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Grindhouse Review

By Joe Yang



Plot synopsis: Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino each directed a feature length movie then stuck them back-to-back in an explosive two-movies-for-the-price-of-one concept that serves as an homage to exploitation films of the 70's.

Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror is an action-packed sci-fi/horror story about a biochemical agent unleashed by a team of corrupt military guys. The deadly gas mutates the citizens of a small town into a horde of gross-looking zombies that go on a killing/eating rampage that's more horrifying than a bunch of Jenny Craig rejects at the local Sizzler. A band of survivors led by anti-hero El Wray (Freddie Rodriguez), a one-legged stripper named Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), and tough sheriff Hague (Michael Biehn) do their best to shoot, stab, dismember, and splatter their way to safety.

Tarantino's Death Proof features the mysteriously charming Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), who's really a psychopathic stunt driver who is somehow obsessed with killing young women who are either dumb enough to ride in his car or who happen to be sharing the road with him. Stuntman Mike meets his match when he confronts three hotties (Tracie Thoms, Rosario Dawson, and Zoe Bell) who just happen to be stuntwomen themselves.

The good: Before each feature you'll see trailers for several other exploitation flicks, each promising to be outlandishly gory and cheesy. Complete with bad editing and campy voice-overs, these trailers definitely add a touch of fun to the whole Grindhouse experience. Digitally produced film scratches and intentional sound dropouts also add to the atmosphere.

The over-the-top action and gore in Planet Terror is just about everything you'd expect from Rodriguez. The creativity/silliness/mayhem is plain fun and even heart-pounding when it kicks into full gear. If you're over the age of 21, this is a great movie to watch while drunk. But if you're stuck being the designated driver, you'll still like it. For Death Proof, the climactic car chase will definitely get your pulse going. Just don't drive like Kurt Russel or Tracie Thoms when you leave the theater. Or if you do, call me in advance so I'll know to stay off the roads.

The bad: Sorry Tarantino, but Death Proof just doesn't quite work as an exploitation flick. If you got drunk and enjoyed Planet Terror, Death Proof would be a pretty rude buzz-kill. Although I'm no expert on this genre during the dark ages of bell-bottoms and bad presidents, this half of Grindhouse has way too much damn talking in it in a similar way that Lord of the Rings had too much walking. This isn't to say Death Proof is bad. It looks and feels more like an art-house film than something you'd find in an exploitation theater. Story-wise, it feels incomplete and short despite the near-incessant gabbing that goes on earlier. I hate to say it, but this one doesn't live up to the high-octane trailer.

I'm afraid I can't let Rodriguez completely off the hook either, which I will detail below when I give my final verdict…

The final verdict: Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino love their craft, and you'll definitely get a sense that these guys were having fun while making, and coming up with the idea for Grindhouse.
Those exploitation movies of the 70s were campy, silly, and just plain bad. But if you emulate that formula you'll simply make a movie that's, well, campy, silly, and just plain bad. So herein lies the zen-like dilemma: Is it possible to consciously make a campy, silly, "bad" movie that works?
Although entertaining to some degree, I'm willing to bet that a lot of guys who made those sick films of yesteryear did not intentionally set out to make schlock. They were either deluded enough to think that they were making high art or were compelled to make trash because the voices in their heads told them to (and thus couldn’t care less about who watched their stuff).
Rodriguez and Tarantino, as influenced as they are by exploitation films made by hacks, are not themselves hacks. They may be easy-going and open-minded enough to appreciate the genre, but they are too sophisticated to be participating in it. The acting in Grindhouse is too good, the storyline (of Planet Terror, at least) is too complex, the characters have too much depth, and the dialogue is too intelligent. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the filmmaking styles of Rodriguez and Tarantino are genres in and of themselves. And Grindhouse, by this assertion, is the mixing of two incompatible genres (although it may not seem that way on the surface). I mean, would you want Paul Verhoeven directing a Tom & Jerry cartoon? Yeah, both are known for gratuitous violence, but I'd probably leave the theater feeling kind of weird.
Grindhouse certainly has its moments, but it's not quite mindless enough to be as stupid as it should be. This ironically, is the reason why the film doesn't quite work.

