Pulp Fiction (1994)

You know, it’s movies like this that make me realize how much I need a “Top 10 Movies of All Time” list on this site.  What qualifies a movie for that list?  A spot-on script, top notch performances, flair without being too flashy, no moment wasted, unending rewatchability, and a smile on my face the whole way through.

My friends, Pulp Fiction delivers the goods, as securely as if Jules Winnfield himself were the bagman.

I’m reviewing this movie now because I recently had the opportunity to watch the movie with someone who’d never seen it before, and it helped me to recapture a lot of what I love about Pulp Fiction without simply resorting to Nostalgia Glasses that allow me to effectively tune out the movie and revel in the reminiscence of the dozens of times previous that I’d seen this film.  (I’m also reviewing it in the context of being Quentin Tarantino’s second, and perhaps best, film, in the run-up to December’s Django Unchained.)

What, then, is Pulp Fiction about?  Many things, really.  It’s a nonlinear narrative about a group of Californians who lead lives dominated or surrounded by violence – Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson), a pair of hitmen; their boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames); his wife Mia (Uma Thurman); boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis); and Pumpkin & Honey Bunny (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer), the two robbers and lovers who frame the piece.  Pulp Fiction is about these people and the meaningful – and often surprising – ways their lives intersect, but it’s also about how these people are confronted by opportunities to change their lives before the violence gets them, too.  In strange ways, it’s about the importance of love, about divine intervention and the power of miracles, about how much pop culture matters to us, and about following codes that make no earthly sense but have a ring of the divine to them.

It’s about so many things that some critics have charged Pulp Fiction with being about nothing.  Perhaps they’re right – perhaps Pulp Fiction is just the Seinfeld of the movie world.  But for a multiplicity of reasons – philosophical, aesthetic, existential, etc. – I refuse to believe that a movie this sublime, this enjoyable, this... perfect could be an exercise in nihilism.  What about Pulp Fiction merits so much revisiting?

Much of the film’s strength comes from the stellar cast of once-was and would-be-yet stars.  As one of only three characters to appear in all three segments of the film (Marsellus and Mia Wallace being the other two), John Travolta is a fantastic “leading man” for an ensemble cast such as this.  His role as the “comeback kid” in the behind-the-scenes mythos of the film takes a backseat to his perfect fit as an accessibility point for the audience; he shepherds us through the film, feeling dread when we’re supposed to feel dread, breaking the tension when it needs it, and entering the film as a kind of outsider who needs to relearn the game after a stint in Amsterdam.  And, boy, can he dance.  The impromptu dance sequence with Uma Thurman is a real treat – for better or for worse the film’s most recognizable moment – a spontaneous and exuberant indulgence in the film’s own pop sensibility.  The two dance for no other reason than Mia’s “I wanna dance” logic, a perfect analogue for why I still watch this movie:  because I wanna.

Travolta’s counterpart is Samuel L. Jackson, the devout Protestant to Travolta’s lapsed Catholic.  (There’s no specific invocation of religious denominations here, but I contend that the whole movie comes down to miracles and how the characters respond to them – the subject, perhaps, for another article on here.)  Jules Winnfield is a career-making role for Jackson, establishing his trademark hybrid of the sacred and the profane with the almost lyrical way in which he drops an F-bomb.  Yet Jackson is gifted enough to oscillate between irreverent comedy (“I’m a mushroom-cloud layin’ motherf--ker, motherf--ker”) and intense introspection (“I felt the touch of God”), making Jules perhaps the most human of the film’s characters.  His quiet monologue in the film’s concluding diner scene is almost chilling for its earnestness; it ought to be difficult to believe that the same cheeseburger-gobbling gangster from the first ten minutes has become a contemplative amateur theologian, but Jackson makes that transition palpable and cues himself for the well-deserved success he’s enjoyed in his career thus far.

Then there’s Bruce Willis, the star of the film’s middle third.  It seems odd to say it, but I always forget that he’s in this movie until I start watching it.  Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Butch Coolidge section isn’t exclusively Tarantino’s script (co-written with Roger Avary), or perhaps it’s that “The Gold Watch” is such a traumatic and trippy piece that I psychologically block it out.  It’s not that I actively dislike “The Gold Watch” – indeed, Willis does some great work here as the sympathetic boxer, and the unforgettable Christopher Walken monologue that opens this chapter is equal parts touching, spooky, and weird (meaning it’s yet another Christopher Walken performance).  But “The Gold Watch” veers so hard and fast into disturbing territory that moviegoers likely won’t be prepared for where the film takes them.

