This list of 50 films, is a set of films that I have decided that will be my "Criterion Collection" of films. A set of movies that I use to describe who I am, my ideas and what I think are the best movies. You may not agree and that's ok, but these are my movies. And as always, "THARR BE SPOILERS! YE BE WARNED! "
So, I got tired of doing them in a counting up pattern. Primarily a reason on why I took a break from writing these. It just got lame if I had to wade through some of the lower ranking movies to get to the really cool ones. In a way of looking at it, outside the top ten the rest could all be labeled 11 and it would work out for me.
For this installment I had someone (the person ended up being Scooter) pick a number and I decided to write about that movie. And boy howdy, we got a doozy.
#23: Pulp Fiction
My family had just got DirecTV for the first time. (I'm sure I don't have to remind you that DirecTV is satellite television, but there it is.) I remember the first thing I watched ever on DirecTV was Robocop 3. It was when Robo was saving his partner from those strange hoodlums and he drives off the overpass and guns all the people down.
Mind-blowing for a 11 year old. I had seen the original Robocop but that was just way, way too much. I had never seen 3 before and I knew then good things were to come from having satellite TV.
Now, as the way things go for my family we usually always have dinner around the television. As a ritual we watch the local news and then find something else to watch when either the meal is finished or the news is over. Unless its a Saturday, then we would usually find a movie to watch.
One particular Saturday, I remember it was summer time, we were eating and we stumbled upon Pulp Fiction. It was playing on Bravo. This was before Bravo was the Bravo of today. It barely had any commercials and they got the classic actors/directors (De Niro, Hoffman, Pacino, Scorsese) to be on Inside the Actor's Studio. We stopped on it knowing that A) It had some significance because the title "Pulp Fiction" had been somewhat familiar to myself and my parents, B) It had John Travolta in it, and C) It was odd.
I believe we jumped in at the beginning, Jules was getting his bite out of that tasty burger, and from then on it was a daze for me. I was absorbed into the plot awaiting each and every turn. At one particular point my mother said, "Don't tell anyone we let you watch this movie!" in regards to the anal sex scene. Yet, it was a point of pride for me the next day to tell all my friends when I went to my summer school class and told them all about this one movie where there are gangsters, hitmen, one guy got his brains blown out and they had to clean it up, and Max Schrek from Batman Returns told this story about how he had a watch up his butt!
They thought it was cool, but their 5th grade minds didn't let it sink in like I did. Their mind wasn't on fire like mine was. I knew then, that I had found a special movie. Its ok, if no other person in the world thought it was cool. It was my special movie.
Flash forward until my senior year of high school. The same friends who scoffed at me for watching Pulp Fiction when I was younger, handed me a script for a film for our photography class containing plot points lifted from Pulp mixed in with some Office Space, Shaun of the Dead and modern comedic movies at the time. They were telling me about Pulp as if it had just came out and how cool I was. I just laughed and pulled out my copy on DVD that I bought a year ago.
Always ahead of the curve I was.
What speaks to me now about the movie is the layering of the movie, use of a non-linear time-line to tell the story from different angles. The dialog is the best, especially Sam Jackson's character and the situations the characters find themselves in are quite memorable. Its on this list because I can put this movie on leave it in the background and know exactly each beat of the film as I watch it. I quote lines and laugh at all the dark humor as if it was my first time.
As a side note, after I had injested the movie for the first time I dove deeper in it and discovered who Quentin Tarrentino was and all the other movies he made. Soon after seeing Pulp we watched Reservoir Dogs and from then on Tarrentino became an inside joke. We'd see a movie he did on TV we'd watch it no question. Nothing else on, we pop in a Kill Bill. Come to think of it, Tarrentino movies are the only movies that the three of us, (My mom, dad, and I) always agree on. Each of us have our own favorite movie genres, but we always come back to watch Quentin.
Now if I could only get them to watch more Kevin Smith movies, I think they would be probably the coolest parents ever.
My family had just got DirecTV for the first time. (I'm sure I don't have to remind you that DirecTV is satellite television, but there it is.) I remember the first thing I watched ever on DirecTV was Robocop 3. It was when Robo was saving his partner from those strange hoodlums and he drives off the overpass and guns all the people down.
