Review: Danny Trejo Revealed in "Champion"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 13 (of 2011) by Leroy Douresseaux

Champion (2005)
Running time: 81 minutes (1 hour, 21 minutes)
DIRECTOR: Joe Eckardt
WRITER: Cecily Gambrell
PRODUCERS: Joe Eckardt and Cecily Gambrell
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Vitaly Bokser, Dana Gonzales, and Daniel S. Haas
EDITORS: Joe Eckardt and Joseph Lorigo

DOCUMENTARY – Biography/Interview

Starring: Danny Trejo, Cecily Gambrell, Edward Bunker, Steve Buscemi, Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, and Robert Rodriguez

His body covered in tattoos, actor Danny Trejo has appeared in such films as Desperado, Con Air, and Spy Kids. Trejo is mostly known for playing tough guys, criminals, and villains. You’ll recognize him when you see him, and you may not be surprised to learn that Trejo has a past that includes substance abuse, drug dealing, and prison.

There is another side to Trejo. His troubled childhood, which included drug addiction, armed robbery, and extensive prison time, eventually led him to a career as a counselor, where his vocation became helping people who are struggling with alcohol, drugs, and gang-banging. That in turn led Trejo into acting, beginning with work in the 1985 film Runaway Train. The 2005 documentary Champion offers an intimate and detailed look at Trejo’s life and journey and includes testimonials from actors Steve Buscemi, Dennis Hopper, and Val Kilmer, among others.

The first hour of Champion mainly deals with Trejo’s troubled youth and a 20-year period from the 1950s to the late 1960s in which Trejo beat up people and/or robbed them, while selling drugs and doing time in juvenile and prison facilities. Although interesting, some of this first hour is repetitive or dry and slows the film. Then, Champion has a Saul-to-St. Paul moment and seems to suddenly open up, revealing the man who has a great big heart and a drive to help people. Champion is not a traditional documentary; in fact, it is essentially one long interview film. What the film ultimately documents is an inspirational story of how far up someone can come from being so down. Watch it and understand why Danny Trejo is indeed a champion.

7 of 10
B+

Friday, February 11, 2011

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Review: "Predators" Rocks Except When It Sucks

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 94 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux

Predators (2010)
Running time: 107 minutes (1 hour, 47 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong creature violence and gore, and pervasive language
DIRECTOR: Nimród Antal
WRITERS: Alex Litvak and Michael Finch (from Jim Thomas and John Thomas)
PRODUCERS: Elizabeth Avellan, John Davis, and Robert Rodriguez
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Gyula Pados
EDITOR: Dan Zimmerman

SCI-FI/ACTION with elements of horror

Starring: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Oleg Taktarov, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Trejo, Louis Ozawa Changchien, and Mahershalahashbaz Ali

In the 1987 movie, Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch led a Special Forces team into the Guatemalan jungle. There, they encountered an alien hunter (called “the Predator”) that picked them off one by one. The 2010 movie, Predators, is a direct sequel to the original film, and follows a ruthless mercenary, as he leads a group of trained and untrained killers through a jungle on another planet.

In Predators, Royce (Adrien Brody), an ex-American military turned mercenary, awakens to find himself falling from the sky into a vast, unknown jungle. He soon meets seven other people that arrived there in the same manner. They include Isabelle (Alice Braga), a sniper and black operations soldier; Edwin (Topher Grace), a doctor; Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien), a Yakuza, and Stans (Walton Goggins), a death row inmate; among others. They are killers without a conscience.

The group soon learns that they are not on Earth. After a pack of alien beasts attacks them, Royce deduces that the planet is a game preserve and that they are the game and the prey. When the hunters stalking them finally attack, the humans discover just how formidable they are. Their only hope – to get off the planet – is seemingly an impossible one, but they may get help from the unlikeliest sources.

