grindhouse

i saw grindhouse, the postmodern homage to the experience of 60s b-movies, about a week ago and am still excited about it. grindhouse consists of two feature length films, planet terror (directed by robert rodriguez) and death proof (directed by quentin tarantino) as well as four trailers for non-existent films. two of these trailers come before the first feature, machete (rodriguez) and don’t (edgar wright), and two come before the second feature, thanksgiving (eli roth), and werewolf women of the s.s. (rob zombie). taken all together, these films and trailers are meant to recreate the experience of visiting a seedy grind house theatre during the 60s were exploitation films heavy on sex and violence were screened. rodriguez’s planet terror does exactly this; the plot revolves around a highly contagious virus spreading through a town and creating zombie-like creatures, complete with disgusting bubbling goiters, and rose mcgowan with a machinegun leg. rodriguez captures the feeling of these films including using effects to make the film appear damaged and announcements and apologies for missing reels. while i found planet terror to be a lot of fun and probably a genuine facsimile of exploitation films, i felt that tarantino’s death proof was a far more interesting reinvention of the genre. death proof begins with a group of three girls going out to a bar in texas one night and meeting stuntman mike (kurt russell) who claims to have a car that is ‘death proof’, meaning you cannot be killed while in it, regardless of the damage inflicted. stuntman mike also meets pam (rose mcgowan again) and offers to give her a ride which is when we see him finally turn out to be the creep we can tell he is. after pam’s death, stuntman mikes goes after another group of four girls all working on a film set, and it feels as though an entirely new film is starting. the four girls have the day off and three of them end up taking an old and expensive car for a ‘test drive’ that involves their daredevil australian friend to ride on the hood while holding onto belts attached to the doors. stuntman mike finds them and tries to run them off the road; thus starting the longest and most intense roughly fifteen minute car chase that i was almost certain would end in a disgusting bloody mess, given all of grindhouse that I had seen up until this point. what does end up happening is a complete surprise within the context of the film but not so surprising when you realize tarantino is directing. the final scenes take the typical treatment of women within this genre, i.e. exploitative, and turn them on their head. the women are no longer frightened, nor do they allow themselves to be objectified or taken advantage of. they save themselves from stuntman mike and essentially end up kicking his ass. it only took about five minutes of death proof to realize that it was a quentin tarantino film, right down to the atmosphere and the dialogue-heavy script. i realize a lot of people criticize tarantino for his pretentiousness but i think it’s at least partly earned; he has enough knowledge and understanding of these genres to enable him to not just pay homage to them but to construct and completely re-imagine an exploitation film for an audience in 2007. i’ve been hearing lately that due to grindhouse’s poor performance at the box office, planet terror and death proof may be separated and sold as two different films, albeit in longer cuts of each. and while granted, i’d enjoy seeing longer versions of each, i think it would be counterproductive to the effect that rodriguez and tarantino were hoping to establish; that of a grind house double-bill, something that many of us have never had the opportunity to experience. i think this speaks to the complications in trying to recreate this genre inside a box-office driven multiplex, instead of the grind houses that would have screened them in the past. i think it’s clear that rodriguez and tarantino love and respect these exploitation films and wanted to bring the experience to a younger audience but it just doesn’t quite work within the current structure of north american cinemas.

