Yesterday, my friends and I decided to check out the ongoing Cinemanila film festival and we decided to watch Death Proof, a film directed by the legendary Quentin Tarantino. The film is a parody of exploitation movies, the kind of movies shown in so-called grindhouses. In fact, this film is, along with Planet Terror (a film directed by Robert Rodriguez), is part of a two-movie set complete with trailers called Grindhouse.

As we settled in for the movie, in walks to applause none other than the man, Quentin Tarantino, himself! He gave a short introduction, punctuated with jokes and laughter, to the film. He then settled in with the audience, which is composed mainly of budding filmmakers (Quark Henares among them) and film buffs, to watch the film.

Death Proof is about a bunch of women from the show industry being offed serially (or should I say in sets?) by a deranged stuntman on his “deathproofed” muscle car. As expected, it’s full of action, including a longish car chase involving not one but two muscle cars. And, of course, there’s an exaggerated amount of blood and gore. In addition the film is full of intentional bad filmmaking. It’s an obviously synthesized crap movie. Which makes it quite enjoyable for what it is.

Rating: 3/5

“What came first? The music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns and watching violent videos, we’re scared that some sort of culture of violence is taking them over…. But nobody worries about kids listening to thousands — literally thousands — of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” this litany from High Fidelity‘s main character Rob (John Cusack) immediately struck a nerve and so I continued watching.

Why am I watching the equivalent of a guy’s chick flick? See, I was reading Wander Girl by Tweet Sering, a passing acquaintance back in college. At one point, I was amused by the book’s lead character Hilda’s (or is it also Tweet’s?) obsession with John Cusack. Later in the afternoon, as I was browsing my sister’s video collection, I saw High Fidelity. I remembered that it has John Cusack in it and so I decided to watch it. I’m glad I did. In fact, I wish I had discovered the movie earlier.

As I said, the movie is a guy equivalent of a chick flick. Not to say it’s bad, quite the contrary. In fact, it’s almost a revelation: a lesson on things I should have known and a reminder of things I have forgotten. Rob is going through his nth break up and he was wondering why this is so. So he goes talk to all his previous girlfriends to ask why. In the process revealing the stupid things we men do, the stupid things we say, the things we don’t do and should have done. How we analyze things too much. How we are concerned with the wrong things. And so much more. All this is done in a light, humorous, and quite entertaining manner by Rob.

I could see why the obsession with John Cusack.

Rating: 3/5