PLANET TERROR
(Review)

Robert Rodriguez confuses me.
El Mariachi blew me away with its crackling, low budget ingenuity and I had high hopes for whatever Rodriguez would cook up next. What came after however, tended to disappoint, more than anything else.
Desperado just seemed to be El Mariachi on a Hollywood budget, Four Rooms (the anthology he contributed to alongside Quentin Tarantino, Alexandre Rockwell, and Allison Anders) seemed more self-indulgent than actually funny, The Faculty lacked the visual frenzy of Rodriguez’s audacious debut, Once Upon A Time in Mexico didn’t really come alive for me, and Sin City was little more than an interesting ultra-violent visual experience.
Then there are his kiddie movies (the Spy Kids flicks and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl) which were clearly not made with me in mind.
Perhaps the only post-El Mariachi film Rodriguez helmed which I actually enjoyed was his team-up with Tarantino, From Dusk Till Dawn, a vampire movie which reveled in its B-movie roots.
The only one, that is, till I got to visit Planet Terror.

Originally one half of Grindhouse, Planet Terror is Rodriguez’s crazy-a$$ contribution to the raging subgenre of zombie cinema.
Here, a chemical is unleashed on an unsuspecting Texan populace, which mutates its victims into pustule-ridden monstrosities hungry for flesh. As per the template of your average zombie mash, Planet Terror follows a number of characters who eventually converge to become one ragtag group of survivors that must navigate the chaos of a world that’s suddenly gone Romero.
Among the motley crew are go-go dancer/aspiring stand-up comic Cherry Darling (Scream’s Rose McGowan), anesthesiologist Dakota Block (Marley Shelton, from Pleasantville and Sin City), and the mysterious El Wray (Six Feet Under’s Freddy Rodriguez). Along for the ride are biochemist/testicle fetishist Abby (Lost’s Naveen Andrews), would-be barbecue king J.T. (Jeff Fahey, set to appear in Season 4 of Lost), J.T.’s brother Sheriff Hague (former James Cameron collaborator Michael Biehn), and Deputy Tolo (make-up effects maestro Tom Savini). Oh, and a certain Earl McGraw (Michael Parks), who some of you may have seen in Tarantino’s Kill Bill saga as well as Death Proof. (Earl happens to be Dakota’s pop, and Dakota is also actually seen briefly in Death Proof.)

Populating this wild ride with these misfits, Rodriguez delivers a solid exercise in fun, B-movie schlock; this is the sort of tongue-in-cheek insanity that some low budget horror films can only hope to attain. Utilizing a good mix of old school practical make-up effects, digital effects, and painfully obvious dummies, Rodriguez showers the audience with over-the-top gore as the infected transform into oozing grotesqueries ready to chow down on the nearest live human being, while spurting copious amounts of the red stuff as they’re being gunned down, or run over, or chopper rotored, by El Wray and company.

Planet Terror is a runny, rowdy, four-cheese pizza without the dough. It’s messy and messed-up and one of the most lunatic popcorn flicks ever made for the midnight movie crowd.
At long last, Rodriguez is back in the game, and I am so looking forward to his remake of Barbarella, where he re-teams with McGowan (who has since become his real-life Cherry Darling).
Bring it on, baby!

Parting shot: Notable musical moments: Rose McGowan’s cover of “You Belong To Me,” which is played over the end title crawl, and, though it’s not my favourite cover of theirs, Nouvelle Vague’s “Too Drunk To F*ck,” which plays as QT tries to do something nasty to Cherry, only to have something really nasty happen to him…

Parting shot 2: Reportedly, Rodriguez is also set to turn his faux trailer from Grindhouse, Machete—which plays right before Planet Terror starts—into a full-fledged straight-to-DVD film.
More schlocky insanity! With Cheech Marin as a gun-toting priest! Brilliant!

(Planet Terror OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of ew.com; Robert Rodriguez on-set image courtesy of rollingstone.com.)

BOBBY (Review)

Spending detention in a library with Molly Ringwald and stalking Andie MacDowell. Oh, and starring in what is largely considered the worst Stephen King-related film of all.
Certainly a far cry from that to writing and directing an ambitious film like Bobby. But somehow, Emilio Estevez has managed to bridge that considerable distance.

"Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation ... It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

It’s the 4th of June, 1968, and in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles (where the Campaign Headquarters of Senator Robert F. Kennedy is located), a host of individuals converge on the fateful day that the course of a nation, and perhaps even the world, was dictated by an assassin’s bullet.
In a country wracked by social turmoil and civil unrest, Robert F. Kennedy was a beacon of hope, a grand statesman and popular humanist, who was largely considered the best and brightest hope to unite America, and to save it from an unpopular war.
Estevez uses the events of that final day as a pivot point around which to weave a tapestry of disparate lives united not just by the sharing of this tragedy, but by the simple fact of their common humanity.

And portraying this section of humanity is an assemblage of some of film’s most talented thespians, from the older generation—Sir Anthony Hopkins (also one of Bobby’s producers) and Martin Sheen (ain’t nepotism grand?)—to the younger set—Elijah Wood and Shia LaBeouf (who is set to explode in Michael Bay’s Transformers)—and spiced up with some Demi Moore (fellow Brat Packer, to whom he was once engaged, back in the day).
The ensemble meets expectations admirably, infusing their characters with honesty and humanity, a joint effort which earned Bobby a nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Arguably though, the weak link here could very well be Mr. Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher. His drug dealer, Fisher, doesn’t really seem anything more than Kutcher in hippie drag. But part of that problem could be traced to Estevez’s script.

In presenting us with 23 characters, Estevez could very well have stretched the Grand Hotel template a tad thin in certain places, leading one to question the relative importance of certain plot threads and characters to the film’s theme of hope in the face of turmoil. Aside from Kutcher’s drug dealer (whose presence also precipitates the bizarre acid trip Kennedy volunteers LaBeouf and Brian Geraghty go on), Sheen and Helen Hunt’s socialite couple are also problematic, as is Moore (unless doing a cover of “Louie Louie” is a valid enough excuse to have her in the movie), and even Hopkins, to a certain extent. And please, keep in mind that I’m not questioning the performances, but rather, whether we could have done without some of these characters.

With this many characters and this much going on, it’s unavoidable that some plot threads will be more important and more integral than others. Some, like the young husband- and bride-to-be (Wood and Lindsay Lohan) and several of the hotel employees (particularly Freddy Rodriguez’s busboy and Laurence Fishburne’s chef) serve to give voice to particular issues of the time, or to underscore some of the values and beliefs that Kennedy stood for, and these are the ones that clearly belong in this movie. Others though (some of which I’ve mentioned above) are on shaky ground.
If Estevez had shaved off some of the characters, then there might have been more screen time that he could have devoted to bolster some of the roles that seem iffy; Kutcher serves to typify both the drug and the hippie cultures, so the presence of his character could be justified, but as it is, he’s more a plot device to get LaBeouf and Geraghty high than a flesh and blood character.
Hopkins’ retired doorman also could have used some beefing up. This sort of character, who is acutely aware of the history of the story’s setting, could have been a far more valuable asset to the narrative than he turns out to be.

If there is a weakness to Estevez’s script, I feel it is this, and not, as some people may point out, its historical accuracy.
Yes, the bystanders wounded in the assassination in Bobby are fictional and not the actual victims. And yes, there is also no suggestion of any conspiracy pertaining to the assassination.
But this is not JFK. This is not that sort of film.
This is, instead, a film about the everyday kindnesses (the “… numberless diverse acts of courage and belief”) and the casual cruelties that make up the history of our lives as a race and as a people. It is about hope, about its resiliency and fragility.

Is there more to the story of Robert F. Kennedy? Of course, although I feel it would be more accurate to say there are other stories to tell of Robert F. Kennedy.
Estevez chose to tell one about everyday people and how a figure like Kennedy—already mythic, even in life—could impact and influence their lives, and that is just as valid as a story about destroyed evidence and mystery gunmen.
Estevez chose this tale, and for the most part, succeeded in the telling. Surely that is something worth celebrating.

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not."

(Quotes in italics from speeches by Robert F. Kennedy.)