#94 - Pulp Fiction

This is the stuff a movie buff's dreams are made of. Quentin Tarantino's 1994 magnum opus "Pulp Fiction" is the fastest, best two-and-a-half hours that ever came out of the 1990s (well, maybe it shares the prize with 1990's "GoodFellas"). It is a modern masterpiece that invented new rules for how movies can be made. Tarantino takes movies and television shows from days gone by, takes out the best parts of them, adds some adult themes and language, and presents them all at once in an overwhelming and devilishly good movie.

What is essentially just the story of two hit-men's lives for a couple of days (played by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in his comeback role) turns out to be the stuff of great novels. Tarantino said that the reason for the multiple storylines, with characters weaving in and out of them all, was that he wanted to do what novels could do but films had never attempted.

I've seen the movie several times, but the element that jumped out at me on this viewing was the detachment of the storylines. As I was watching Marsellus Wallace being raped by a couple of hillbillies, I thought back to Vincent Vega taking out Mia Wallace -- what a different time, mood, and basically entire movie that was.

And can we talk about the segment "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"? In my opinion, Uma Thurman is the reason this movie is so great. The way she moves, speaks, lives is entirely unique and unlike anything we've ever seen before. Every time I hear her say she'll be down and ready to go in "two shakes of lamb's tail," chills go up and down my spine. Her comment after arriving back to the dinner table (how she loves going to the bathroom at restaurants and coming back to find her food waiting for her) is one of my favorite lines in movie history. Not because it is overtly compelling, but because it was able to put into words a feeling we've all had -- that small joy in seeing a full plate of food waiting for us.

As far as I'm concerned, the first hour of this movie is some of the best filmmaking ever achieved. The next thirty minutes (mainly Bruce Willis's "The Gold Watch" segment) has always bothered me for some reason -- it is definitely the most detached from the main set of characters (Vega, the Wallaces, etc.) and maybe that's why it makes me uncomfortable. It just seems forced to me. Call me crazy.

But after that small bump in the road the film resumes and finishes off with another hour that is almost as amazing as the film's first sixty minutes.

The nonlinear storytelling is, of course, one of the movie's most discussed attributes. The following is a description of what we are shown:

1. Prologue - The Diner (i)

2. Car scene/Brett's

3. "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"

4. Butch flashback/leaving the boxing match

5. "The Gold Watch"

6. "The Bonnie Situation"

7. Epilogue - The Diner (ii)

That's how we're shown the events, but they actually happen like this:

1. Butch flashback

2. Car scene/Brett's

3. "The Bonnie Situation"

4. Prologue - The Diner (i)

5. Epilogue - The Diner (ii)

6. "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Washburn's Wife"

7. Butch leaving boxing match

8. "The Gold Watch"

Wow. Talk about guts as a filmmaker. To make the prologue and epilogue actually happen one after the other, and actually be in the very middle of the movie's events, is something that not only films had never done before "Pulp Fiction," but no form of fiction that comes to mind has ever done it either. This is what makes "Pulp Fiction" a modern classic, both deserving of a spot on this list and deserving of a spot higher than #94.