I found Predators to be immensely entertaining, and this is also one time that I can certainly give credit to the director the film, in this case, Nimród Antal. He works action movie magic out of a script filled with inane characters and inconsistencies. Some of the characters are extraneous and pointless (a Yakuza!) or defy common sense (a death row inmate!). Some of the good ones disappear too early in the film, Danny Trejo’s Cuchillo, a drug cartel enforcer, and Mahershalahashbaz Ali’s Mombasa, a death squad soldier. The audience doesn’t get to know the characters that well, if at all, and they often come across as cardboard cutouts. However, Laurence Fishburne’s Noland is a delight; Fishburne plays him as so deranged that the character is both scary and alluring.

Meanwhile, the director took advantage of a new setting for the Predator franchise (an alien world) and special effects, CGI, and production design talent, improved from the original, to make a movie that looks cool, especially when the Predators attack. The moment the viewer stops and tries to make sense of the plot, story, and concept, Predators begins to fall apart. When the viewer focuses on the chasing and the killing, Predators is just plain fun – so much fun that I didn’t want it to end. So let’s go with this formula for a future film: more Predator action and fewer crappy characters.

6 of 10
B

Saturday, November 20, 2010

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Review: "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" - Robert Rodriguez's "Mexico Trilogy" Stumbled to the Finish Line

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 142 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Running time: 102 minutes (1 hour, 42 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong violence and for language
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Robert Rodriguez
PRODUCERS: Elizabeth Avellan, Carlos Gallardo, and Robert Rodriguez
CINEMATOGRAPHER/COMPOSER/EDITOR: Robert Rodriguez

ACTION/CRIME/DRAMA

Starring: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Mickey Rourke, Eva Mendes, Danny Trejo, Enrique Inglesias, Marco Leonardi, Cheech Marin, Ruben Blades, Gerardo Vigil, Pedro Armendariz, Jr., and Willem Dafoe

Take a Sergio Leone spaghetti western like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and spin it on its head; add the flavor of the Southwest and Mexico, and you just might have director Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon a Time in Mexico, a follow up of sorts to his 1995 film Desperado, itself a remake of Rodriguez’s El Mariachi. The film is certainly unique, being a mixture of several genres, but not really being like anything else in particular. As with most Rodriguez’s work, the film is of his own unique and zesty recipe, even if the film ends up being quite messy.

Sands (Johnny Depp) maybe a rogue agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, but like a lot of things in this movie, it’s not entirely clear what he is and what he wants. He hires the legendary El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas, reprising his role from Desperado), the guitar case assassin, and his compadres to kill Mexico’s El Presidente (Pedro Armendariz). Sands, however, is into manipulating a whole slew of players including a police officer (Eva Mendes) for whom he has amorous feelings, retired FBI agent (Ruben Blades) and a drug lord (Willem Dafoe), among others. It’s an explosive plan Sands has set for detonation during Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, but he just might find himself scorched by the explosion.

Once Upon a Time has a lot going on in it, and there is so much to see; the film is literally a visual feast. Its most glaring deficit, probably the most important element, is a weak story and an even weaker script. Even if you take this film at its face value, which is that the tale is more impressionistic and symbolic than literal, the narrative is too jumbled to make much sense. There’s a lot of goofiness in the hyper-violence, and the film’s action sequences have a rapid and rabid, colorful, manic, music video cool about them. The film’s color palette is so lush and delicious that the film seems practically edible. Still, when all the dazzling is done, by the end of the film, the best you can do is agree that it seems as if the good guys won.

The acting (what there is of it) is mostly good, and Depp (He’s one of those actors that the camera really loves) steals the show. He is, however, not the lead, and although this is an ensemble drama, his character, if not the most important, is played by the most intriguing cast member. Maybe, he should have been the lead and his character more than just a catalyst (the crap starter) because Banderas, as the central figure here, just doesn’t work.

Rodriguez, as usual, is a one-man gang filmmaker. A musician, he scored the film, and edited it. He shot the film himself using digital video camera technology (which filmmaker George Lucas introduced him to in 2000), and he is, of course co-producer, writer, and director. I’m impressed with his verve, but I wish there was a little more meat to Rodriguez’s film. He’s a jack-of-all-trades, but sometimes, he doesn’t seem to be very good at any one. This is one of those times when a collaborator or two would have better served the end product. Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a good idea that doesn’t come to fruition. Although on the surface it may seem otherwise, it ends up being like a lot of summer action flicks, full of sound and fury, and not, surprisingly, empty.

