Movie Details
| Title: | From Dusk Till Dawn | |
| Director: | Robert Rodriguez | |
| Year: | 1996 | |
| Genre: | Vampire | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 04.11.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (3)
- Machete Kills
- Once Upon A Time In Mexico
- Sin City
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 04.11.06 | Alamo Downtown | Tonight's Grind House crew screening started with this movie which Tarantino says he hasn't seen in a theater for a long long time. Rodriguez wasn't there - actually, these "crew" screenings seem to have become half and half between actual crew and AFS/alamo folks who just want to see the movies in a cool atmosphere - but QT mentioned how he thought this was his best acting and that their best collaboration to date ("We'll see about Grind House").The intros seem to be getting less performancy as these go on... The best part about watching this movie again in the theater... well there's actually two best things about it. The first is hearing how much Quentin laughs at his own stuff. You'd think he might want to be modest about it or something like that but he was laughing harder and longer than anyone else in the movie. It got to be where I stopped thinking it was funny and started thinking "well of course, why make a movie you don't like" so... good for him... I guess. The other thing is that now I get to see the movie with a bit more wisdom and experience concerning the types of movies that QT likes and draws from. With Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, I always thought of his cinematic inspirations/sources as being fairly close to those of Paul Thomas Anderson (American Classics mixed with some New Wave and maybe a little Kurosawa), but starting with this movie and pretty much everything he's done since, QT has been much more exploitation-bound. I didn't see it back in 96 when this came out but I do now. I noticed John Saxon in there, and realized who Fred Williamson is (and spotted Greg Nicotero as the guy who Sex Machine intimidates with his crotch gun (which must hurt like hell when he fires it, right!?!?) and Michael Parks as the sherrif in the beginning sequence (later to reprise the role in a flashback sequence in Kill Bill) and having Harvey Keitel's Chinese son played by Ernest Liu (have to believe there's some relation there to Gordon)... it all just makes much more sense to me now. Now, the Salma Hayek dance and whiskey serving... I always thought was one of the hottest moments in contemporary cinema, bar-freakin-none. But also, over the years since seeing it (and being disapointed in it) for the first time, I've also come to really like how the movie completely switches genres on a dime. I still think the first half when it's a Desperate Hours movie is pretty slow, but can think of few other movies that manage to completely bait and switch on you like that. Now if only the film wasn't marketed at a vampire picture, this movie really would've blown some minds. Dealing with the first half though... I think they might've made a mistake by casting Keitel and Juliette Lewis. I can see why they did it because in the second half of the movie they turn into complete badasses and it suits their image just fine (especially at the time coming off Rservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers), but I have a harder time believing them as non--badasses during the first half than if they would've cast actors known for their sensitive sides and turned them into badasses during the second half. Still though, the pacing of the first half makes the second seem to go by in about a minute, and now that I've actually seen a few other Desperate Hours movies and know the conventions, I find myself enjoying this film a lot more. Plus they had the volume pumped. it was rockin. |
