I’ve seen a few entertaining films recently. I was most surprised by the film Perfume, it had really amazing camera effects and told a haunting and amoral tale of man driven by his sense of smell in the 18th century-where most of the smells were unpleasant. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised since the director was Tom Tykwer the director of the inventive and equally entertaining Run Lola Run. Incidentally, someone gave me the novel by Patrick Suskind several years and I never read it. It seems to work very well visually and was well acted by newcomer Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille However, the hammy performance of Dustin Hoffman as Giuseppe Baldini, suggests that Hoffman may be only effective in comedic roles at this stage in his life.
I found the separate films of The Grindhouse production by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez flawed, but entertaining. Death Proof had its moments and was basically entertaining but I found all the “you-go-girl” banter tiresome. But you gotta love those 70s American muscle cars. And I ‘m glad Tarantino decided to resurrect Kurt Russell-in my mind he will always be associated with superior cult films like Big Trouble in Little China, Escape From New York City, and The Thing rather than lesser films like Captain Ron.
Planet Terror, on the other hand, is more over the top in its exploitive violence and gore and definitely isn’t for everyone. Rose Mac Gowan is a very sexy lady, even with one leg. There’s plenty of black humor to offset the gore as well. However, I found it quite entertaining in its own right despite the gore. The previews included an entertaining fake trailer called machete, which I heard might be made into a full-length feature. I heard there were others filmed for the original double feature production, which unfortunately we’ll probably have to wait for the DVD boxed set version to be released before seeing it.
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