Death Proof (2007)

A White-Hot Juggernaut At 200 Miles Per Hour!

Rather boring for the first 30-40 minutes. It's the dreariness of the Texas girls' characters and their existence that's dull. Their existence is just empty hedonism. Hot girls with "attitude", talking tough, drinking, smoking, doing drugs and just hanging out. It's all so banal. Then "Stuntman Mike" starts killing. Why? Who cares? As Tom Charity says, "For 50 minutes four girls sit and gab: in a car, in a bar, and in another bar. Then something really terrible happens and the movie starts over again: four girls in a car."

The girls in Tenessee are a bit more interesting, but again, as always with Tarantino, the characters talk virtually non-stop, and always with "attitude". Moveover, there's some awful exposition designed to let the audience know that two of the girls are stuntwomen, one of whom carries a pistol strapped to her leg, telegraphing a more equal combat scenario with Stuntman Mike. And that these two girls are into cars.

Have to say, the last half hour the action picks up, to some extent redeeming the previous hour's longeurs, including an excellent "ship's mast" action sequence, and getting very exciting when the girls turn the tables on Mike. But then the film ends. As with the psycho killer in No Country for Old Men (2007), we never find out anything about Mike's motivation.

Like Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), it seems to be like a practice exercise for a proper film. Great cinematography and editing, great soundtrack, hip dialogue, but for what?

When we enter Tenessee, the film changes to black-and-white, then some time later, back to colour, presumably trying to replicate Tarantino's experience of watching Grindhouse B movies in cheap movie theaters in the 1970s. Ditto the faux scratches and jumps on what is presumably pristine possibly digital modern film or video footage.

I read that the original film, shown as part of a double bill with Rodriguez's Planet Terror (2007), was only 60 minutes long, but here it's got an extra 27 minutes!

Watching streaming online from LoveFilm.com didn't help, as the movie kept stopping and having to re-buffer.

On the plus side, Russell does a fantastic John Wayne impression.

• Rating: Rental
• When seen: 14 Aug 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

An epic of epic epicness.

The rewards decreased as the film progressed. In the first reel, the effects were novel and fun, and I was excited and thought it was going to be really good. In the second reel, I started thinking, OK, but is this it? By the third reel, I had resigned myself to thinking that, after all, it was a film aimed at adolescents and teens.

What's good about the film? One nice thing is the way young people and their attitudes, etc, are portrayed, which seems pretty realistic. Another thing, especially in the first reel, was the swift cross-cutting between different times and places, reminiscent of the brilliant cross "cuts" in Joseph Heller's Catch 22 and following that, in Mike Nichols "The Graduate", and which are especially effective when Billy first becomes obsessed with Ramona, creating an emotionally genuine virtual internal space-time, really clever.

The synesthesia effects, transferred from the comic books, and tongue-in-cheek homage to the TV Batman series style, are also really effective, especially while still novel earlier in the film. For example, in the music store, when Knives's declaration of love for Billy streams across the space between them in the form of pink "smoke" letters, and which he wafts aside with his hand.

The video game borrowings are fun, e.g. the use of on-screen scores; the way characters die as a shower of coins, as in the Lego character games; the way Billy is able to re-approach a scene by getting a second life (after death) and "going through the levels again" to get to the same scene, as in Groundhog Day (but kind of chucked at the screen quickly here).

What wears rather is the repetition of having to battle all seven exes, especially the repetition of stylised non-lethal fight sequences; the dependence on the audience having spent time with a range of video games, e,g. guitar-based games, to get the joke.

Part of the problem was that I'd just seen the lead actress, Ramona (Winstead?), in Sky High, which really delivered and which I really enjoyed, and I couldn't help comparing the two. That had a fun take on young superheroes, but it also had a clever story with a strong message. Billy Pilgrim, by contrast, squanders a promising premise: a young man fancies a young woman, but has to battle his feelings of inadequacy, which take concrete form in the shape of her previous romantic partners, each of whom appears superior in one or more ways, and against whom she will compare him. How can he possibly match up to her idea of an ideal match?

The premise is excellent, but the potential poignancy and power of this metaphorical plot device, unlike that of Groundhog Day, is somehow not realised, and in the end, we are left with a series of rather repetitive fight sequences. Why is it not realised? Winstead is very good. The supporting cast is very good. I think, apart from the script, that the problem may be Cera, who seems too shallow to suggest the psychological depth required.

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 4 Sep 2010
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Amendments: Added writer tags: "Michael Bacall, Bryan Lee O'Malley"; actor tags: "Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong, Alison Pill, Mark Webber, Johnny Simmons". Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image. Changed "Catch 22" to "Joseph Heller's Catch 22". Changed "as in Groundhog Day" to "unlike that of Groundhog Day".