best movie i've ever seen.

As Good As It Gets

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Stupid movie. Don't waste your time. Not at all entertaining.

I think this might arguably be Robert Rodriguez's best, and he has some pretty ones ("Sin City" is probably a close second). Rodriguez is not an art-house director by any means, but he is a director of wildly entertaining films and I think this may be his most entertaining, though I'll also say this film probably has the narrowest audience appeal. The story is a zombie one about a government experiment gone wrong that infects the populace of a small Texas town, but this film is unique in that it was one half of Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's "Grindhouse" double feature, that tried to recreate the experience of going to rundown theaters and watching low budget explorations films of the 1970s, complete with fake exploitation film trailers, damaged film prints, and missing reels to round out the experience. That's what I think limits the film's appeal to a wide audience, because not only does Rodriguez embrace the visual aesthetics of these films, he also fully embraces the ratcheted up sex and violence of these same exploitation films that he's celebrating, which is not going to appeal to all audience members. I can't speak from personal experience in regards to attending grindhouse theaters, but I can attest to watching many of these films during the VHS heyday. Those VHS video gems did include cheesy trailers for cheap low budget films and often did include poor film transfers that included damaged film prints, so even for a gen-xer like me, this film provided a lot of nostalgia. Freddy Rodríguez is the hero of the film who helps save his stripper girlfriend, Rose McGowan, from zombies. In the process McGowan loses her leg, which is eventually replaced with an M-16. Josh Brolin plays a terrifically villainous doctor after his ex-wife Marley Shelton. I think this was the first film I saw him in where I realized this guy can really act and isn't just the guy from "Goonies" and "Thrashin'". You also have Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Fergie, Nicky Katt and Bruce Willis. A great touch is that Willis is never shown in the same shot as the rest of the cast, which was a favorite trick of exploitation films who would hire one major (usually fading) start to film one or two days worth of footage that could be inserted into the rest of the film, then giving producers the opportunity to boast about the films' fabulous cast. Rodriguez pretty much summed up this love letter to exploitation films of yore when he said, "The posters were much better than the movies, but we're actually making something that lives up to the posters." and he absolutely did!

Conceived as part of his Grindhouse double bill with Quentin Tarantino but released separately from Tarantino's DEATH PROOF internationally, PLANET TERROR is a glorious throwback to the schlocky exploitation days of the 1970s, where so-called 'grindhouse' cinemas played a series of low budget gore-filled 'nasties' to audiences eager for sex and sadism. Having seen many of the original exploitation films in question, I'm pleased to say that director Robert Rodriguez gets it spot on and the look and feel of this film is just right.Things kick off on a high note with Rose McGowan go-go dancing. I've never been a fan of this actress, but that's changed right here with the role she has. She's perfectly cast as the tough yet vulnerable dancer who loses a limb but gains a weapon in the zombie attack, and it helps that she's as hot as hell. The one thing I loved straight away was the soundtrack, especially the main theme with the saxophone playing – great stuff that had me humming along.Anyway, the film that follows is a simple story of a zombie attack, starting off isolated incidents and building into an all-out zombie rampage. The usual scenarios are present, from the survivors holed up in a deserted diner to the killer soldiers involved in a cover-up. PLANET TERROR has few twists, instead it lets the narrative drive itself with a series of outlandish action sequences which are thoroughly entertaining. The biggest treat, though, lies in this film's casting; Rodriguez seems to have assembled a bunch of stars, old and new, A-list and B-list, and they come together nicely. I won't go through the bother of listing them all - the cast list is available right here on IMDb - only to say that Michael Biehn and Jeff Fahey really stand out as the kooky brothers, the latter particularly fine after years of being stuck in B-movie limbo. The gooey gore comes thick and fast and only a few scenes descend into inanity; the Tarantino cameo is a bit of a disappointment but the rest works gloriously well.

Very disappointing. I liked the Quentin Tarantino contribution to the Grindhouse pair of movies, "Death Proof". I have always been more of a Tarantino fan than Robert Rodriguez, but thought "Sin City" was brilliant and expected at least something entertaining for "Planet Terror". No, it is incredibly lame. Plot is full of holes, action sequences are incredibly contrived, acting is wooden.I realise that this was a homage to the Z-grade cheap horror Grindhouse movies of the 70s, but Rodriguez didn't have to be so faithful to the genre and make a crap movie.