Pulp Fiction (1994)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1994
	Director: Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Inglorious Basterds)
	Actors: John Travolta (Face/Off, Saturday Night Fever), Uma Thurman (Kill Bill), Samuel L. Jackson (The Hateful Eight, The Avengers 1-4)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, Drama, Black Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 22.03.2019, VOD, 42" TV screen
Synopsis: PULP ( pulp ) n. 1. A soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter. 2. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper.
Review: This expression may sound worse in English than in my native French but it does apply to this movie: "If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it", and the same goes for its director Quentin Tarantino (I think that's also what he said about his lead actress Uma Thurman). It was so unique and refreshing in the 90's cinematographic landscape that people fell in love with Tarantino's style and the movie was internationally acclaimed. If you don't like his style, the movie will probably bore you because characteristically very little happens, and instead we follow people chatting endlessly about common matters that sometimes don't even relate to the story (it is getting even worse in his next movies, see Deathproof). Or at least you would think so. For me this is not a matter for boredom but on the contrary for delectation, given that those dialogs are delivered by actors inhabited by their character, and framed (visually and auditorily) in a definitely not-boring manner: Tarantino is known for his soundtracks selection and even though he does not use an extravagant shooting style, the scenes from his movie (including this one) are often shown to us in a refreshing, original manner that makes us pay more attention to them, like the whole one when kid Butch receives his father's watch (shot from his point of view), or when we follow Mia around at foot's height. I think he got all those ideas from watching tons of movies in the 70's, the close up on the actor's eyes definitely comes from Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns (like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). I realized I haven't written yet anything about what the movie is about, assuming everybody knows it. It is showing us the incredible events happening during two days in the life of gangsters (and associates) in the Los Angeles area. Sounds boring? Sound... pulp? Well that's on purpose. To make it less so, you can rely on the visual and auditory framing I mentioned, the events themselves that make for an uncommon couple of days, the talented actors of course, and if that was not enough a non-linear story that deliciously comes full circle at the end. The movie features Tarantino's characteristic style of aestheticization of violence as I read it, which he had developed in From Dusk till Dawn and Reservoir Dogs (see that infographic as well). I also noticed an aestheticization of drug use which may not have played well with a conservative audience. In fact it almost shocked me to see those scenes that are borderline glorification of drugs, but that's probably because in the past years I became too brainwashed by watching too many Netflix and mainstream PG-13 movies. And what were my motivations to watch this 25-year old monument? First I though about it when seeing a 90's Samuel Jackson in Captain Marvel. Then I was tired of not being able to quote this review when writing posts about other movies because I haven't seen this one since the blog exists. And finally just because it is a motherf***ing good movie and it was a damn shame I hadn't seen it for so long.
Rating: 9 /10