5 of 10
C+

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Review: "Desperado" Both Beautiful and Brutal

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 65 (of 2005) by Leroy Douresseaux

Desperado (1995)
Running time: 106 minutes (1 hour, 46 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong bloody violence, a strong sex sequence, and language
DIRECTOR/WRITER/EDITOR: Robert Rodriguez
PRODUCERS: Bill Borden and Robert Rodriguez
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Guillermo Navarro

ACTION/WESTERN with elements of crime

Starring: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Joaquim de Almeida, Cheech Marin, Steve Buscemi, Carlos Gomez, Quentin Tarantino, Tito Larriva, Carlos Gallardo, Albert Michel, Jr., and Danny Trejo

Robert Rodriguez followed up his ultra-low budget independent thriller, El Mariachi, with the larger-budgeted ($7 million, which is low by Hollywood standards) Desperado. The film is a slightly re-imagined sequel. El Mariachi is now played by Antonio Banderas, replacing Carlos Gallardo, who played the character in the original film and who does make a cameo appearance here. This time the no-named musician (we do learn his name by the end of the film) is stalking Bucho (Joaquim de Almeida), the last Mexican drug lord with connections to the death of his girlfriend (as seen in the first film). He meets Carolina (Salma Hayek), a beautiful bookstore owner and falls in love with her while also taking on a small army of Bucho’s henchmen in a small, dusty border town. El Mariachi learns, however, that Bucho has a strong link to his past.

Some described Robert Rodriguez’s poetic way of presenting violence in this movie to the cinematic styles of John Woo and Sam Peckinpah, and the shoot-‘em-ups in Desperado are indeed eye candy, especially the violence in the first hour of this film. This first half of the film sparkles with black comedy, acerbic wit, and violent slapstick, but as the film goes on, it begins to list. The romantic scenes are dry and are only road bumps in the narrative. Whereas El Mariachi was short and tightly efficient, Desperado is a bit long and a little padded. Still, the combination of Guillermo Navarro’s warmly hued photography and Rodriguez’s visual acumen make for a beautiful, brutal, ballet of film violence, proving that violence does indeed look good on film, if the director knows what he’s doing. And with each movie, Rodriguez proves to be a natural born moviemaker.

7 of 10
B+

Monday, May 16, 2005

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Review: Superb "El Mariachi" Introduced Robert Rodriguez

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 64 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

El Mariachi (1992)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Mexico/USA; Language: Spanish
Running time: 81 minutes (1 hour, 21 minutes)
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Robert Rodriguez
PRODUCERS: Carlos Gallardo and Robert Rodriguez
CINEMATOGRAPHER/EDITOR: Robert Rodriguez

ACTION/CRIME/THRILLER/WESTERN

Starring: Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gomez, Jamie de Hoyos, Reinol Martinez, and Peter Marquardt

The virtual one-man film studio, Robert Rodriguez, introduced himself to audiences around 1993 with his film, El Mariachi. The film, which garnered Rodriguez and his producing partner, Carlos Garner, an Independent Spirit Award for “Best First Feature,” chronicles the travails of an unnamed traveling musician known only as El Mariachi (Carlos Gallardo) who is mistaken for Azul (Reinol Martinez), a murderous criminal who carries his arsenal in a guitar case.

Both El Mariachi and Azul dress in black and carry a guitar case. Azul goes on a murdering rampage to get money owed to him by a former criminal associate, Mauricio (Peter Marquardt), also know as Moco. Azul kills several of Moco’s men, so Moco sends some of his hired killers out for Azul. They mistake El Mariachi for Azul; however, the musician is capable of defending himself, and he kills several of Moco’s men. El Mariachi takes up with a local bar owner, while he tries to straighten the mess he’s in, but it’s still all heading for a violent confrontation.