“The Gold Watch,” though, is often underrated because it’s sandwiched between two classically Tarantino pieces – Travolta’s dance number with Thurman and the infamous bloody car cleanup.  But as with Inglourious Basterds, “The Gold Watch” is a segment where Tarantino displays his impeccable gift for generating tension; danger is around every corner in this portion of Pulp Fiction, with death or worse fates awaiting Butch and ensnaring those close to him.  The sensitive scenes with Maria de Medeiros (as Butch’s naïve lover Fabienne) are haunted by her question, “We’re in a lot of danger, aren’t we?”  Honey, you don’t know the half of it; “The Gold Watch” is dogged by the sense of impending and unrelenting doom.  It makes for uncomfortable viewing, especially when you find out what Zed and Maynard are really up to, but aesthetically it’s genius filmmaking as Tarantino pulls back on his trademark peppy dialogue and lets the visual language – long takes and intimate close-ups – do all the talking.

But lest you get the wrong idea, Pulp Fiction really is a barrel of laughs.  (Or, if it’s not, I’ve just outed myself as some kind of nut.)  It’s either genius or bizarre filmmaking when Tarantino turns an exploding head into one of the most riotous scenes in the film, allowing that trademark snappy dialogue to take over as Travolta and Jackson degenerate into a shouting match.  The film is told out of chronological order, which allows some of the more difficult bits to go down easier – as when a deceased character returns to the film in scenes from before his death – and it allows the film to reach a comfortable happy ending without sacrificing the danger that still waits for violent men who continue to act violently.

Though Inglourious Basterds concluded with the not-so-subtle intimation that it was Tarantino’s masterpiece, but I argue that Pulp Fiction retains that place in his oeuvre.  It’s quite simply a perfect film.

Pulp Fiction is rated R “for strong graphic violence and drug use, pervasive strong language and some sexuality.”  Where do we begin?  This film is unflinching in its depiction of shootings and their oh-so-bloody aftermath; profanity flows liberally with almost 300 F-words and nearly every other indecent verbiage included.  Drugs include alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, with numerous nicknames given.  Butch and Fabienne share an extremely intimate but fully clothed rendezvous which runs for a very long time, and there’s a scene of semi-graphic nonconsensual homosexual intercourse (everything seen but the body parts in question) that might be the film’s most disturbing scene of all.

Thanks for sticking with us all week, and have a very Happy Thanksgiving with your near and dear ones!  Come back here next week for our regularly-scheduled “Monday at the Movies,” as well as a review of Denzel Washington in Flight for Wednesday.

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

If you're not familiar with the oeuvre of Tony Scott, he's the guy whose movies always look like they were filmed from a moving train (Domino, Man on Fire, and Déjà Vu, though not so much True Romance). So it's only appropriate that his latest film, both a remake of a 1974 classic and the novel that inspired it, is centered in the New York subway system.


The Taking of Pelham 123 is a fast-paced, near-realtime thriller with a simple core: Walter Garber, a civil servant thrust into the shoes of being a hostage negotiator (Denzel Washington) matches wits with a troubled and somewhat unstable criminal named Ryder (John Travolta) on the other end of the microphone. The demands are simple: $10,000,000 within an hour or hostages start dying. And the supporting cast is fairly simple: an actual hostage negotiator (John Turturro) coaching Garber as the Mayor of New York (James Gandolfini) scrambles to get the ransom money in time amid his own personal scandal.


I can't do much by way of comparison with the original (and a 1998 version starring Edward James Olmos), which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I can't provide the kind of commentary I'm sure some of you are seeking, but on the other hand, I'm free to concentrate on the film that Tony Scott has made without any distractions. As updates go, this one compensates well for technology not extant when the originals came out, but I'm just speculating there. Not knowing anything about the original versions, this one kept me guessing and held my attention during the whole thing, and the 106-minute runtime flew by... well, like a subway train.


