rodriguez & tarantino's GRINDHOUSE (2007)

it's difficult to approach Grindhouse from a critical point of view, at least so soon after a first viewing, because it still exists in my mind as an experience rather than a work of art. the film's publicity has made a whole lot of noise about Tarantino and Rodriguez's yearning affection for the bygone days of schlocksploitation double features, but in practice Grindhouse reaches more universal heights, even for those who know the film's reference points only by vague reputation: it reminds us how ridiculously fucking fun it can be to go out and see a movie. as the audience laughed, cheered, hooted, hollered, clapped and cursed in harmony with each other, there was a glow of shared experience that's all but foreign in latter-day cineplexes, and for the first time in a long time i felt like i'd really gotten my eight bucks' worth.

Rodriguez's segment seems the more successful of the two films, at least insofar as the project's thesis goes: Planet Terror grabs the bronco of grindhouse cinema by its horns and balls and manages to hang on for most of its running time, primarily thanks to a wealth of wit, energy and ideas that somehow keeps the novelty of the whole spectacle from wearing off. (oddly, when it does sadly and inevitably lose its momentum, the most direct culprit is Tarantino, in a terrible cameo role that could almost be interpreted as sabotage.) the final sequences remain interesting, though, and despite their mania amount to a sort of break for the audience, who upon its conclusion are immediately assaulted with a series of breathlessly brilliant Coming Attractions mockups by Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright and Eli Roth. (Roth's in particular is hilariously, uncomfortably spot-on in its evocation of the no-budget slash trash for which i harbor an extreme phobia.)

Tarantino's segment, however, proves to be a different animal. where Planet Terror is Robert Rodriguez's love letter to the films from which Grindhouse takes its inspiration, Death Proof is, as usual, Quentin Tarantino's love letter to Quentin Tarantino; the first of the film's two acts is fatally, self-indulgently bloated with his trademark Witty Banter, and for the second time over the course of Grindhouse's three-plus hour running time, Quentin Tarantino is responsible for bringing everything to a screeching halt. but we've all learned two things about Tarantino over the course of his career: 1) he's an insufferable douchebag and 2) it doesn't matter, because he's a genuinely brilliant filmmaker. accordingly, a sudden, shocking climax throws the unsettled audience into an unexpected second act that initially echoes the first act's inactivity but quickly begins to take its own shape, culminating in an extended action sequence as visceral and expert as anything in Tarantino's oeuvre. Death Proof's payoff not only retroactively transforms the first act's unconcerned pacing into a ballsy model of unconventional exposition, but also more impressively elevates the film as a whole into an amalgamated homage to exploitation cinema that reduces Planet Terror to mere mimicry by comparison.

overall, though, the expertly sequenced double feature format does both films favors that probably prove key to their individual successes, and the pacing and energy of Grindhouse as a whole makes it more than the sum of its parts. it's by some measure the most fun i can remember ever having at the movies, and i look forward to seeing it again.