Django

Title: Django

Year: 1966

Director: Sergio Corbucci 

Lead: Franco Nero, Jose Canalejas, Jose Bodalo

Rating: NR

A coffin-dragging gunslinger finds himself in the middle of two feuding factions in a struggle for control of a town.

So I have to dispel some preconceived notions about this film. It is in no way similar to Tarantino's "Django Unchained". It's more of a "Fistfull of Dollars" clone than anything. The only thing the two movies have in common is the intro song and the name of the lead character.

So on to the film. It's pretty outstanding. It's got the feel of a late night exploitation film rolled into a spaghetti western. It's pretty vicious, especially the ear cutting scene which is (in my opinion) more vicious than the Reservoir Dogs scene. Where do you think Quentin got the idea? Django is an excellent character, he is a man of few words and he delivers some punishing mayhem. You can definitely see the other Sergio, Sergio Leone's influence in the character and the story that Corbucci is telling. Corbucci took the Spaghetti Western genre with this film and turned it into a bloody, violent, midnight screening film that critics hated. This film is hard to review because it's just so cool. It's not that great of a film and it's not that bad of a film. It's just a hearty piece of cinematic entertainment. It's brutal, violent and really freaking cool. Django drags a coffin around with him at all times, at first, you think, "This is weird, I don't know about this." but then he opens the coffin. My reaction was a dorky little movie nerd smile. Then the end, man.... my dorky movie nerd self went crazy, I was watching the movie alone and I still yelled. This is an extremely watchable movie. 

I've been doing some research on the Italian western genre lately in an effort to find out what makes them different than the American genre. So far I've almost enjoyed the raw hopelessness that the Italians incorporate into their films. American westerns seem to glorify their villains and heroes and the towns that they pass through, but Spaghetti Westerns take their characters and rough them up and add some chips to their shoulder. They are all troubled. Every hero is an anti-hero and their representation of the west is extremely bleak, they turn the country into another character. I've found that Italian westerns are much more brutal and much more fun to watch than American Westerns, Django simply gave me more evidence to support  this idea.

Django 9/10

Death Proof

Title: Death Proof
Year: 2007
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Lead: Kurt Russel, Zoe Bell
Rated: NR

A stuntman hunts down and kills beautiful girls with his "death proof" car.

Never has a director come along and redefined and owned every genre he has ever dabbled in until now. Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django Unchained) can literally take any genre of cinema and make a movie that sets the bar for every future film to follow. Death Proof is no exception. Quentin takes 70's driving movies that played in grindhouses and made it a 2000's driving movie that plays and continues to play in your memory. This movie is a germ. It gets in your brain and won't let go for awhile. Everything about it is infectious; the music, dialogue, cars and stunts are all so on point that it won't let you go even after you've finished watching it. I do have to say that when watching it for the first time, it did play a little slow which really got me down, but let it go, you'll get into it and it will blow you away.

This is one of the best car movies I've ever seen, the stunts and effects are so good that you'll find yourself wanting to re-watch just the car scenes. I'm just going to say this: The car chase in this movie is the best car chase in film history. It's so ballsy and so insane that you'll be sweating the whole time. The acting is pretty incredible with lines being delivered so crisp and rhythmic that it might just be one of the better written Tarantino movies out there (a case could be made that Tarantino movies are all the best written movies around). Zoe Bell plays herself in this film, if you don't know who she is, she was the stunt double for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, she's tough as nails, you'll see why in Death Proof. Kurt Russel is so awesome, he is scary and all kinds of crazy in this movie.

Like I said, Quentin has taken our memories of 70's "b" movies and added this one to the top of the list. Death Proof is the second half of "Grindhouse", a project by Tarantino and his best friend Robert Rodriguez. It was a double feature presentation that was meant to resemble the double features of the drive-in age. The two films were played back to back with fake trailers in between, including one for "Machete" which Rodriguez went on to actually make with Danny Trejo. The two movies even replicated the scratched film and missing reels that were ever present in grindhouses during their time. Grindhouses got their names in part because they would repeatedly "grind" film prints through the projectors 24 hours a day, damaging them beyond recognition. It's really a fun treat that adds some character to the movie and is also a great piece of work by Tarantino's late friend, and main film editor, Sally Menke. Check this film out, it's incredible. 9/10