watch the trailer

the namesake

the namesake was directed by mira nair (vanity fair, monsoon wedding). it is an adaptation from the novel by jhumpa lahiri, and follows the story of gogol, a young man born in america to indian immigrants. the film is essentially about leaving one’s homeland and assimilating in a new country with entirely different cultural codes and beliefs, all the while attempting to instill a sense of heritage into children born outside of this culture. i found that the film was effective at establishing how frightening and lonely it would be to leave home through the character of ashima, gogol’s mother. we are aligned with her as she enters into an arranged marriage with ashoke and he brings her to america where he is working on his phd. i was completely drawn into the first half of the film as it followed the story of gogol’s parents immigrating to america and establishing their life there. however, there is a noticeable shift when the alignment of the film switches to gogol (kal penn) and his difficulties being an indian american, desperate to discard his heritage and be just an american. we start with gogol at his highschool graduation where he is getting high with friends and then must go home to visit with family friends. we see him traveling between his two worlds and the familiarity with both, but we also see how he clearly resents his parents for expecting him to celebrate his indian heritage. this shift of identification in the film causes it to feel like a completely different genre. when we were with ashima, i felt like i was watching a carefully paced and executed indian film, and when we our brought forward to gogol’s teen years, i suddenly felt like i was watching a teen movie meant for kal penn’s harold and kumar fans. i found his character very annoying during this period of the film because we see him rejecting his parents over and over as they patiently try to explain to him about his culture. i think part of this frustration comes from the fact that we’ve been aligned with the parents up until this point and all of a sudden we are thrown an obnoxious teenager who wants nothing to do with them, but also from the fact that I don’t think kal penn is a great actor. i never really believed him as a teenager, nor was he convincing as he got older. i don’t think kal penn should be blamed entirely for this odd change in the mood of the film; it also felt like maybe the filmmakers needed to edit it quickly and tried to rush a lot of the second half of the film. there are several important plot points that get fast forwarded through and almost glazed over; whereas everything in the first half was given great attention. an example of this contrast would be when we first see ashima and ashoke, there is a scene where ashima is about to meet her soon-to-be husband and she is trying on his shoes in the hallway. there is so much time spent on watching her put these shoes on and model them as she considers what america will be like. conversely, in the second half we are shown gogol’s relationship with maxine (jacinda barrett), ashima’s death, the breakup of gogol and maxine, his subsequent relationship with moushumi (zuleikha robinson), her infidelity, their breakup, and the conclusion of the film. because of this rushed conclusion, i was taken out of the film and found it really hard to believe many of the characters’ actions.

watch the trailer

300

i saw 300 awhile back but luckily i don’t have much to say about it. 300 was directed by zack snyder and is the newest frank miller graphic novel adaptation. the film is based on the true battle of thermopylae and the 300 spartan soldiers who fought in it. this film has a similar aesthetic style to that of sin city, 2005’s frank miller adaptation. having read neither of the graphic novels upon which these films were based, i can’t really speak to the quality of the adaptations, but in terms of purely comparing the films, i enjoyed sin city more. while the visuals of 300 are impressive, i found myself a little bored part way through the film. the beginning of the film that builds towards the battle was interesting, but once at war, the film was somewhat tedious. the style of the battle scenes were all the same (regular speed, fast motion, slow motion, etc) which looked amazing but didn’t impress me as much once i’d already seen the techniques. the dialogue of the film is primarily meant to inspire the spartan soldiers, and us in turn, the audience. for the most part though, the script is cheesy, flat, and decidedly uninspiring; the same could have been true of sin city given that both have a graphic novel as source material but in my opinion, sin city was a much denser text. i think its safe to say that 300 is attempting to wow us with its visuals and violence and that the focus should not be so much on the narrative or the acting. but in retrospect i don’t find myself remembering the aesthetic as particularly exceptional, and therefore i feel like 300’s visuals failed to compensate for its lack of a strong story.

another aspect to the film i found interesting was the way it negotiates between being homophobic and homoerotic. as a film targeted primarily towards heterosexual males, there are surprisingly few females in it; only one in fact comes to mind, queen gorgo. not only are there very few women present, but the incredibly muscular, half-naked spartan soldiers who all live and fight together have clearly formed strong bonds amongst each other that leave open the possibilities for queer interpretations. these homoerotic overtones seem to be balanced by the homophobic treatment of the persian leader, xerxes (rodrigo santoro). xerxes, the spartans’ enemy is highly feminine and could potentially be sexually threatening, and thus the film demonizes him by implicating the villain as queer. the homoerotic nature of the spartan soldiers relations are a threat to masculinity within this testosterone-heavy film and therefore xerxes is villianized to ease these anxieties and reinforce the heterosexuality of the soldiers. granted, all this comes with the comic book territory and fanboy culture but i still hoped for less adherence to this gendered structure.

watch the trailer