300

300 is a very entertaining, although simplistic movie with a powerful message, which is this:

If you find it within yourself to go out in public wearing nothing but a pair of tight black speedos and a red cape, you BETTER know how to fight.

SUPERMAN RETURNS a brief synopsis (warning: spoilers)

By Harbourseal

I saw Superman Returns over the weekend & I bet you did too. So here's a quick summary:

After the events of Superman 2, Superman goes back to Krypton to determine if his home planet really blew up, or if Don Corleone was just messing with him from the first movie. Yeah, it's really gone. So he comes home 5 years later in the same spikey-looking spaceship that he was in as an infant. He crashes the damn thing into his adopted mother's cornfield back in Smallville and she doesn't even get mad at him for wrecking the crops. Why does Superman need a spaceship? That makes about as much sense as a dolphin hiring a fishing boat to get food.

Anyway, Lex Luthor is back and is played by Kaiser Sose. He finds some crystals in the Fortress of Solitude and discovers that he can make a new continent with them just by adding water.

Meanwhile, Clark Kent goes back to Metropolis and discovers that Lois Lane is engaged to Cyclops of the XMEN, and has a weird son. She's mad at Superman for just leaving without saying goodbye, doesn't notice his good Christopher Reeve impersonation, then says she doesn't need him. But deep down she still has feelings for Supes, otherwise there wouldn't be much of a movie.

Later on, Kaiser Sose drops one of the Krypton crystals (mixed w/ Kryptonite) into the ocean which creates a new landmass that threatens to turn the entire continental United States into one giant New Jersey. Superman saves Lois Lane, Cyclops, and their weird son, and goes after Kaiser Sose. But since the new New Jersey is filled with Kryptonite, he ends up stumbling around like a drunk and doesn't get much accomplished. After getting stabbed in the right butt cheek with part of a green ice scraper, Superman falls about a thousand feet into the lovely waters of the New Jersey harbor. He was probably better off with the Kryptonite.

While flying away in the same sea plane from the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lois convinces Cyclops to turn around so they can help Superman. Cyclops says 'no.' Lois says 'please,' then Cyclops says 'ok' because he is whipped and does whatever she tells him. Before long they find Superman splashing around in the water and probably suffering from major shrinkage by now. Lois Lane rescues him, thereby putting Aquaman out of work for good.

After regaining his strength and removing the green ice scraper from his right butt cheek, Superman opens the door and jumps out without remembering to chip in for gas money. Diving into the ocean, he literally lifts the new New Jersey out of the ocean and hurls it into space, which is the proper solution to any problem. Then Superman falls back towards Earth and winds up in the hospital after swallowing the missing puzzle piece.

After a visit from Lois and the Man with the Yellow Hat, Superman escapes from the hospital before he can be billed. Breaking into Lois Lane's house he goes into her weird son's room and watches him sleep for a little while. By now we learn that Lois' kid is actually the son of Superman (remember that back in Superman 2, they got it on under those aluminum foil sheets at the Fortress of Bong-chicka-bawm-bawm). So Superman flies away (again) before Professor X can come over and take his kid to mutant school.
Once the credits roll, everyone in the audience is torn between sticking around to hear John Williams' original score or running to the bathroom because the movie was so freakin' long.

Movie review: ULTRAVIOLET

Review by Joe Yang


In the future, a virus is accidentally unleashed upon humanity. Faster than you can say bird-flu, those infected become what are known as "hemophages." Deemed a threat to the populace, hemophages are hunted and removed by the government. We learn all this from Milla Jovovich's voice-over in the film's opening, and after yet another obligatory anti-Bush reference from Left Coast Hollywood, we are told that an authoritarian society controls everything in this Dr. Seuss-looking future world. Hemophages become an outlaw group of revolutionaries who want to preserve their race. The virus has given them enhanced strength, stamina, and supposedly more intelligence, and they make use of their powers by trying to look cool while lounging in their brightly lit secret hideout located in the most conspicuously-looking tower in the whole city. Needless to say, the only hemophage getting anything done is Violet (Milla Jovovich), a sword and pistol-packing babe with some serious anger management issues who's bent on beating the crap out of everyone in the world. And at the rate she's going she'll need a new hobby in about two days.

