Pulp Fiction -- 1994 -- R

I first saw this film in 1994 when I got to Fort Carson in the military. I didn't understand it at all at the time. Now, 12 years later, I've watched it again, and I get it.

The genius of this film rests in the dialogue. There is endless banter running through this film among all the characters which serves to firmly root them as people with lives outside of the narrative of the plot. This is a fundamental necessity of any story and it is done with ease throughout the movie.

The stories are told out of order like you have a stack of pulp fiction books and are going through them in the order of the stack, but not necessarily the order of release. When I first saw this, I thought the story being out of order was someone's warped mind, or just projectionist screwing up on the film. Well, it is a warped mind, but as I said, seeing years later, I understood it and it works beautifully.

The only problem this film has is the tendency to drag a little bit when the conversations go on too long. Some of what is being discussed is interesting, but sometimes, the banter just drags and although well delivered, you just want some scenes to get moving on to the next one. We're dealing with a 2 1/2 hour movie here, so brevity should be the rule, but it wasn't always.

All in all, this was a very good film to watch. It really didn't have a point to it beyond a collection of clever little stories that intertwine somewhat, but it was a lot of fun.