I caught the Weinstein Company’s Grindhouse
last night, after battling an ungodly but dispiritingly typical Los Angeles
traffic snarl to make it all the way to Culver City (total distance: roughly 21
miles; total traveling time: one hour, 41 minutes, door to door!), and I’ll
have more discrete thoughts here and there, as well as a full review on Monday,
but it suffices to say that this is a film that will further entrench those
locked in mortal debate about the diminishing return of Quentin Tarantino’s
gifts as a filmmaker.

The movie, of course, is comprised of separate full-length
features from Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. The latter’s effort, Planet Terror (above), kicks things off,
and it’s arguably his best work in years. In telling a loose story of the
zombie infection of Austin, Texas, Rodriguez certainly makes the most out of
the whole notion of a grindhouse homage, with a great score — alternately
purposefully tremulous and conveying great, dick-swinging strides — calculated cinematography
and production design, and plenty of affected scratches and grain. It sags a
bit toward the end, but it’s a good bit of fun, and full of characters we care about.

Tarantino’s Death
Proof, on the other hand, might most charitably be described as a mess. If
it has an idea, it’s certainly not a codifying one. There’s a lot of rangy
material for Kurt Russell, but he drops out of the movie for a goodly portion
in the middle, and too many scenes drag on for far too long, stung by Tarantino’s
unchecked self-satisfaction.

Watching the film as a whole — and coming as it does on the
heels of the very divisive 300
— I was struck by just how alienating along generational and cultural lines Grindhouse will likely be. I was
actually reminded, in tangential fashion, of an Eminem lyric from “Who Knew,” from The Marshall Mathers LP: “I don’t do black music, I don’t do white
music/I make fight music, for high school kids/I put lives at risk when I drive
like this,” then, “Get aware, wake up, get a sense of humor/Quit tryin’ to
censor music/This is for your kids’ amusement.”

Grindhouse is, of
course, a film full of sputtering excess, and in fact largely predicated on it.
As such, its vulgarities and careening nature are bound to upset the
sensibilities of older film critics, as well as general audiences who don’t
necessarily embrace referentiality for referentiality’s sake. (In particular I’m thinking
of two shots from Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving,
one of the trailers for fake movies that serve as bumpers between the features:
one presents a quick shot of a masked killer screwing a “turkey,” another emphasizes
a cheerleader stripping on a trampoline, and then the insinuation that she does
a naked split down on a knife.) Not typically the sort of thing one imagines the Richard
Schickels and Kenneth Turans of the world being predisposed to appreciate.