The story begins when the hemophages catch wind of a plot cooked up by Daxus (Nick Chinlund), the supreme leader guy in the world or something like that. Daxus has developed a weapon of mass destruction designed to wipe out the hemophages once and for all. In an effort to prevent a most terrible end to their coolness, Violet disguises herself as a courier assigned to transport the weapon, and sneaks into the heavily guarded building where the weapon, sealed in a sleek ipod-white case, is located. Her orders are to get the weapon and bring it back to Nerva, the hemophage leader (Sébastien Andrieu), who looks and talks like an actor from an 80s Vidal Sassoon ad. Oh, and she is expressly forbidden from opening the case. Without giving too much away, let's just say that strict instructions like that are the cinematic equivalent of those "do not remove this tag" labels found on your sofa.

Violet manages to get past the numerous security checkpoints, which include fancy x-rays, blood tests, invasive poking and prodding, and finally a section where she is ordered to remove her clothes and walk down a dark hallway, thereby causing every male in the audience to pay attention. Violet retrieves the weapon, and is about to leave when things go awry. Outside the building, the real courier (another hot babe) shows up. The confused guards get panicky (I guess two hot babes in the same day violates some sort of quota in the future) and arrest her before she can get to the part of the building where she has to take her clothes off. Alarms go off and Violet is forced to do some serious butt-kicking/shooting/slashing in order to get out alive. The plot thickens slightly when Violet takes it upon herself to protect a little boy named Six (Cameron Bright), and when the hemophage underground and Daxus reveal hidden agendas.

Shot in Shanghai, China, Ultraviolet scores a tad bit higher on the watchable scale when it comes to ridiculous action flicks, thanks greatly to Milla Jovovich's midriff. The major plotline is pretty straightforward and the movie more or less stays on track in that respect. The cinematography and visual effects are interesting as there's a specific comic-book style look to the movie, and I must admit that the music score was all right. But all this is like admiring peace and quiet after a nuclear bomb has gone off: it's hard to ignore what's really wrong.

The biggest flaw with Ultraviolet is that it tries way too hard to be cool. Vehicle chases that defy the laws of physics, logic, and most countries create some hyper-stylized entertainment, but when it grabs you it fails to hold, as it looks all too familiar to anyone who's seen anime or classic Hong Kong action movies. The hemophages, decked out in their designer outfits and sporting some expensive-looking hairstyles, look more like a bunch of metrosexual boy-band members trapped in a Mentos commercial, which may not be the best PR move for a bunch of hardened anti-government revolutionaries. Cinematically, it's just too jarring and more than a little unconvincing. In typical Hollywood 'we-think-we-know-what-audiences-will-like' thinking, Milla Jovovich acts and talks tough like the heroine babe she's supposed to be, but when she's done reciting wooden, hokey dialogue we are treated to scenes of her slashing away with her super sword in a series of watered-down Kill Bill imitations. And to appease first-person shooter fans, there are plenty of instances where Violet mows down bad guys with more bullets than were used during the Battle of the Bulge. And it's downright baffling that the bad guys either can't aim or don't bother to take cover when they're being shot at.

I'm not saying that comic-book, adrenaline-rush actions movies can't be cool. But in order for that style of filmmaking to work, there has to be a respect, or at least an understanding of that style. In the case of Ultraviolet, it seemed like the filmmakers simply went through the motions hoping that Milla Jovovich's ever-changing wardrobe could keep the audience distracted long enough before the viewers realize they're being conned.

1.5 out of 4 stars

ULTRAVIOLET

Directed by Kurt Wimmer
Starring Milla Jovovich, Nick Chinlund, Cameron Bright

Released by Screen Gems Studios

Rated PG-13 for violence, some bad language, evil metrosexuals, and one gratuitous butt shot.