Despite being a high-stakes plot with 19 lives in the balance and despite Scott's brutally flashy direction (which is entertaining if a little distracting), there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of urgency behind the film; it's as though at times there aren't lives on the line. But that's all right. The heart and soul of the film is the interaction between Washington's charismatic everyman and Travolta's unhinged hostage-taker. Like Sam Jackson, these two are just plain fun to watch, especially Washington, who disappears behind his klutzy character while bringing us in on every small tic and mini-grin Garber carries with him. Travolta isn't exactly menacing - that is, when he's not brandishing a gun in a hostage's face (there, he's downright spooky) - but he's a great foil for Denzel, and the two are clearly having a great time playing off of each other.


That these two are such magnets for the audience's attention compensates for the fact that no one else really does anything in the movie. Turturro stands over Denzel's shoulder, Mayor Gandolfini squawks his way past a Tony Soprano impression (having learned his lesson, it seems, from Lonely Hearts), and the rest of the terrorists in Ryder's crew pace the length of the car with their guns drawn but never actually have to fire. Even the hostages are fairly cookie-cutter.


But again, none of that really matters. When Garber is on the screen, I couldn't look at anyone else - even though I'm a huge fan of the other major hitters in the cast - because Denzel Washington is just that good. Perhaps I should stop before this turns into an overwrought love letter to one of the best actors of our time... oops, too late. Simply put, this movie is fun, refreshing for its simplicity in spite of its own crafty direction and seemingly involved plot (yes, I learned by the end of the film, it's really that straightforward).

The Taking of Pelham 123 is rated "R for violence and pervasive language." Violence is quick and sprinkled throughout the film, though bloody after-effects linger in the cramped subway car, and the language is standard F-bomb fare dropped casually and occasionally intensely about 50 times.

Lonely Hearts (2006)

Lonely Hearts tries hard, but it's no LA Confidential. Instead of being a gritty period piece (this time modeled on a true story rather than a James Ellroy novel), Lonely Hearts is ultimately little more than a limp cop thriller with a cast that's seen better days.

This was a true story that was unfamiliar to me, but someone out there must know of the Lonely Hearts Killers - Raymond Fernandez (Jared Leto) and Martha Beck (Salma Hayek) - who answered personals ads and swindled WWII widows of their "hero's pay." The film also follows the cops (from right in the image: John Travolta, James Gandolfini, and Scott Caan) on the killers' heels.

I like cop films - the fact that I've reviewed four Dirty Harry movies in less than a month should be testament to that. And I like period films - I'm often nostalgic for a 1930/40s that probably never was, and Glenn Miller's on my Top 100 Most Played in iTunes. And I'm a huge fan of most of the headliners in this movie. Why then doesn't director/screenwriter Todd Robinson's film about his own grandfather (Travolta) work?

Though this isn't Robinson's debut film, parts of Lonely Hearts feel amateurish. There's a lot in here that doesn't work, and the screenplay isn't among the strongest. Perhaps I've been jaded by Brian Cox's stellar cameo in Adaptation ("God help you if you use voiceover in your work, my friends! God help you!"), but I've been so badly brainwashed against the concept of a narrator that even Morgan Freeman is an unlikely-at-best antidote. Gandolfini's narrative is confusing, suffering both from stylized diction and an equally heavy accent that feels like a holdover from the days of The Sopranos. Consequently, most of the important exposition is lost in the squawking swamps of Gandolfini's voice, and so the film can be a touch inaccessible.

Gandolfini's certainly not at the top of his game, nor is Travolta, who I usually enjoy in almost anything. Here Travolta seems weary, as though he's not putting his heart and soul into this one. In fact, one might invoke the old cliche and say that Travolta seems to have phoned this one in. It's almost as though Robinson was afraid to ask too much of his actors. Lynch-muse Laura Dern floats in and out without much consequence to the plot, and Leto looks too much like Zac Efron with a mustache to be truly intimidating. Indeed, the only performance in Lonely Hearts that seems to succeed (other than Scott Caan, who is entertaining but neither is given much time nor seems to fit in at all) is Salma Hayek, who does a more than adequate job of bringing the simmering psychosis of her character to a brutal boil throughout the film.

The film, though, lacks a grounding stability that would have made it feel more coherent. The film isn't sure if it wants to be a cop film or a criminal film and can't manage to strike a happy balance between the two. Near the tail end of the film, things spiral out of control, and the audience's heads starts spinning when characters behave irrationally and the plot starts taking "How did that happen?" turns. Furthermore, Lonely Hearts isn't a terribly good period piece, either; the sets, cars, and wardrobes look the part, but none of the actors really fit into the mold of the late 1940s and so the film feels unsettlingly anachronistic. A few moments look good (Gandolfini in the barn at the end of the film is well-shot), but on the whole the film doesn't feel right.

