Grindhouse

(Palhacinho as seen and very much approved)

Grindhouse is the latest film by Quentin Tarantino, a celebration if not culmination of his lifetime love for B-, C- and Z-grade exploitation movies. A groundbreaking co-production with longtime creative partner Robert Rodriguez, the anthology aims to recall the low budget double-feature format pioneered in the 1960s and '70s, but update its formulas with modern-day money and technical know-how. While this appears to have liberated Rodriguez, a director who has toiled for more than a decade in otherwise overdressed genre pictures, it curiously has exposed Tarantino's filmmaking Achilles' heel -- namely, his inability to distinguish when that celebration of movie magic interferes with a well-told tale.

At the same time, there are so many amazing and innovative ideas in Tarantino's pastiche-cum-homage that it's hard to hold his section in too low regard, particularly given its wealth of breathtaking action sequences and one particularly powerful performance. So even if Rodriguez' effort surpasses his headliner's by an outright star or so, this tribute to cinema's exploitative dregs is some of the most dynamic and engaging filmmaking produced in years.At three-plus hours, Grindhouse is comprised of two short films, Planet Terror and Death Proof, which are connected by a series of fake trailers shot by industry colleagues like Eli Roth (Hostel) and Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead). Rodriguez' Planet Terror is presented first, presumably because he is the lesser-known of the two directors, but his proves to be the better movie and more faithful interpretation of the grindhouse "ethos." In the film, Freddy Rodriguez (Lady in the Water) plays Wray, a traveler with a shady past who becomes the unlikely savior for a band of survivors when the rest of humanity succumbs to a mysterious disease that turns them into zombies.

With Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez hasn't merely paid homage to the zombie flicks and John Carpenter movies that inspired his filmmaking career, but fulfilled his potential as both a technical and emotional storyteller. Where previously he dazzled audiences with visually stunning but emotionally bereft tales, he has synthesized thought and feeling in one of the most unexpectedly satisfying films of the year -- one so spectacular, in fact, that it could and should easily stand on its own without the need for the grindhouse context. As Grindhouse's anchor and what one hopes will be vindicated as the "A" picture against Tarantino's b-movie follow-up, Planet Terror is Rodriguez' best film to date and an unequivocal masterpiece of celebratory schlock.