40/50: Pulp Fiction

I don't know what took so long for me to finally watch this. Despite thinking I knew most about the film itself, I was still blown away.

Pulp Fiction is basically the telling of a series of events, not exactly told in chronological order.

It was a lot less bloody than I was expecting, but that was ok because it didn't take anything away from the actual film.

As good as the story was, the best part about the film was the dialogue. I absolutely loved the dialogue in The Social Network because it was so smart and it seemed like each and every word was so important. I got that same feeling when watching Pulp Fiction. Most of the film really has no important dialogue, but the way it is spoken in the film - even about a stupid quarter pounder with cheese - it seems important.

Anyway, the film mostly revolves around a man that we do not actually see for most of the film. Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) is a crime lord, who employs two hit men, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson). Wallace also makes a deal with a boxer, Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), to take a fall in a match and make Wallace a ton of money.

Those are the two main stories of the film. Two other smaller stories involve Vega and Wallace's wife, Mia (Uma Thurman) - you know that iconic dancing scene, right? The final story is both the beginning and the ending of the film, featuring a couple of wanna-be criminals, Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer).

The absolute best part of the film are the scenes involving Travolta and Jackson. The dialogue between the two of them is amazing and I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Just perfection in words.

This was my second Quentin Tarantino film (Jackie Brown being the other), and this was much better. I hope the other Tarantino films are as good as this one - I am very intrigued now and can't wait to see them.

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The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

Let me first start off by saying that this film should have been WAY better than it turned out being.

For starters, they roped in a ton of great comedic actors and oddball types from television and film. And, for the most part, most of the ideas in the film are pretty good - they just didn't seem to follow through with the funny, which was disappointing.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard is about a group of sniper salesman (my term) who are hired to come into an auto dealership and basically sell the place out. This is what they specialize in. The leader of the group is Entourage's Jeremy Piven, who plays Don Ready. In Ready's entourage are Jibby Newsome (Ving Rhames), Brent Gage (David Koechner) and Babs Merrick (Kathryn Hahn).

Ready is brought in by Ben Selleck (James Brolin), owner of the auto dealership over the Fourth of July weekend to sell each and every car on his lot. If Selleck is unable to sell these cars a rival salesman, Stu Harding (Alan Thicke) and his son, Paxton (Ed Helms) will take over the dealership. Another tossout, Helms' character just happens to be engaged to Selleck's daughter, Ivy (Jordana Spiro).

Like I said, a pretty bankable cast already with the funny and I haven't even mentioned that Tony Hale and Ken Jeong are part of Selleck's sales team. Or that Craig Robinson is brought in as the events disc jockey.

The premise seems great and a lot of the small things going on in the film can be funny, like Helms aspiration to become a hit boyband group, but while in his 30s. Or that Babs is really trying to score with Ivy's brother, Peter (Rob Riggle) despite the fact that he is a 10-year old with a pituitary issue.

Overall, I laughed a few times, but I have to admit I was hoping for more with the cast that was assembled. Sure, there were no A-list quality comedians in the bunch, but with the amount of second banana characters in the group it still could have been much more than it was.

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