video review : Pulp Fiction

video review : Pulp Fiction

The best thing Pulp Fiction has going for it are its flashy characters and the things they say. Quentin Tarantino, the movie’s writer and director, has a knack for creating interesting people. With John Travolta and Samuel Jackson on set to bring them to life, it’s just a matter of putting them in the right situations.

Vincent and Jules are contract killers who probably wouldn’t be hanging around each other if there weren’t “work” involved. They have contradicting personalities. Vincent is cool. He knows when to keep his mouth shut. Jules is a loudmouth who recites Bible passages to his victims before killing them.

A day or two in the life of a couple of hitmen is only part of the story, the worn pages of which also feature Bruce Willis as Butch Coolidge; a crooked boxer on the run with his girlfriend; and Uma Thurman as the wife of the notorious mob boss Vincent and Jules work for. At one point, he’s butt-raped by a man.

Pulp Fiction is mostly a series of flashbacks. One character is shot to death in the middle of the movie, comes back in the next scene and stays alive to the end. Other scenes are cut short and continued later. It’s a style of storytelling that’s somewhat confusing but also quite clever and entertaining.

my rating : 4 of 5

1994

video review : The Hateful Eight

video review : The Hateful Eight

If not for Inglourious Basterds, his masterpiece, I’d say Quentin Tarantino hasn’t wowed me, in a good way, since Jackie Brown. The Hateful Eight, like Django before it, is more epic in scale than substance. There are memorable quotes; the “goddamn Mexican” bit is hilarious; but they’re too far and few between to justify the script’s grandiose verbosity. Nearly every member of The Hateful Eight is a stone-cold killer, but they’re apt to talk you to death. That should be a positive. Tarantino has long had a knack for punchy dialogue, but he seems to be losing it.

The problem of the characters only sometimes saying interesting things to one another is compounded by the fact that they’re snowed-in at the mercy of a blizzard for most of the plot, which circles around a prisoner named Daisy Domergue; the one woman and most despicable of the bunch. The haven is a lodge named Minnie’s Haberdashery and, though this virtual stage play runs for nearly three hours, the suspense and bloodshed doesn’t begin until about the halfway point. Ironically enough considering the fact that a tighter edit could make the film better in half the time.

my rating : 3 of 5

2015