I saw Grindhouse (April 14). My inner 14-year-old boy loved it to pieces.

(Adult me wished it were a little shorter than 3.25 hours, because my eyes were turning to sandpaper toward the end.)

Grindhouse is Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's pretend double feature of violent chick-sploitation 60s and 70s films, like ones that would have been shown in a "grindhouse" -- a term for sleazy run-down movie theaters that show nonstop cheap thrills. No, I didn't know the term. In fact, I almost suspect Mssrs. Tarantino and Rodriguez of making it up, then pretending that of course it's an old term, back in the 70s everyone knew that term, didn't you grow up in the 70s like us?

"Planet Terror," by Rodriguez, is the first part of the double feature. It's a zombie movie, sort of. The fact that the mysterious glowing green secret government gas reanimates the dead doesn't seem nearly as important as the fact that it causes the living and the dead alike to start pustulating horribly. Flesh melts. Goo explodes. It's the gooiest zombie movie since Dead Alive -- in fact, I think it might be the gooiest movie ever. There's no point where anybody sitting in the theater is going to think, "you know, this could be gooier." It also has the memorable image of Rose McGowan mowing down zombies with a prosthetic machine-gun leg, which no 70s movie could have managed, effects-wise, but you know they totally would have done it if they could have. It's tempting to call "Terror" a "parody" but it's not really mocking its own absurdity -- it's glorying in it. It's full of bizarre, hilarious moments that manage to be oddly touching as well.

"Death Proof" (by Tarantino, with a brief flash of spliced film indicating that it used to be called something else) is a car chase revenge movie with quasi-feminist overtones. It is also the first genuinely exciting car chase I have seen in ages. This is because it looks real. It feels real. It's two actual cars ramming each other at high speeds. One of the stars, Zoe Bell, is an actual stuntwoman, who is obviously doing her own actual stunts, and they are thrilling.

Plus, there are a few hilarious fake previews, and some awesome period typesetting and graphic design. The movies have surfacing to make them seem like battered old prints, scratches and missing reels, used to hilarious effect -- in both movies, it's the sexy scene that's missing. This is not only a tease to the audience, but a reference to the well-known practice of frustrated and less ethical employees taking home bits of the movie for themselves.

Neither story is actually a period piece -- people use cell phones, "Terror" references the Iraq war, and at one point the dueling classic cars in "Death Proof" go bursting onto a modern highway full of glossy, bulbous, sedate-looking modern cars. The vintage experience goes deeper -- everything in Grindhouse -- dialog, makeup, lighting, sound, editing -- has a "hey, they don't make movies like that anymore" feel. This isn't just a homage to the movies the directors loved as kids. It's a recreation of the things that were in those grindhouse flicks that are missing in modern filmmaking. Both segments manage an unapologetic gritty urgency that make other modern thrillers seem hollow and calculating.

I saw Hot Fuzz (April 21), and all parts of me loved it. Created by the brilliant team that brought you Shaun of the Dead (Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright) Hot Fuzz is every bit as hilarious and delightful as Shaun. If there's a drawback, it's only that I love zombie movies, and don't care much about action cop movies. But, everyone else seems to feel the same way (reviewers, and my friends) and we all loved it, so, you will probably love it if you loved Shaun. And if you didn't love Shaun, there's probably no hope for you, but see Hot Fuzz anyway just to find out if your sense of humor is broken.

The premise: hot shot good-guy cop (Pegg) is making the rest of the force look bad, so he is promoted to serve in "England's safest village." "Safest" in terms of crime, that is, and it turns out -- well, not everything is quite as it would appear. So, the movie starts as a fish-out-of-water comedy, which turns into a mystery, which turns into an all-out guns blazing finale. Like Shaun, it actually is the kind of movie it is having fun with. So, underneath the jokes and absurdity, there are real characters, and an interesting story.