El Mariachi also won the “Audience Award” at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, and Columbia Pictures bought the film and distributed it later in the year. Like everyone who has seen it, I’m amazed that this tense, action thriller was filmed for $7,000. The truth of the matter is that Rodriguez is just super skilled at making the most of what he’s got, even if it’s very little.

The actors are mostly amateurs and people off the streets in a small town in Mexico, but Rodriguez makes them look like professionals. The action sequences are more riveting than those from most big-budget action movies. El Mariachi is a gun-slinging modern western that gives life to the genre, although its setting is almost a century after the setting for traditional westerns. Rodriguez takes “The Man with No Name” attitude of such Clint Eastwood films as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars and turns it into a raw, unpolished street fight. This is brilliant, bravado filmmaking that is perfect for action movie fans and movie lovers.

8 of 10
A

Monday, May 16, 2005

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"Review: "Sin City" Crazy Good

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 56 (of 2005) by Leroy Douresseaux

Frank Miller’s Sin City (2005)
Running time: 126 minutes (2 hours, 6 minutes)
MPAA – R for sustained strong stylized violence, nudity, and sexual content including dialogue
DIRECTORS: Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller (with special guest Quentin Tarantino)
WRITER: Robert Rodriguez (based upon the Sin City graphic novels created by Frank Miller)
PRODUCERS: Elizabeth Avellan, Robert Rodriguez, and Frank Miller
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robert Rodriguez
EDITOR: Robert Rodriguez

CRIME/ACTION/DRAMA/THRILLER

Starring: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Nick Stahl, Powers Boothe, Rutger Hauer, Elijah Wood, Rosario Dawson, Benicio del Toro, Jamie King, Devon Aoki, Brittany Murphy, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, and Michael Madsen

Robert Rodriguez, director of films like Once Upon a Time in Mexico and the Spy Kids franchise, really wanted to direct a film adaptation of comic book creator Frank Miller’s series of graphic novels, Sin City. Miller, who blew up in the 80’s with by revitalizing and reworking Marvel Comics’ Daredevil and DC Comics Batman character in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, had already said “no” about a dozen times, according to Newsweek magazine, with Rodriguez being the 12th.

However, Rodriguez wouldn’t give up. He invited Miller to Austin, TX for what was supposed to be a test shoot, but what was really Rodriguez’s opportunity to show Miller what he already done in pre-production to make the film look like Frank Miller’s Sin City and not Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City. Rodriguez had already shot a short piece, an adaptation of a Miller Sin City short story “The Customer is Always Right,” with Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton playing the roles. Miller was convinced, and the footage reportedly also amazed the actors whom Rodriguez wanted to cast in the feature film when he showed it to them.

The film, Sin City, (or by its full title Frank Miller’s Sin City) is literally the comic book. This isn’t a film adaptation of a comic book character like the Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman franchises. This is a movie as a comic book – a frame by frame (or panel by panel, in the case of a comic book) transfer of pictures from a comic book onto film and translated into moving pictures and a film narrative. Let it be called Rodriguez and Miller’s Sin City, and, thus far, it’s best movie I’ve seen this year.

The film adapts three of Miller’s Sin City graphic novels, which are set in and around Basin City or, as it’s better known, Sin City. The Hard Goodbye features Marv (Mickey Rourke, in prosthetics), a tough-as-nails, nearly impossible to kill street fighter/killing machine, who is out for revenge for the killing of a hooker named Goldie (Jamie King), who showed him a good time and the only touch of kindness he ever received. His search leads him to Kevin (Elijah Wood), a psycho serial killer who moves and bounces around like Spider-Man.

The second is The Big Fat Kill, which finds Dwight (Clive Owen), one of the few Sin City good guys, trying to help the hookers of Old Town, after they unknowingly kill Jackie Boy (Benicio del Toro), a cop – a corrupt cop, but still a cop, and his posse. Killing a cop will end the truce that’s protected the ladies of Old Town via a deal that keeps the mob and the cops out of Old Town, as long as the cops are paid off and the girls never kill a cop, even one who gets rough with them. Now, Dwight has to keep evidence of Jackie Boy’s death a secret (by making sure his body, and then later, his severed head, not get into the wrong hands). Dwight’s lover and leader of the Amazonian prostitutes, Gail (Rosario Dawson), and a ninja super ho named Miho (Devon Aoki) assist him, but they find themselves up against a ruthless one-eyed (the other is a gold ball) mob henchmen named Manute (Michael Clarke Duncan).

