Grindhouse

I wanted to see it again.

That's what I thought immediately after seeing Grindhouse, a three-hour ode to gushing blood, gratuitous nudity and eye-popping action. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino co-directed.

They wanted to give homage to the movies they grew up watching, those double-features that circulated through theaters so much that the film was scratchy and reels of the film, the parts that contained much of the sex, ended up missing.

Rodriguez directs Planet Terror, a silly rambunctious romp about zombies and a hot go-go dancer, played by the sexy Rose McGowan, with a machine gun for a leg. Freddy Rodriguez is the gun-slinging hero, El Wray. And from the first frame to the last, the screen is splashed with either zombies chewing on flesh or our heroes blasting them away with bloody gusto. This movie is not for the faint of heart.

It's a virtual rollercoaster ride of rollicking action where logic, plot and dialogue matter little. This is simply pure stupid fun.

And it sets everything up for Quentin Tarantino's feature, Death Proof. Kurt Russell is Stuntman Mike (yes, he's a stuntman), a psychotic who has death-proofed his car, meaning he can crash into anything and won't get killed. The people he rams his car into aren't so lucky. Nor are the people who are unfortunate to ride with him.

As in all Tarantino movies, there's a lot of talk. Lots of talk between women, very strong and sexual women who don't take crap from anyone.

One thing Tarantino has always prided himself on is his ability to write dialogue. He has reason to pride himself. Anyone who has seen Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs or Jackie Brown knows that the best part of those films is the cool interaction between characters. He uses dialogue as a way to reveal character and just to have people say cool things. The characters become, in a sense, real.

And he's just flat-out funny.

Lucky for us that the dialogue is also leading somewhere. And that somewhere happens to be out on the road for one of the most thrilling car chases of all time. Tracie Thoms, alone, is worth seeing this movie. She gets the best lines. And she plays a far-different character than the last time we saw her on the big screen, as the lawyer in the movie adaptation of the play, Rent.

This time, she's balls-to-the-walls tough.

Russell is good as well, cool and smooth, giving a performance reminiscent of his infamous Snake Plissken role in Escape from New York.

And the ending was the most satisfying one I have seen in quite a long time. I walked out of the theater pumped. It was a true movie experience, the kind any action junkie craves.

I wanted to see it again.