Brandon’s movie memory

SEPT 2006:

Funniest zombie movie ever. Funnier than “Return of the Living Dead” and “John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars”… combined! Even Katy liked it.

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UPDATE: DEC 2007

Katy might have liked it the first time, but she’s had quite enough of it now, and played computer games through most of the movie when I was showing it off to Dana this week. Well, no, obviously she still LIKES it, otherwise she would’ve either left the room or suggested something else. Dana did not immediately declare it the funniest zombie movie ever, so the screening was a partial failure. I got to watch “Heart of the World” beforehand, so I was obviously the happiest person in the room.

Really there’s no question that Grindhouse is spectacular, so I’ve just been pondering which parts of it were the MOST spectacular. Rodriguez’s segment? Tarantino’s? The voiceover on “Thanksgiving”? Edgar Wright’s goddamned hilarious “Don’t”? Nicholas Cage? Danny Trejo as Machete? Rose McGowan’s machine-gun leg? Tom Savini? Kurt Russell’s crybaby finale? Rosario Dawson’s backseat hotness? The car stunts? Rodriguez’s surface noise and missing reel?

Planet Terror has an incomprehensible plot and is just in it for the fun of blowing things up and inventing unpredictable, shameless plot devices (still can’t believe the nurse’s kid shooting himself). All sorts of back story is either hilariously lost in the missing reel or just never existed, including Freddy Rodriguez’s El Wray character (who, btw, killed Osama Bin Laden). The production quality goes from slick to “dawn of the dead” (the zombies loose in the hospital scene) and back again. Bruce Willis is a… mutant, military something. It’s just a lot of fun.

Death Proof is very carefully plotted, with a “Psycho” plot twist in the middle, very neatly setting up the rest of the movie. Reviewers have noted that Tarantino is presenting the first group of girls (hot radio DJ, three friends and one rival) to be not very likeable, then after they’re dispatched by stuntman Kurt Russell, he introduces the other group (two stunt women, two film-crew friends) as the affable heroes. Makes sense, but I might’ve been phasing out during the long dialogue scenes, still overwhelmed by Planet Terror and the trailers, and missed his intentions there. Either way, the ending is beautiful.

Gotta see again, obviously.

The trailer set it up right - supercop Simon Pegg is making the department look bad in comparison, so he’s shipped to the safest small town in England and paired up with lazy son-of-the-chief Nick Frost. All is well until the town elders turn out to be involved in a Wicker-Man-like conspiracy to beautify their town by any means possible (usually murder). Very suddenly it turns into an all-out war, with the police dept. (minus the evil chief) and Simon and Nick (or Shaun and Ed, as I still like to call them) against the neighborhood watch.

Extremely funny and a great action flick. Nothing much or bad to say about it. The crowd gave big response to particularly gruesome killings, the jump kick to an old woman’s head, and Bill Nighy. Edgar says they were happy to be working with an ex James Bond (Timothy Dalton) and three oscar winners in this one (Cate Blanchett, Peter Jackson and Jim Broadbent, the former two uncredited). Such a very fun movie, this and Grindhouse have put me in the mood to watch less serious-minded movies, hence the appearance of Saw 3 on this page.