Is that the sound of angels singing? No, it’s just Grindhouse being awesome

First of all, hello to the spoilers.

Now THIS is a comic-book movie. Yeah, I know it wasn't actually a comic book, but it missed a good chance to be. Grindhouse is the kind of movie I was thinking of when I talked so much shit about 300. See, it's fun without being insultingly stupid. There are no fucking queer jokes, there are no appearances by RuPaul knock-offs, there are no hunchbacks with questionable moral conviction (too bad, because Ugly = Bad Person, of course), and there are no handicapped-lesbian gang-bangs. In fact, Grindhouse shows a refreshing lack of any lingering flavor of "manly" by way of "excessive playing of video games and extreme living with parents." It pays homage to the cheesy, bloody, sometimes misogynistic traditions of '70s and '80s B-movies without absorbing all of their bullshit wholesale. But my favorite thing about Grindhouse is that Rodriguez and Tarantino chose to turn it into a Slayer story. And that's awesome.

Although Rodriguez and Tarantino's movies draw life from a hodgepodge of geek-cherished cinema, including all kinds of exploitation films, I don't remember either committing violence against women to film without reason. Granted, there is a fine line between violence in service of a story and violence for its own sake, and those distinctions can be subjective and difficult to judge. Still, think of the ass-kickers that both directors have brought to life: Jackie Brown, The Bride, Carolina, the prostitutes in Sin City. When you've reached that level of bad-ass-woman credibility, I automatically cut you some slack.

"Death Proof" is a perfect example of the difference between misogyny and just plain bad shit happening to women narratively. It tells the story of two groups of women: one murdered brutally, the other equally brutal in their vengeance against the murderer. To really stir up the pure movie satisfaction of watching Rosario Dawson crush Kurt Russell's skull with her boot, you have to go through the suffering he inflicted, and while it's hard to watch, I understand why those particular strings have to be pulled. Like, I remember thinking near the end, "you better let me see that fucker die." I would have preferred something bloodier, but really, I can't complain. I also like "Death Proof" as sort of a feminine retread of the talky roundtable scenes Tarantino is famous for. I was surprised at how real the female characters felt, and you'd think Tarantino would know fuck all about writing women if you focused on, say, Reservoir Dogs, but he pulls it off. And, Tarantino proves here, just like he has in the rest of his movies, that being a pop culture-obsessed dork is fine, but being a bitter, miserable dork who peers suspiciously at life through a fog of Doritos and emasculation is not. Somebody should probably explain that distinction to the macho retarded-gorilla powerhouse that is 300.

"Planet Terror" is the one that really stirs up my Slayer love, though. Here we have the go-go dancer with the secret destiny, the woman who finds her power by examining those places hidden in plain sight, who finds uses for all her "useless talents." She draws strength from the man she loves, but continues without him, leading those who survive fucking crazy zombies to a new home, a new civilization built among the ruins of a long-dead one. "One girl, in all the world, a chosen one." Plus, seriously, fucking crazy zombies getting killed by a machine-gun leg. What could be more Slayer than that? OR MORE AWESOME?