Pulp Fiction: almost twenty years old and still inspiring, delighting and intriguing a new generation of movie watchers and film fanatics. I should know as I only saw Pulp Fiction in the summer of last year, during a self-prescribed 'summer of film'. Fortunately, the film confirmed what I thought I knew after seeing Kill Bill and Death Proof: Quentin Tarantino is a genius. With new movie Django Unchained coming out very soon, the universally positive early reviews seem to indicate a return to the mixture of humour, blood, action and strong characters that have become part of Tarantino's love letters to pop culture and film genres and as recognisable as the Bride's yellow jumpsuit, Michael Madsen's dark dance to "Stuck In The Middle With You" and
that Quarter Pounder conversation. However, rather than being a big gushing love letter to one of cinema's most prolific and inventive writers, producers and directors, this article is a critique of suggestions that could have elevated Pulp Fiction even further into something stronger, even more fun and enjoyable and perhaps a deeper, more existential and a more contemplative film about society and life itself.
5. Actually Show 'Fox Force Five'
This is definitely a fanservice and one dear to my heart, but when Uma Thurman's Mia Wallace, a one-time-actress-turned-trophy-wife describes her failed pilot, Fox Force Five, we should have seen more. FFF was about a team of five heroic and utterly badass women all with special talents and expertise in different skills (knives, demolitions, espionage, sex...) and I instantly wanted to see even just a few minutes of this pilot, which still, after almost twenty years, sounds better than about 70% of TV. Not only do a lot of the descriptions of the women sound uncannily like precursors to the women warriors Tarantino would envision and create for Kill Bill, but it also sounds like a great, Charlie's Angels-esque blast of fun that would have made for one hell of a DVD extra.