Why Death Proof was the better movie

If any of you that have seen Grindhouse thought Planet Terror was superior to Death Proof, I feel very sorry for you, because you're making an unfair judgment based on the contrast between Robert Rodriguez's entertainingly infantile gross-out gimmicks and Quentin Tarantino's subtler, auteurist undertow.

It's as specious the Pepsi Challenge, where Pepsi always wins out over Coke because participants will tend to choose the sweeter drink, regardless of what their long-term preference would be.

As usual, style upstages substance, and that's what's been happening with Grindhouse and the inevitable comparisons between Rodriguez and Tarantino's movies.

I'm blogging about this not because I didn't enjoy Planet Terror -- I actually was smiling ear to ear the entire time -- but because I'm disappointed by people who didn't appreciate Death Proof. So, for the benefit of people who are incapable of recognizing a work of genius, I've spelled out reasons why Death Proof rocked:

Sydney Tamiia Poitier. The opening credits called her Sydney Poitier, and when I saw that I ignorantly clapped my hands, because I thought it was Sidney Poitier, acting icon. I didn't know he had a daughter. I also didn't know he had a hot daughter. She was stunning. She looked like the perfect combination of Halle Berry and Toni Braxton, and during the scene where she's staring right at us, right into the fourth wall, with her perfect face and her long black hair, I think every man in the audience gasped.

The long dialogue scenes. Almost all the negative reviews say that after an hour and a half of the mayhem offered by Planet Terror and the three fake trailers, Death Proof kind of just sucked the air right out of the room, because of the long, aimless dialogue. Me, I thought it was a breath of fresh air, 1) because no one captures all the nuances of chatter rhythm better than Tarantino does, 2) it properly set us up for the action sequences, and 3) it got us caring about the characters. When you see the group of girls singing in the car at the end of the night, when you see the camera spinning around a table like it's the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs, eavesdropping over their shoulders on conversations seemingly about nothing, you feel like these girls are truly best friends, like you've known them all your life. Tarantino has a gift for making his characters remind us of people we know in our own lives.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead literally saying "gulp" when she's stuck with the creepy guy after the girls take off with the 1970 Dodge Challenger. It reminded me of Kill Bill, when the young O-Ren Ishii said "whimper" from under the bed, instead of actually whimpering. I don't know. It was cute.

The car chase scene. Possibly the best car chase scene ever filmed, and I have seen Bad Boys 2 and The Matrix Reloaded.

Zoe Bell. With all due respect to the otherworldly beauty of Sydney Tamiia Poitier, I think I have a crush on Zoe Bell. She's plucky, she has a New Zealand accent, and she was easily the most likable character of either movie, although Freddy Rodriguez's character in Planet Terror -- especially when he started busting out his kung fu moves -- comes in a close second.

The End. Right after the climax of the movie, at the very end, it became so deliriously entertaining that as soon as the words THE END came up on the screen, every single person in the theater screamed and applauded, even the people who shifted repeatedly in their seats during the "boring" dialogue scenes. Sure, Death Proof didn't have any of the melting testicle gimmicks that Planet Terror had, but when a movie has you leaving the movie theater in a great mood and suddenly gives you a fetish for plucky New Zealanders, I think it's more than done its job.