The final vignette is That Yellow Bastard, which is actually split in two. One part plays before “The Hard Goodbye” and “The Big Fat Kill” and the other closes the main section of the film. In the first part, Hartigan (Bruce Willis), a good cop with a bad ticker saves Nancy (Makenzie Vega) an 11-year girl, from Rourk, Jr. (Nick Stahl), a raging pedophile and the son of the powerful Senator Rourk (Powers Boothe). Although Hartigan saves the girl, his partner (Michael Madsen) shoots him down to keep him from killing Rourk, Jr.. In the second and closing installment, Hartigan ends up in prison on trumped up charges because of the senator’s influence. After getting out, he has to protect the grown up Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) from Yellow Bastard (Stahl), who is Rourk, his skin made yellow by the special medical treatments given to repair “the damage” Hartigan did to him in the first segment of Bastard.

Rodriguez, who insisted that Miller get a co-director credit (which forced Rodriguez to leave the Directors Guild of America because co-directors who aren’t siblings is a no-no), shot this film entirely before a green screen. The only things that are real are the actors, the objects they touch, and the cars they ride in. Everything else was digitally inserted later using special effects, such as in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The result is a digital painting in stark black and white with dashes of vibrant color – a red dress, gold hair, a yellow-skinned bastard, etc.

But is this movie good? It’s as good as it is groundbreaking. For all it’s visual flair and the fact that it really looks like a comic book brought to digital film live, the story and the characters are also riveting and engaging. I couldn’t’ take my eyes off the screen. This is power slap to the face like Pulp Fiction and The Matrix, where you get the hard-boiled crime story that enthralls in the former and the eye-popping and mind-bending technical explosion of the latter. Hell, this is better than The Matrix and Sky Captain. Comic book geeks and aficionados, hard core action movie junkies, and the young male demographic will likely love this; this mean baby of a movie was born for them. Anyone else who likes the daring in cinema and can stomach the strangest art films can also handle this, even if they, in the end, don’t like it.

Sin City does seem to run on a little too long, but even this minor quibble is for the best. It gives the large cast (that was anxious to star in this maverick project) more film time in which to shine. There are some truly good performance here – Stahl, Rourke, and Owen for sure. How can a true fan of movies miss this? Yes, it’s vile and almost pornographically violent, but violence looks great on the big screen. Besides, the opportunity to see Jessica Alba’s gyrating dance, Rosario Dawson’s super duper fine ass, and Jamie King’s breasts of a goddess are worth it.

9 of 10
A+

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Review: "Grindhouse" a Two-Fisted Double Dose

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 72 (of 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux

Grindhouse (2007)
Running time: 192 minutes
MPAA – R for strong graphic bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, some sexuality, nudity, and drug use
CINEMATOGRAPHERS/WRITERS/DIRECTORS: Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror, and fake trailer segment “Machete”) and Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof)
PRODUCERS: Elizabeth Avellan, Robert Rodriguez, Erica Steinberg, and Quentin Tarantino
EDITORS: Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror) and Sally Menke (Death Proof)

ACTION/HORROR/SCI-FI/THRILLER

Starring: (Planet Terror) Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn, Naveen Andrews, Josh Brolin, Jeff Fahey, Stacy Ferguson, Nicky Katt, Michael Parks, Quentin Tarantino, and Bruce Willis; (Death Proof) Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, Zoe Bell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Sydney Tamiia Portier, Vanessa Ferlito, Rose McGowan, Jordan Ladd, Jonathan Loughran, Eli Roth, and Quentin Tarantino

Directors Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Sin City) and Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill) present two-full length movies in their horror double feature, Grindhouse. The film is an ode to theatrical double and triple features shown at grindhouse theatres (called such because these theatres would grind out one movie after another). Most of the films shown at grind houses were exploitation films involving sex, violence, crime, sci-fi/horror, or race (blaxploitation). Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse also includes four fake trailer segments for non-existent movies – an homage to how grindhouse theatres would show many trailers for upcoming films between double features.

