Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez conspire to make an exploitation double feature, but is it any bloody good? Elsewhere, The Host scares and impresses. And Killer of Sheep is a gem worth seeking out.
Grindhouse is a one-of-a-kind theater experience, the type we get so rarely anymore in our bland multiplex era. That’s why it makes even harder to admit I didn’t love it.
I prefer the Robert Rodriguez half of this double-bill for the same reason I preferred Sin City to Kill Bill: Quentin Tarantino may be the greater artist, but Rodriguez is the greater hack. Of the Tarantino/Rodriguez/Linklater posse, he's the one who best understands genre in his bones. He's not arty enough to mess with the conventions in an ironic or intellectual way; he makes great B-movies because he aspires to nothing higher. (One wonders how much more of a blast he would have made A Scanner Darkly.)
Rodriguez’s Planet Terror runs too long but it's unquestionably a ball; from the cardboard characters to the gratuitous gore to the smart little winks at the ridiculousness of the story beats, his zombie movie is a hilarious, loving throwback spiked with giddy nostalgia for being a stupid, happy little boy. (Rodriguez is perhaps still that stupid, happy little boy, but that’s for another day.) Its greatest disadvantage is that Tarantino shows up in it, which also hurts Quentin's Death Proof, a movie that again reminds you that while his stylistic virtuosity is growing more astounding with each film, the blabbermouth needs to knock off the "clever" dialogue.
Tarantino’s obscure pop-culture referencing and Sex-and-the-City relationship talk go nowhere because we're so attuned now to his rhythms that he can't surprise us. What he's left with is one of the greatest car chases ever. Which it is. But watching Death Proof, I couldn't help but feel that Tarantino was too much of an auteur trying to be a proper B-movie hack. He loves this shit, but Rodriguez loves it, adores it, knows it more than anything else in the world. It’s an important distinction to make.
Film restorations are a thorny business. To a community burned out by studio product and fearful that the American independent scene and foreign art house are more miss than hit, they promise guaranteed gems with that added layer of obscure cool. But if they’re not wholly magnificent, well, you feel like maybe a life devoted to the movies really was a stupid vocation.
I wasn’t quite at that level of depression after the recent unveilings of Army of Shadows and Mafioso – they’re both damn good – but neither rearranged my emotional universe. But the official release of Killer of Sheep,Charles Burnett’s 30-year-old UCLA thesis film, is another matter entirely.
In Thom Andersen’s argument-starting documentary about the history of L.A. on film, Los Angeles Plays Itself, he complained how recent African-American depictions of class struggle were mere trifles compared to Killer of Sheep, and now that I’ve seen it, I have to concede the point. Even Menace II Society is mere exploitation in the face of this naturalistic, very sad look at black poverty. Only after being blown away by it did I realize its antecedent was the magnificent Bicycle Thieves, but even that had more of a plot than Burnett’s bystander glance at one family so slowly falling apart that only one of its members even seems to notice it.
But Killer of Sheep is no beautiful-loser paean: In an economically depressed community, the jokes and laughs are frequent, and so is love and lust. Burnett’s not asking anyone to feel sorry for these people: He just wants you to know they exist. It’s ironic that his terrific film has suffered in silence for almost as long as these characters have.
The Host (Magnolia Pictures)
Political commentary, family drama, ecological cautionary tale, horror spoof, action film, full-blown monster movie: The Host wants to be all six, and one of the film’s many delights is how seamlessly it bounces around from genre to genre.
Director Bong Joon-ho binds his moods together by a moviemaking love that seems nimble and fresh rather than cannibalistic and reductive. Plus, his monster is really scary. Really scary. Creatures with large, gruesome jaws always get me, and The Host has a great one, a phantasmal beast born from human carelessness and disturbingly unpredictable in its actions. It’s majestic and poetic too – he does something with his tail in this movie that is both frightening and awe-inspiring in its beauty. The human protagonists are great, too, and while Bong has a pretty dim view of our species, he attempts to find a few worthy souls who don’t deserve to be devoured by his creature. Of course, even they have significant flaws, but they mean well, and not just in a self-pitying, self-absorbed sort of way.
A lot of horror films have been spawned in reaction to 9/11, but this one goes beyond terrorism and fear of the Other. Bong scares us with his monster, but he’s telling us that the thoughtless monsters around us are the ones we should really be watching out for.
The Hoax (Miramax Films)
Richard Gere’s already played a conman. In his great turn in Chicago, he seemed to finally own up to the slippery duplicity that is the key to his persona. (Even at his warmest and most romantic, there is something slightly askew about him, something detached and vaguely inhuman.)
As Clifford Irving, the author who claimed that the reclusive Howard Hughes had contacted him to write his autobiography, Gere again taps into that vein of insincerity. But The Hoax never quite gets off on the fun of this real-life scam; the movie feels too weighted down by its bigger political points it’s trying to score. Gere was a natural in Chicago, but here he tries too hard to summon up Irving’s complexities. Hey, filmmakers, we know lying is wrong, but we’re seeing this movie because, every once in a while, we want to live vicariously through those brave or stupid enough to try to get away with it.
Patti Smith, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” (from the forthcoming Twelve, Sony)
Because she doesn’t do glib irony, I figured this Tears for Fears cover would be achingly sincere and undoubtedly well-performed. And it certainly is, but it also accomplishes that rarest of achievements in our world of hip “reimaginings”: The esteemed artist finds the underlying universal truth in a dated ‘80s relic, rather than just rolling her eyes and keeping her tongue in her cheek. If nothing else, Patti Smith is beloved as a conscientious objector and a willful antagonist, and yet she knows not to bludgeon the track with self-righteousness – it is a pop song, after all. And in her hands, it’s a meaningful one, too: world-weary, wise, a bit melancholy, a rallying cry. It’s as if she knew what Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith were going for all along and, big-hearted lass that she is, decided to lend a helping hand.
!!!, Myth Takes (Warp Records)
If there are political lyrics here, I choose not to hear them. The ear only has time for so much raw data, and this band’s danceable grooves are only growing in complexity. They’re a rock group, first and foremost, and they sound more horny than enraged, though nobody comes up with stuff so visceral without having some anger issues to work through. This is how I thought the Chemical Brothers would end up, ideally – transformative, earthquaking, smart and funky as hell. They ran out of gas. Everyone does. But on “Heart of Hearts” and “Bend Over Beethoven,” !!! get my hopes up all over again.
Loney, Dear, Loney, Noir (Sub Pop Records)
The name’s Emil Svanängen. Lives in Stockholm. Records in his apartment and in his parents’ basement. Specialty is pop miniatures, sweet and ornate. This makes him either adorable or a genius, or maybe both. On these 10 tracks, I lean toward adorable, but I wouldn’t be mean enough to say he oughta get out more or that he’s a precious twerp. Nope, he’s just a sensitive guy with a high voice writing songs that work perfectly for your den. The pleasures are modest but consistent. This stuff’s a wonder to fold laundry to.
Consumables is a biweekly overview of popular culture.
