Grindhouse (**3/4)

? Writer-directors Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) and Quentin Tarentino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill) indulge their love of 1970s exploitation films with this double feature that includes intentionally “damaged” film, fake retro trailers, and other bits meant to re-create the ambience of a beat-up old theater in the pre-megaplex era. The two features are Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, a zombie flick, and Tarentino’s Death Proof, a girls-night-out adventure culminating in a car chase, with Kurt Russell playing a mysterious, has-been stuntman. A few of the actors, like Planet Terror star Rose McGowan, show up in both halves of Grindhouse.
+ Really the appeal of both movies is in nostalgia. Both movies are apparently set today (judging by the cell phones both plots employ), but everything else feels deliberately old-fashioned, including the special effects. This makes the zombie stuff look more cheesy, and the car-chase stuff more realistic. That was among the reasons I liked Tarentino’s half better, but the main one was that where Rodriguez’s film is a straight homage, Tarentino’s movie blends the sensibility of his earlier works with a car chase that, while not the best I’ve seen, has some unusual elements that help make it a little different than something I’d have seen on a UHF station late at night 25 years ago. In addition to better characters and more compelling dialogue, Death Proof shows off the director’s quirky side, such as his affinity for forgotten pop and soul gems. (Kudos to Rodriguez, too, for writing his own score.) As in the talkier parts of Pulp Fiction, Tarentino blends in lots of stuff that doesn’t advance the plot, simply because it’s interesting.
- Aside from the retro appeal, and the innovation of having a machine gun used as an artificial leg, I found Rodriguez’s half of the movie pretty tedious, exactly like I probably would watching some of the bad 1970s movies that probably inspired it. Death Proof barely has a plot at all, but it partly makes up for it with other elements.
= **3/4 overall. (Slightly upgraded for the clever concept.) Planet Terror **1/4 I guess your opinion of Rodriguez’s half depends a lot on your reaction to the phrase “typical zombie movie.” It’s not my favorite genre, I’ll confess. Death Proof *** For those who like Tarentino’s quirkier side, or pre-CGI car chases, or both.

[reviewed 4/26/07]