Machete

Finally got to screen Machete tonight, which I have been anticipating since I first read it was a full-on script that has existed since Desperado and not just a fake trailer. And, yeah, it lived up to the hype. The film succeeds in its over-the-top Planet Terror moments, but its biggest achievement is allowing the audience to become at least as attached as a true exploitation movie allows. I mean to say that, although self-aware in its lampooning of 70's exploitation movies, it feels more like a valentine to the best of these and attempts to genuinely offer much of the same experience - only with a larger budget and less conversational filler. As Tarantino said when the original Grindhouse double-feature premiered, the exploitation movies of old never could quite live up to the 3 best minutes they shoved into the trailer. Machete has, like Planet Terror before it, succeeded in creating one that more than delivers on what the trailer has promised. Planet Terror b/w Machete will be an excellent blu double-bill when I have them neatly on my bookshelf, and it is one I plan to enjoy frequently.

This is also a good opportunity for me to bitch about the Death Proof unrated cut which I have screened twice in the past 4 months, the last time being 2 nights ago... and BOY DO I FUCKING HATE THIS CUT OF THE MOVIE. I did and still do enjoy the shorter theatrical cut very much, but this super-long, super-boring unrated version sure takes the piss out of the whole thing. The extended bar scene is bad enough, but I could possibly argue that this in some ways extends the tension before the first murder sequence. But after that, slowing down the second portion with the completely unnecessary and plodding picking-Zoe-up/convenience store sequence completely deflates any tension the movie has built. In short, this cut completely fucks over the pacing, includes minutes and minutes and minutes of boring dialogue that never should have left the editing room, and does not even remotely compare to the experience of a slasher film. Sure, this was SUPPOSED to be the most subversive take on the slasher genre probably ever made, but this longer cut does not even remotely resemble a 70's horror film... there is way too much other shit bogging it down. A horror film should not have you checking your watch, and I was doing so frequently on each screening of this unrated version outside of the very first. I doubt I will ever put this in again.

The thing about Tarantino is no matter how good he is, and how similar his taste is to mine as far as genre films, I have seen his movies enough to notice all the flaws. In hindsight it is clear to me that Pulp Fuction and Jackie Brown represented a magical peak that he has been unable to recapture. Inglorious Basterds is a valiant effort and is a damn good B+/A- movie, but when I think about what he originally set out to do -- create a men-on-a-mission genre movie, in the vain of Dirty Dozen or the original The Inglorious Bastards -- he managed to fail. He made a great movie, but for all his little homages to the genre, he made a poor example of a men-on-a-mission genre picture. The various bastards are given ornamentary introductions with much hype, but beyond this we never spend any quality time with any of these characters, much less learn to love them for their various quirks and character depth. I dare you to watch Dirty Dozen and then Inglourious Bastards as a double-bill and attempt to make the case that you care for his Bastards even a tenth as much as the film he attempts to homage. It can't be done. In every other regard I love his movie, but in cramming in tons of cool unrelated shit (a Demons-esque valentine in using a cinema as a central set piece, the masterfully executed bar sequence, the suprise ending) he lost sight of his goal to create a men-on-a-mission film. The same can be said of his second volume of Kill Bill, but this movie, in my opinion, does not succeed "in spite of" as Basterds does, but drowns under its own plodding weight. For every minute of perfect drama Jackie Brown provided Kill Bill 2 drowns in its own dialogue-driven aspirations.

Well the fiance is bored, so that is all for my Grindhouse/Tarantino recap, but as a word of parting advice --

GO FUCKING SEE MACHETE. The end.