Quote of the Week -- Dana Stevens on "Grindhouse"

Of all the reviews I read, Slate's Dana Stevens best conveyed and illuminated the transgressive pleasures of "Grindhouse."

We've all experienced some degree of Tarantino fatigue since ["Pulp Fiction"], whether with the director himself (who sometimes seems to be using the screen as a place to play out his own airless adolescent fantasies) or with the endless imitations spawned by his particular brand of fast-talking, genre-savvy splatter (this year's dreadful "Smokin' Aces" is one latter-day example).

But Death Proof is a reminder of what there was to like about Tarantino in the first place: his uncanny ear for dialogue that's at once naturalistic and deliriously wordy, his kinetic action sequences, and his voracious love for cinema in all its incarnations, especially the sleazy ones. With its lean 90-minute running time and a near-complete absence of CGI, "Death Proof" feels like an experiment in austerity after more than a decade in which Tarantino had free run of the special-effects candy store. And it works fabulously, much to the surprise of this generally Tarantino-weary writer.