Grindhouse...

... is so, so very awesome.

Hated the trailer, so I tempered my expectations.

The one part I was excited for, Rob Zombie's trailer for Werewolf Women of the S.S. turns out to be the least interesting part. The casting, which had me salivating, turns out to be the only good joke... so I won't spoil it for you (suffice it to say, the first names revealed will bring a smile to any cult movie fan, but it's the final one... and specifically the character he's playing... that is a masterstroke).

Planet Terror is Rodriguez's best film by a long shot, a cracking riff on early John Carpenter that starts off great and never lets up. Especially delightful is the resuscitation of the least likely actors - Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, and especially Josh Brolin (channeling Nick Nolte) - that we expect from Tarantino.

Speaking of whom, words cannot capture my awe for Death Proof. It is slightly let down by its placement in this film, since it provides a slight but not isignificant tonal shift from all of the giddy tongue-in-cheekiness that precedes it. I was apprehensive about Kurt Russell taking over from Mickey Rourke, but as usual QT's instincts are spot-on: Russell gives a vital twinkle that would have been missing from Rourke, and I would be sad to lose the hilarity of Stuntman Mike's last 15 minutes or so to the (I'm presuming here, of course) gravitas would have brought. Anyway, Death Proof is 30 mins of solid Tarantinoisms, capped by a helping of ruthlessly visceral horror, followed by 30 mins of QT's version of a chick flick, followed by an 30 minute finale in which QT not only hommages but thoroughly bests all of those 70s car thrillers he loves so damn much.

Normally I'll guzzle a large drink throughout a 90 minute movie, Grindhouse was accompanied by one post-Rodriguez gulp of water because damned if I was gonna miss a second of this bugger. It repaid that commitment in spades: even if there is a "better" movie this year, no ten movies combined will have as many movie-movie goodies thrown at a sympathetic audience than this one.