The first feature is Rodriguez’s zombie horror flick, Planet Terror, in which a small Texas town finds itself inundated by fellow townsfolk who have mutated into flesh-hungry zombies. A mysterious trucker named Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) and a go-go dancer named Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), who had her right leg ripped off by zombies, join forces to fight the monstrous invasion. Wray eventually replaces Cherry’s missing leg with an automatic rifle, and the pair lead an group of accidental warriors in a bid to stop Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis), a rogue military officer, from making the all-ready dire situation worse.

The second feature film is Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, in which Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a scar-faced rebel-type, stalks college-age beauties in a small Texas town. Popular DJ, Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Portier) and her pals Shanna (Jordan Ladd) and Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito) don’t know that a killer has his eyes on them. Stuntman Mike is really a murderer, who uses his muscle car as his weapon. Stuntman Mike, however, eventually meets his match when he attacks a trio of women who work as film crewmembers. On the back roads of Tennessee, Stuntman Mike engages in a duel to the death with Kim (Tracie Thoms), Zoe (Zoe Bell, a real life stuntwoman), and Abernathy (Rosario Dawson).

Although I never experienced grindhouse theatres, I am somewhat familiar with exploitation films. In fact, I’ve seen enough of those to know that well before Grindhouse, Rodriguez and Tarantino’s films were capturing the vibe of 1970’s exploitation cinema.

With the sound dropping out or fading, a scratchy picture, bad splicing, etc., Rodriguez’s Planet Terror looks like a movie played from a print that’s been dragged across the country. Besides that, it’s a damn fine sci-fi/horror movie – certainly on par with Rodriguez’s late 90’s teen horror flick, The Faculty, although not quite as good as From Dusk ‘til Dawn. It’s one of the best zombie films to come around since Resident Evil kick-started this horror sub-genre back to life in 2002.

Planet Terror is a hoary old beast of a movie, created by modern movie science, but formed and shaped with an eye on the excesses of 70’s cinema. It’s violence and gore is a work of art and a labor of love. Plus, it’s damn funny when you get down to it, with a mixture of social satire (especially the fake trailer segment “Machete,”) and movie parody with a touch of irony.

Tarantino’s Death Proof is the better of the two films, but not by much. It was born from Tarantino’s love for late 60’s/early 70’s car chase films like Bullitt and Vanishing Point. Whereas Rodriguez showed his love for exploitation movies by making one that looks like an exploitation flick, Tarantino borrows from those films and makes something that is both technically and artistically superior. It’s like Steven Spielberg directing a slasher horror movie.

As is usual with Tarantino films, the dialogue is good, but, here, the action sequences with the cars make Death Proof. In fact, that first car crash is unforgettable – a stroke of genius on Tarantino’s part for the way he executed it. Tarantino insisted that there by no CGI for the car chase sequences in Death Proof, yet the first car crash and the long chase sequence that ends the film are breathtaking and far scarier than even the cool CGI-enhanced chases in films like The Matrix Reloaded and Bad Boys II.

Ultimately Grindhouse is a gift to people who obsess about movies from two guys who obsess about movies and movie making. I left the theatre thinking that I owed them something more than just the cost of a ticket for the joy they gave me.

8 of 10
A

NOTES: The creators of three of the four fake trailer segments are as follows:
Writer/Producer/Director: Eli Roth (fake trailer segment “Thanksgiving)
Writer/Director: Edgar Wright (fake trailer segment “Don’t”)
Writer/Director: Rob Zombie (fake trailer segment “Werewolf Women of the S.S.”)
Writer: Jeff Rendell (“Thanksgiving”)
Producers: Daniel S. Frisch and Gabriel Roth (“Thanksgiving”)

Saturday, May 05, 2007

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