“Hamburgers! The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast.”

Might as well make it a double feature of Tarantino films that I get weird looks for not having seen before. Here’s 1994’s Pulp Fiction, which is considered one of Tarantino’s best.

Plot
So…its complicated. We’ve got the interlacing stories that all connect to a crime boss. One story involves the misadventures of a pair of loquacious hitmen trying to get a MacGuffin in a briefcase to their boss. Another involves one of the hitmen taking the boss’s wife out on the town, and finally we get the story of a boxer who tries to cheat the crime lord by not throwing a fight and then trying to get away with it. Now take those three main storylines, and just mix them up out of order into several chapters that you have to piece together like a jigsaw.

Characters
Vincent Vega: John Travolta became a respectable actor again after this. The not-coincidentally named Vega is a pretty dumb lug who’s just back from Europe. Vincent is a (mostly) competent hitman, but he’s also incredibly sloppy, a heroin user, and has absolutely terrible trigger discipline that causes more problems.

Jules Winnfield: Samuel L. Jackson in the movie that made Samuel L. Jackson the badass he is today. Jules is the jheri curl wearing, eloquent and smarter member of the hitman duo (and its fun watching him act circles around Travolta). Jules is awesome and everything he says is awesome too. He has a religious experience that convinces him to give up his murderin’ ways.

Marsellus Wallace: Ving Rhames is our crime boss. He’s got a hot wife, a strip club, and would like to make it very clear that he does not like being treated like a bitch.

Butch Coolidge: Bruce Willis is a boxer in the twilight of his career who agreed to throw a fight for Wallace, didn’t and gets into quite a bit of trouble because of it (and because he wanted to get his watch back)

Mia Wallace: Uma Thurman is Wallace’s sexy actress wife who likes to party. Ultimately a minor character in the grand scheme of things, she and Vincent have a night out that ends badly.

Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe: Harvey Keitel is a “cleaner” who gets called in to clean up a mess Vincent made in the backseat of Jules’ car. Manages he is the badass of the film (even out-badassing Jules).

Captain Koons: Christopher Walken plays an army veteran in a flashback that brings Butch’s father’s watch back home. Is it really necessary to the story? Not really. BUT its Christopher Walken going off on a truly insane monologue, so who cares?

Ringo/Pumpkin & Yolanda/Honey Bunny: Tim Roth & Amanda Plummer are two small time crooks who try to rob a restaurant that Jules & Vincent happened to stop into.

Marvin: Phil LaMarr (a guy who’s done a TON of voice work, including Samurai Jack and Green Lantern on Justice League) is Marsellus Wallace’s inside man that Jules & Vincent meet up with. Vincent’s trigger discipline leads to the "Bonnie Situation." Tarantino must have a thing against guys named Marvin.

Visuals/Effects
Quentin Tarantino had more of a budget here, and the presentation is incredibly slick with lots of great colors and scenes. Editing is outstanding too, since it maintains coherence throughout the breaks and stops in narrative.

Writing
Quentin Tarantino (with some help from Roger Avary) keeps going with the snappy dialog and sudden twists and turns. He juggles a lot of plots in this, and succeeds in keeping them all in the air and interesting. And for those counting F-bombs, its used 265 times.

Sound
No score, but plenty of music. This time most of it is drawn from the 1950s, including some surf guitar. Everything is better with surf guitar.

Conclusion
Pulp Fiction, while it doesn’t really have much of anything to do with the pulp serial novels of the 1930s, is a hell of a ride. Slick, stylish and eminently quotable, at times it feels a little too slick for its own good, but never gets bogged down in how cool it is. It’s a great movie, though I do like Reservoir Dogs better.

“Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite?”

I’ve got no clever preface for this, so let me just say that I’d never seen most of Quentin Tarantino’s films, so I decided to remedy that, starting with 1992’s Reservoir Dogs.

Plot
Simply put, something goes wrong during a simple jewelry store heist for six crooks and the survivors are trying to figure out what the hell happened and who’s the rat in the group. Then there’s a bunch of flashbacks for certain important characters that help fill in the details to the audience. Simple, but effective.

Characters
Mr. White/Larry Dimmick: Harvey Keitel is a tough guy veteran of plenty of heists and when things go wrong, he tries to keep a level head while trying to keep the badly wounded Mr. Orange alive. He’s a crook, but he’s sensible and sympathetic.

Mr. Orange/Freddy Newandyke: Tim Roth is one of the younger members of the gang and he’s got the unfortunate distinction of spending most of the movie lying in a bloody mess on the floor with a gunshot wound to the stomach. Probably the most interesting character of the movie and Roth does one hell of a job.

Mr. Blonde/Vic Vega: Michael Madsen would be the badass of the film if he wasn’t a complete psychopath who gunned down a bunch of civilians when the heist went sour. He’s newly out of prison and likes listening to the radio while he works.

Mr. Pink: Steve Buscemi is our extremely paranoid (justifiable) guy who really tries to stay rational and calm, but he’s really on edge for the movie.

Mr. Brown: Quentin Tarantino is really only a factor in the table scene at the beginning and gets blown away during the chaos of the heist. Fodder, basically.

Mr. Blue: Edward Bunker (who actually did serve prison time for robbery, among other things) is the oldest and most mysterious member of the crew. Doesn’t say much and disappears after the first scene. We’re told that he was killed, but I don’t believe it. I think he’s still out there, and that makes him the baddest ass among badasses in this movie.

Nice Guy Eddie Cabot: Chris Penn is the, for lack of a better word, handler of the heist. He’s a daddy’s boy and an annoying bastard who isn’t very nice at all, actually. And he wears an ugly jacket all the time. He’s a good friend of Mr. Blonde and brings him into the heist.

Joe Cabot: Lawrence Tierney is the mastermind behind the heist. A local bigwig in crime, he’s the planner and he is very, very unhappy that it goes sour.

Marvin Nash: Kirk Baltz is the poor unfortunate cop captured and interrogated by Mr. Blonde. Poor, poor Marvin.

Visuals/Effects
Quentin Tarantino didn’t have much of a budget for the film, and most of it takes place inside of an empty warehouse with all the other locations basically being flashbacks. This works in the movie’s favor, since it gives the movie a claustrophobic feel that just feeds into the paranoia, which in turn ratchets up the tension. The action sequences, when they happen, are quite brutal, disturbing and awesome at the same time. Not to mention the now iconic scenes of the table scene and the walking scene at the beginning.

Writing
Quentin Tarantino has got a knack for snappy dialog, which is good, because most of this movie involves angry men talking and then shouting to each other and dropping F-bombs 272 times according to IMDB. He keeps it interesting, and the flashbacks help break up the tension nicely. A simple plot doesn’t mean a bad one, and Tarantino wrings a compelling drama out of the old formula of “it was supposed to be a simple job.” Though he does seem to like rambling a little too long occasionally.

Not that I would know anything about that.

*Cough*

Sound
No original score. Which isn’t to say there isn’t music. Its mostly worked in as a radio station (with deadpan comic Steven Wright as the DJ) that plays the songs of the 70s. Of particular note would be “Little Green Bag” by the George Baker Selection and “Stuck in the Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel, which, well, makes me view that song in a new light. *shudder*

Conclusion
Not gonna lie, Reservoir Dogs is one hell of an impressive movie. It’s a tight little indie film crime drama. Totally recommended.