AFI # 94: Pulp Fiction (1994)

#94 on 2007 AFI 100 Greatest Movies of All Time
#95 on 1998 AFI 100 Greatest Movies of All Time
#7 on AFI's Top 10 Gangster Films

There's a hurricane outside and we are home from work, so we figured it was a good enough time to watch the next movie on the list.  Which is Pulp Fiction.  This is the first movie on the list that both of us had seen before, which shouldn't be too surprising.  We were definitely looking forward to watching it again, since neither of us had seen it in quite some time.  Which means we had forgotten a number of things about the movie.  When I think of Pulp Fiction, I think of the Royale with Cheese conversation, and the robbery at the diner.  But it's been a long time and I had definitely forgotten many things.  So, here are the things we (mostly I) had forgotten about Pulp Fiction.

1. This is a really long movie.

We got the netflix envelope and opened it up.  "Great, it's Pulp Fiction... oh my God, did you realize that this is a two and a half hour movie?  Wow."

2. The $5 milkshake.

When Vincent Vega takes Mia Wallace to Jackrabbit Slim's (the restaurant where the waitstaff dress like Marilyn Monroe, etc. and they have the twist contest), Mia orders a milkshake.  More specifically, a $5 milkshake.  They then proceed to have this whole conversation about the milkshake and how Vincent Vega can't believe she ordered such an expensive milkshake.  Now, I'm assuming that my reaction is because twenty years have passed since this movie was made, but I just didn't think $5 sounded like it was that much for a milkshake.  For the record, I also had forgotten that Steve Buscemi played the waiter dressed as Buddy Holly.

3. Eric Stoltz is in this movie.

I had forgotten about a lot of people in this movie, like Amanda Plummer and Rosanna Arquette.  I definitely forgot about Eric Stoltz as Lance, the heroin dealer who explains how to stab Mia with the needle after she ODs. 

4. The watch up the ass.

How do you forget Christopher Walken talking about having a watch up his ass?  I didn't really forget about it, I just forgot that it was in this particular movie. 

5. The briefcase.

What is in the briefcase?  There are so many answers to this question and it spawned so many pseudo-philosophical questions when I was in high school and then in college.  A lot of people think it was Marcellus Wallace's soul, and there are lots of reasons for that.  Some people think it's the loot from Reservoir Dogs.  For the record, Quentin Tarantino has said that there is no actual official explanation, that it was written in so that people would come to their own conclusions.  However, I have to share that when we started watching the movie today, I asked Mike, what do you think is in the briefcase and he said "Keyser Soze's files from the Usual Suspects".  HA!

6. Marcellus Wallace is going to get "medieval on your ass".

I forgot about that line.  I did not forget about bringing out the gimp or the wonderful scene where Bruce Willis keeps picking up larger, more dangerous weapons.  But I forgot about how Marcellus is going to get medieval on Zed's ass.  And I remember how people would often spell it "midevil", as though he was going to do something in the middle range of evil things...

Overall, we enjoyed it a great deal.  We had a lot of difficulty figuring out where to put this on our list.  So we had to come up with a new method, whereby we each keep a separate list and then average it out.  So the combined list will still appear on the side, but I am going to put each individual list here in the post.  And here they are:

	Mike			Sara
1	Do the Right Thing		1	Pulp Fiction
2	Guess Who's Coming to Dinner		2	Do the Right Thing
3	Pulp Fiction		3	Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
4	Blade Runner		4	The Last Picture Show
5	The Last Picture Show		5	Blade Runner
6	Toy Story		6	Yankee Doodle Dandy
7	Ben-Hur		7	Toy Story
8	Yankee Doodle Dandy		8	Ben-Hur

AFI #95: The Last Picture Show (1971)

#95 on 2007 AFI 100 Greatest Movies of All Time

So, first I will say, we took a bit of a break there in between movies.  Which is inevitable this time of year with all the fall TV starting and catching up on our TV on DVD.  Plus this is an election year, and I am an active member of my political party, which means even less time for movie watching.  So, we finally got through our backlog of TV shows and the election is almost here, so I only have  a few days of campaign volunteering left, which means it's time to get back to our list.  But let's not pretend that we are going to get through these movies quickly.  I'll be happy if we can get through all 100+ movies by the end of 2017.  By which point, there will probably be a new list to add in, and we will have to add some movies to the list.  This is not a short term project...

But, enough babble, let's talk about the movie at hand.  When we saw this movie on the list, neither of us had any idea what it was, since it was made before we were both born.  If I had to guess, I would maybe have said it was probably about Hollywood or the entertainment industry.  I also had never heard of the book it is based on, by Larry McMurtry.  Which shouldn't surprise anyone since, even though I'm pretty well read, I don't like westerns and my primary experience with Larry McMurtry is Lonesome Dove. This particular story is not a western, though.  It is instead a story about a small Texas town during the 1950s.  It was shot entirely in black and white, apparently on the advice of Orson Welles (fascinating, right!).  And it involves a surprising amount of full frontal nudity.  But there's a reason for that.  The movie industry had recently decided to abandon the Hayes Code and move to a ratings system (which we still have).  Which meant that there was a lot of nudity going on in the movies around that time.

This is also the movie that launched the careers of Cybill Shepherd and Randy Quaid.  It also resulted in acting Oscars for Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman and a bunch of other Oscar nominations.  So, cleary, the film industry loved this movie.  Did we love this movie?  Not really.  We didn't hate it either.  But I just wonder if it has really stood the test of time.  I didn't really identify with any of the characters and I thought that the plot was sort of boring.  But the movie was watchable and the acting was good.  So, other than the nudity and the Wow! look how young Jeff Bridges is! moments, it was just kind of okay.  So, we decided to place this at the current #4 on our list, which currently looks like this:

1. Do The Right Thing (1989)
2. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
3. Blade Runner (1982)
4. The Last Picture Show (1971)
5. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
6. Toy Story (1995)
7. Ben-Hur (1959)