"Grindhouse" Review of Sorts
Apr. 9th, 2007 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI saw "Grindhouse" this weekend, the double-feature horror/suspense flick by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. The first one is the one by Rodriguez, of "Spy Kids" fame but also "El Mariachi." It is a festival of gore and female skin. I quite like many of the characters and the beautiful barbecue place. The second one is the one by Tarantino of "Pulp Fiction" fame but, by comparison, has almost no gore at all. Especially if you close your eyes during any car crashes and beatings. But my point is that you hardly have to close your eyes at all. The plot is looser, but there are a lot of interesting characters.
Those directors were trying to have a lot of fun with their genres and also deliver on the flesh, thrills, and gore promised in bad 1970's flicks. They clearly succeeded. Maybe they had a little too much fun.
So the advice from your squeamish reviewer is that if you have heard that the second half is even worse than the first, and you were not even looking at much of the first movie, you will get to see most of the second movie. The trailers in the middle--that's a good time to use the restroom.
My favorite trailer was actually one played before the movie by the Alamo Drafthouse for an old movie called "Hobo with a Shotgun." It's really a superhero movie about a hobo who witnesses one too many atrocities and gets himself a shotgun. If it weren't for all the gore, I'd want to see that movie.
The Drafthouse is also having a contest where you compete by entering a fake trailer for a sequel. I've thought of two already: "Hobo with a Shotgun: The PG-rated version" and "Deathproof II: The Cheerleader." The latter addresses a loose thread in the second half of "Grindhouse" which could definitely be a whole movie in itself. Actually, I may have just read a review for a better version of that movie: "The Lookout."
Link of the day - The Real Estate Roller Coaster pulls together two interesting things: a graph of US real estate prices since 1890 adjusting for inflation (don't read the comments--it's depressing that most of the commenters can't read a graph) and the same information transformed into a roller coaster ride.
Those directors were trying to have a lot of fun with their genres and also deliver on the flesh, thrills, and gore promised in bad 1970's flicks. They clearly succeeded. Maybe they had a little too much fun.
So the advice from your squeamish reviewer is that if you have heard that the second half is even worse than the first, and you were not even looking at much of the first movie, you will get to see most of the second movie. The trailers in the middle--that's a good time to use the restroom.
My favorite trailer was actually one played before the movie by the Alamo Drafthouse for an old movie called "Hobo with a Shotgun." It's really a superhero movie about a hobo who witnesses one too many atrocities and gets himself a shotgun. If it weren't for all the gore, I'd want to see that movie.
The Drafthouse is also having a contest where you compete by entering a fake trailer for a sequel. I've thought of two already: "Hobo with a Shotgun: The PG-rated version" and "Deathproof II: The Cheerleader." The latter addresses a loose thread in the second half of "Grindhouse" which could definitely be a whole movie in itself. Actually, I may have just read a review for a better version of that movie: "The Lookout."
Link of the day - The Real Estate Roller Coaster pulls together two interesting things: a graph of US real estate prices since 1890 adjusting for inflation (don't read the comments--it's depressing that most of the commenters can't read a graph) and the same information transformed into a roller coaster ride.