8Apr 2007
Night at the Grindhouse
Been hearing about this movie for a while now and thought I'd bite the bullet and head out to go see it last night. The decision to go came late in the day so we ended up having to see the late, late night showing. At three hours and eleven minutes our 11 o'clock showing kept us there until around 2:30 am. My only regret is that the movie ended up lasting until after all the local bars were closed.
As most of you know the movie, Grindhouse, is actually a double-feature with 5 or so previews to non-existent movies. The experience, as a whole, was well worth the $16 ( I took our other room mate out with me ).
The first move, Planet Terror, was just over-the-top hilarious. Robert Rodriguez did a bang up job in staying true to the B-Movie feel. All the corny one-liners and goofy characters kept me laughing throughout the entire duration of the film. And for those of you who love blood and guts, trust me, there was more than plenty to go around.
Rose McGowan, who played the leg-gun-toting femme fatale, Cherry, filled her role as main character role perfectly. I don't think I've ever really seen her in any other movie, so I didn't have anything else to compare her against, but she did a smash up job. Oh, and yeah, she's shit-hot too let's not forget that.
Death Proof, however, was a disaster until the last 10 minutes or so. QT probably did this on purpose, but it really wasn't that much fun to watch until the last 10 minutes, of course. For those of you who haven't seen this movie yet, I'll go ahead and warn you, there is a good hour of boring, mundane dialog that really amounted to nothing as far as the plot was concerned. Boring, boring, drab and boooring stuff until the last 15 or so minutes.
On another note, I think DP was one of Kurt Russels best roles. Except for Escape from New York, of course.
In a way, I wish they would have showed Death Proof first and then blow everybody away with Planet Terror. Good God, Planet Terror was just fucking amazing. Oh yeah and about 90% of the audience in the theater were clapping and laughing throughout the entire movie was well. Hell, even the crazy trailers of Machete, Thanksgiving, Don't and The Were Wolf Women of the SS were just over-the-top insane. Hell, I'd sit through another 3 1/2 hours just for the faux trailers.
Good stuff, would see again.
I'm jealous that you got to see the whole thing at once in your cinema. In Europe they decided to release the movies seperately with some months in between, and obviously there is no way to have enough patience to wait until they release the second part and then go view them in a row.