Pulp Fiction (1994)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
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51 films that influenced Pulp Fiction
What critics say influenced Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino has said that this was one of the films that inspired his Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994).
In the movie, it's filled with a strange, glowing, possibly atomic device; Alex Cox's Repo Man and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction famously paid tribute to this device.
Packed with extras, this new Criterion release sends novelist Mickey Spillane's knuckle-dragging private eye Mike Hammer (played by gruff lump Ralph Meeker) through a cesspool of tawdry twists, all of them hinging on a mysterious box containing a deadly light that fans of Pulp Fiction should find eerily familiar.
The glowing suitcase is a reference to Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly.
Tarantino giddily incorporates references to seemingly countless pop-cultural texts (Kiss Me Deadly, Saturday Night Fever, and so on)…
Consider how, hidden somewhere in the subtext amid Jules’ recitation of his passage from Ezekiel and the briefcase containing an awe-inspiring sight of golden luminescence (a nod to Robert Aldrich’s noir Kiss Me Deadly ), there exist hints of a religious theme.
Find here, too, explication of Tarantino's casting choices, from Willis for his spiritual resemblance to Ralph Meeker's asshole hero of Kiss Me Deadly to Travolta for his quality of winsomeness, largely unseen since at least Blow Out if not Saturday Night Fever .
As with his �Reservoir Dogs,� Tarantino delves into the working-stiff world of crime.
Like the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino indulges in unadulterated villainy…
As did “Reservoir Dogs,” new pic begins in a coffee shop, with a young couple who call each other Pumpkin and Honey Bunny…
Tarantino’s previous film, Reservoir Dogs, also did the same thing, but with less buzz.
Did she care about Quentin? His reputation? Reservoir Dogs? Nothing.
Reservoir Dogs has the same conceit, as the cliché “heist goes awry” plot develops in a manner no one expects.
It has a flabbergasting climax mixing chainsaws, racial paranoia, samurai swords and sadomasochistic rape by "Deliverance"-style rednecks (the only time the movie probably does go too far).
Suddenly lurching into a cross between "Deliverance" and "The Collected Works of the Marquis de Sade," it puts Willis and Rhames at the merciless mercy of rednecks with really nasty ideas on their mind.
Butch’s gaudy encounter with rednecks, replete with S&M and male rape recalling the Gothic of Deliverance…
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A spectacularly entertaining piece of pop culture, “Pulp Fiction” is the “American Graffiti” of violent crime pictures.
…the film’s soundtrack is something of a modernized “American Graffiti,”…
Like the late Sergio Leone's three-hour 1969 tribute to American Westerns, "Once Upon a Time in the West," Quentin Tarantino's latest movie puts an epic spin on a favorite genre, taking it to time-tripping levels rarely tested by its forerunners.
Touche; it seems that Pulp Fiction‘s birthday is actually in 1964, not 1994 as its IMDB date may lead you to believe.
(It’s no secret that this scene inspired the John Travolta-Uma Thuman dance in Pulp Fiction, or that Quentin Tarantino’s production company is called A Band Apart .
When he feels like paying tribute to the Stanley Donen film Give a Girl a Break (1953), he guides his three characters through a wonderful little dance number (which Quentin Tarantino in turn paid tribute to in Pulp Fiction ) in a cafe.
The dance sequence, for example, came about not because Travolta starred in Saturday Night Fever or the director knew audiences wanted to see him dance again, but because Tarantino wanted to acknowledge Jean-Luc Godard’s similarly themed Band of Outsiders (1964)—its French title Bande à part providing the basis for Tarantino’s production company, A Band Apart.
In between bouts of more extraneous babbling, they execute all but one of the flunkies and take back a valuable briefcase that when opened emits a yellow glow that we never see the contents of (which is a direct lift from Bunuel's Belle de Jour).
(Derived, perhaps, from the mysterious box in Bunuel's Belle de Jour.)
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Despite all its thematic nudges about redemption and second chances, its true agenda is the flip side of Forrest Gump: to make the media-savvy viewer the real hero of the story.
…or Forrest Gump, itself a love letter to the major events that defined the Baby Boomer generation…
In 2022, Tom Hanks addressed the debate over Forrest Gump beating Pulp Fiction to the Best Film Oscar…
The other nominees for Best Picture in 1995 were Quiz Show, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Shawshank Redemption and the winner, Forrest Gump.
To be precise, Forrest Gump took on Pulp Fiction at the 1995 Oscars and won, handily; it took home six Oscars to Fiction’s one (for Best Original Screenplay, the only one where the two films weren’t in competition).
I know that Forrest Gump is still considered a beloved classic, but it beat out two other movies that year, both of which I believe are held in even higher esteem: The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction .
The French New Wave or blaxploitation, The Wild Bunch or The Brady Bunch — it’s all grist.
Perhaps something akin to seeing Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction for the first time (though I’d argue Peckinpah’s use of violence is more complicated than Tarantino’s).