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Planet Terror was amazing. I knew it would be camp but I didn't realize how fantastically campy it would be. Every beat hit. Every joke funny. This is a movie I will watch repeatedly.
Death Proof disappointed the LIVING HELL out of me. It is broken up into what feels like two completely different stories (almost a mocking of the duality of the entire "Grindhouse" movie itself). The first half has waaaaay too much completely irrelevant exposition going on. Then we find one of the most bad ass invincible serial killer monsters ever created. Far from a silent nobody like Jason or Michael and far from a loudmouthed lunatic like Freddy, Stuntman Mike is a calm, even fun-loving kind of monster. His charismatic wooing of the girl makes his turn to psychotic with Rose McGowan's character all that more chilling. He utters one of the most frightening bits of dialogue ever from a movie character. "Oh see, that's too bad. You had a good 50/50 shot. See, I'm going left. Which is where you're going. If you had just needed to left as well, you wouldn't have gotten scared until much further down the road. But you're going to have to start getting scared now." He then pulls off a quadruple kill that puts him on a pedestool of supernatural skill. Quentin gets us excited for a crazy run of Mike doing god knows what to god knows who.
Then Quentin takes that possibility, skullfucks it, breaks it over his knee, incinerates it, and pisses on its ashes. We switch to a group of women we know NOTHING about and CARE NOTHING about who prattle on incessantly about inane topics we care NOTHING about. They get their own little 30 minute story of traveling, eating, and test-driving an old car, something that could have been wrapped up in no more than 10 minutes tops. All the while we wonder, where is Mike? Assumedly he will show up out of nowhere, in the most shocking you-didn't-expect-THIS-shit moments of film ever--only to completely predictably pull up behind the girls as they are pulling some crazy stunt in their car.
Mike is then emasculated. That twinkling dream of one of the most intense, clever, creepy serial movie monsters ever is spat on in one of the most boring, overlong car chase sequences ever. Mike is no supernatural force. He is not, in fact, Death Proof. He's just a crazy guy who APPARENTLY got incredibly lucky when he perfectly murdered four women earlier in a car crash while escaping unscathed. And these four new women, who we had been dying to see die after all their drivel, get to take revenge on Mike, who is now a sniveling baby. Are we supposed to cheer the girls? They're not likable. We don't hardly know them and what we do know is irritating. Quentin forgot that in these types of movies, the audience begins the cheer the predator as he picks off annoying character after annoying character.
And finally we get the most anticlimactic ending ever. I might as well have had my dick sliced off right before orgasm.
I've loved all of Quentin's movies up til this one. But he can go eat a dick after this bullshit.
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If the movie went the way I expected it to go (Death Proof, I mean), then I would've been greatly disappointed.
I personally liked the second set of women in Death Proof. Their characters were fun and while the dialogue did seem to go on for a bit, it
revealed character, details of the plot, and foreshadowed events. Tarantino might love his own work a little too much at times, but what he delivers is some real quality.
Out of the two movies I'd say that I found Death Proof's pay off worth the admission alone. Planet Terror was all kinds of awesome and it's difficult to say which one I liked more. I do hope Rod and Taran do another Grindhouse, because I've
never had quite as much fun at the theater's as I did last night watching this.
Jam it back in, in the dark.
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