exploitation fanboy to appreciate the energy, imagination, and spirit with which Rodriguez and Tarantino pay homage to the cheapo cinema they love."
Read full review

Your Reviews

Here in New York, it costs $11 to see a film, and when you're shelling out this kind of dough, you want to know that the experience is going to be worth it, either in entertainment or artfulness. It's rare, I find, that one achieves this level of satisfaction; even though the film cost a hundred mill to make, somehow we only expect a mere eleven bucks of thrills. That bar has officially been raised with GRINDHOUSE. Boasting scream-worthy plots that boast characters as baldly stereotypical as any you're likely to see in a B- or C-level movie, the double feature of films by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino is worth at least $15.00. (Although I'm fine paying $11, thanks)