Planet Terror:

 Robert Rodriguez’s tongue-in-cheek homage to 70’s style zombie films is so intentionally bad that at some moments it actually is bad. There’s too much time and craftsmanship put into the production that some of the stylized humor gets lost. That being said, the dialogue is perfectly camp, and the lead performances by Rose McGowan and Freddy Rodriguez are stellar. There’s a lot to like about “Planet Terror” but there’s also a lot that makes this throwback seem more like a parody than an homage.

Death Proof:

This is Quentin Tarantino’s finest work since “Pulp Fiction.” In fact it seems like he may have cheated and broke the rules that seemed to steer “Grindhouse.” He starts out showing us a campy horror movie, but the characters and dialogue are so interesting that it becomes a legitimate movie. The best news is that this has the potential to be an ABSOLUTE CLASSIC and we’ve only seen roughly 2/3 of the movie that will be released later this year. Knockout performances by understated Vanessa Ferlita and bubbly Zoe Bell (who you may remember as Uma Thurman’s stunt double in “Kill Bill”) carry this movie well enough, but you MUST SEE THIS MOVIE for the performance given by Kurt Russell. He makes Stuntman Mike one of the most interesting and entertaining characters from easily the last decade, just by smirking and maniacally laughing his way through the film. It’s exciting. It’s funny. It’s a return to form for Tarantino and is absolutely worth sitting through roughly two hours of “Planet Terror” and fake movie trailers to get to it.

My rating: 4.0 stars