Perhaps in the hands of a more able director (Michael Mann, perhaps?) with a more coherent screenplay (no one writes crime like William Monahan), Lonely Hearts might have been a better film. As it stands, though, the film disappointingly falls flat despite tremendous potential from its otherwise-golden cast (and the tremendous hope this reviewer had going into the picture).

The MPAA rated Lonely Hearts "R for strong violence and sexual content, nudity and language." The violence is brutal, gory, and sprinkled throughout the film in liberal doses. Nudity is less frequent but still present, frequently surrounded with sexualized situations (as well as unsettling concepts of incest), and the language is standard F-bomb fare for a cop film, albeit one set before I like to believe people talked like that.

Hairspray (2007)

At the risk of sounding horribly dull and cliched, remakes are a tricky subject. A lot of people don't like talking about them. To be fair, we've had two great remakes - John Huston's 1941 film noir masterpiece The Maltese Falcon (a remake of two previous adaptations of Dashiell Hammett's eponymous novel) and Scorsese's 2006 Oscar-winning epic The Departed (a remake of Hong Kong mob story Infernal Affairs).

But for every good remake, we get thirty like Gus Van Sant's Psycho or The Ladykillers (from the Coen Bros. slump of the early 2000s) or - God forgive me for even invoking this film's name - Steve Martin's The Pink Panther. And lest we forget, Nic Cage's version of The Wicker Man, unintentionally hysterical with lines like "Step away from the bike!" and "HOW'D IT GET BURNED?!", was a remake of a British suspense/horror film with Christopher Lee (automatically superior by default).

So you can understand why I typically roll my eyes when word of a remake whispers around IMDb - case in point, the pointless Keanu Reeves starring in a pointless remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. I get even more skeptical when a film purports itself to be a remake of an obscure 80s movie from a midnight movie director with a strong cult following and no possible way of being family friendly.

Then a movie called Hairspray comes along and completely reinvents my concept of what a remake should be. Though technically a second-degree remake (being a filmed version of the Broadway musical based on John Waters's original 1988 film), Adam Shankman's Hairspray is, in my opinion, the third best film of 2007 (landing behind There Will Be Blood and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street).

And, as it turns out, the difference between second and third place is one dud song; where Sweeney had no songs worth fast-forwarding, Hairspray sadly has one right in the middle of the movie. So, since it's a musical and since I fear becoming formulaic, I'll walk through the plot synopsis song by song. "Good Morning Baltimore," a peppy number about the power of dreams and the need to follow them (lest, as Cherry Darling informed us in Planet Terror, "dreams become the thing you talk about instead of the thing you do"), introduces us to pleasantly plump Tracy Turnblad, played to bubbly perfection by newcomer Nikki Blonsky (who seems thus far to have been a one trick pony). Then it's time to meet "The Nicest Kids in Town," the twenty dancers on the Corny Collins Show, a TV dance program hosted by exaggeratedly swanky yet slightly exasperated host Corny Collins (James Marsden). Among the Kids are lead dancer Amber (Brittany Snow, who takes the catty blonde cliche and plays it to the hilt) and top heartthrob Link (Zac Efron, finally getting a chance to spread his wings away from the Mouse).
When Corny announces that Nicest Kid Brenda is taking a leave for "Just nine months," Tracy sees her chance and auditions for the show. But she comes up against Amber's stage-mom matriarch Velma (a delightfully wicked Michelle Pfeiffer), "Miss Baltimore Crabs," who's determined to keep anyone who's different off the show (sensing the message yet?). Later, Tracy's sent to detention, a paradise of dancing and diversity where the races mix and groove - and where Tracy finally meets Link and falls in love. "I Can Hear the Bells" - can you? Finally the "Ladies Choice" gets a song all to himself, giving Efron the opportunity for his vocals to shine and giving Tracy the opportunity to have her dance moves seen.

To the delight of best friend Penny (Amanda Bynes, who [it seems] can actually act!) and Tracy's parents Wilbur (Christopher Walken, a caricature of himself but a lovable one) Edna (John Travolta, who with a Baltimore accent and a LOT of makeup actually passes as slightly feminine), Tracy snags a spot on the Corny Collins Show, to the predicted chagrin of Velma and Amber who both loathe "The New Girl in Town." They also hate Negro Day, Corny's monthly episode featuring African-American dancers and crooners led by Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah) and her son Seaweed (Elijah Kelley, whose talent and resemblance to Sammy Davis Jr. ought to land him a spot in a biopic).

