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 Sixth Sense

video review : The Sixth Sense

If I saw dead people “everywhere” all the time, I think I’d eventually get used to it, at least to the point where it doesn’t scare me anymore. Not nine-year-old Cole Sear. They still scare him and he’s been seeing them all his life. It’s a secret he keeps to himself, so when he reacts to them, alive people think he’s crazy. I thought he was too until I started to see the ghosts for myself. I wasn’t scared though. I was more dumbfounded than anything else. How, I wondered, are these ghosts wearing clothes?

My snide thoughts were more entertaining than this movie; a slow-paced psychological thriller that doesn’t really thrill until the end. It’s a twist ending if there ever was such a thing; one I was surprised thus impressed by. It almost made me want to watch the movie all over again to see how they pulled it off, but I wouldn’t subject myself to that. It’s too boring for too long. As the kid says to the psychologist while he’s trying to tell him a bedtime story, “You have to add some twists and stuff.”

my rating : 2 of 5

1999