Something to watch tonight: Thursday 14 March

Grindhouse (Rodriguez/Tarantino, 2007)

One of my irreg­u­lar shoutouts to phys­ic­al media today, as a reg­u­lar edi­tion of Grindhouse hits stores in Aotearoa.

I reviewed the spe­cial lim­ited* ver­sion (with a funky len­ticular cov­er) for RNZ back in November last year:

Putting all that aside, these films are a lot of fun. Planet Terror (Rodriguez’s con­tri­bu­tion to the double fea­ture) is about a small Texan town that is over­come by dis­ease rav­aged cit­izens, pus­tuled creatures, exposed to an ali­en tox­in determ­ined to infest every­one they come into con­tact with. A few ded­ic­ated sur­viv­ors – immune to the vir­us – attempt to fight their way to sanctuary.

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Rose McGowan as go-go dan­cer Cherry Darling loses a leg in an early skir­mish but ends up with a machine gun trans­plant! Josh Brolin is an infec­tious dis­eases doc­tor at the loc­al hos­pit­al but turns out to be a nasty piece of work him­self. And Bruce Willis plays an army lieu­ten­ant called Muldoon – that name will nev­er not be funny to me – who is determ­ined to weapon­ise the vir­us for the government.

Planet Terror is very silly, action-packed, has great prac­tic­al effects.

Refer a friend

Tarantino’s Death Proof has all of the strengths and weak­nesses of any film from that dir­ect­or. If you are a fan, you’ll love it but if his exten­ded ver­biage gets on your nerves else­where, then it will do so here. And, it’s still strik­ingly com­mon how anti-misogynist films by male dir­ect­ors will still be shot through with the male gaze. It’s as if they can’t help themselves.

*Let’s be hon­est, all phys­ic­al media is a lim­ited edi­tion nowadays. You can buy this 4‑disc pack­age of Grindhouse from JB Hi-Fi in New Zealand or dir­ect from Via Vision in Australia.

Where to watch Grindhouse (online)

Aotearoa & Canada: Digital rent­al individually

Australia: Streaming indi­vidu­ally on Starz via Prime Video or digit­al rental

USA: Streaming indi­vidu­ally on Starz

UK: Digital rent­al individually

Further reading

I watched three shows cur­rently stream­ing on AcornTV (via AMC+) in New Zealand for RNZ: Shetland, National Treasure and Total Control