Tracy has hit the big time, even scoring a spokesgirl spot for Mr. Pinky (a marvelous cameo from Jerry Stiller, who played Wilbur in the original movie) during "Welcome to the 60s," in which Edna gets her makeover. In terms of pure fun, it's tough to beat "Run and Tell That," Seaweed's ode to being different. Even Maybelle's "Big, Blonde, and Beautiful" is sweet as chocolate cake, which Maybelle and Edna ingest in mass quantities to make the Coneheads blush. A reprise of "BB&B" features Velma attempting (hysterically fruitlessly) to seduce Wilbur, while Edna gets dolled up for her man, who she catches in an apparently compromising position with Velma. The two women collide, and Edna forces Wilbur to move out.
Wilbur atones with Edna in a catchy duet of romance, "You're Timeless to Me," which couples dated references to the Sixties with slightly insulting professions of love ("You're like a fatal disease, babe / But there's no cure / So let this fever rage"). Then comes the aforementioned dud, "I Know Where I've Been," Maybelle's message of racial integration no matter the price, layered over a march on the racist practices of Velma's station WYZT.

But the best number comes after the protest march, when Tracy is imprisoned in Penny's basement awaiting a trip to "the big house," when Penny is similarly tethered to her bed via jump rope, while Link waits for Tracy to come home, and while Seaweed aims "to rescue the fair maiden" Penny - it's "Without Love," by far the standout song in terms of vocals, lyrics, even direction a la Shankman. The rest would be criminal for me to describe in any detail (even Corny's last number, "Hairspray," is a barrel of fun), but suffice it to say that Tracy succeeds in teaching the whole world that - no matter what repression society places - "You Can't Stop The Beat."

I didn't say much about the perfect casting choices made in this movie, because the real star of the film is the music, including a few new numbers by the songwriting team of Wittman & Shaiman, such as the end credits tune "Come So Far (Got So Far to Go)" which will make you sit through the entire credit sequence, something I hardly ever do. But the cast is perfect, too; from Bynes to Walken, from Snow to Marsden, it's impossible to find someone who isn't spot-on for their specific role. Even Paul Dooley, in a small role as Ultra-Clutch Hairspray's exec, simmers with frustration at "that chubby communist" Tracy. The film is also addicting; it's one of those works that whenever it's on cable I can't resist turning it on just to see where they're at - and then stay until the end.

The dialogue (and occasionally lyrics) is hilarious, allowing the anti-racism medicine to go down with more than a spoonful of sugar. A great deal of the laughs come from the impeccable delivery of campy lines such as "Plastic little spastic" or "I am now a checkerboard chick!" (both delivered by Bynes, a real comedic talent whose roles here and in She's the Man tell me she needs the right vehicle to shine) The problem with Waters's original is the deliberate pandering to an audience seeking camp; as Edna, Divine seemed awkwardly masculine while trying to hard, and the original ending featured a roach bomb in one character's beehive do. This new interpretation of the story is effortless, intentionally yet subtly cheesy without calling attention to itself.

If I had a complaint, it's that two of the stage production's songs, "Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now" and "Cooties," have been cut - the former a foot-stomping temper tantrum shared by Amber, Penny, and Tracy at their overbearing mothers, and the latter serving as Amber's "talent portion" at the Miss Teenage Hairspray Spectactular. Maybe I'm just a Brittany Snow fan (and I have been since her turn as white supremacist Ariel on Nip/Tuck) who wanted to see more of her in the movie, but it seems these two songs might have made up for "I Know Where I've Been" (which really could have been cut). Sure, it'd give the film an almost 2.5 hour runtime, but I'm asking more from Zack Snyder in his Watchmen adaptation. Come on, Shankman; it's not too late to film these scenes and put them in a director's cut! (Versions of the songs appear in the end credits, but they're somehow not as charming without accompanying visuals.)

At one point, Link tells Edna that he was "just at home, practicing my new twist on the twist." All too often, "new twists" don't go over so well; Catwoman, anyone? Thank heavens this movie does so well at polishing a somewhat slipshod original production into a Top Five movie.