Quentin Tarantino has a pair of classics out on Blu-ray and I wanted to take some time to talk about each of them.
First is his Magnum Opus, Pulp Fiction. When this film hit the scene in 1994, people were in awe of it. It was a completely different style of film from those being made at the time (consider that the Best Picture winner that year was Forrest Gump, a very traditionally told story.) In my neck of the woods, it seemed as much maligned as praised. I was 14 when it came out and my parents thought it was, quote, “The most retarded movie they’d ever seen,” and forbade me from seeing it. Though see it I did and it blew my young mind.
It is a cool, stylish look at all the terrible behaviour I thought was probably cool and badass in my little 14 year old mind and there was a point where I thought that maybe the film didn’t hold up as well because of it.
Rewatching it for the Blu-ray release, I’m happy to report that it’s much less dated than I’d previously thought. The film stands up rather well and looks gorgeous in this new HD transfer. The sound pops and all of Tarantino’s signature flourishes are vibrantly rendered.
Watching the film this time around transported me back to the mindset of that 14-year old boy who first saw it and blew my mind all over again. Perhaps the sign of a great film, that it’s able to mature and age with your understanding of it as you get older.
The special features are another great perk to this set. The DVD I had of Pulp Fiction was sparse on special features, so this is a welcome improvement. It seems as though it has most of the material from the much-coveted laserdisc edition that Criterion put out (yes, I collect laserdiscs, it’s at least much-coveted by me) and a whole host of new interviews to boot.
The fact that it’s only $12.99 on Amazon right now makes it a MUST buy.
The next film out recently is, I think, Quentin Tarantino’s most underrated film: Jackie Brown. I saw this film the day it came out, excited to see a masterpiece on par with Pulp Fiction. I was 17 now, and I thought my opinion of films had matured. When I walked into this movie and saw what I thought was a run of the mill heist caper, I was a little disappointed. After watching the new blu-ray version, I’m incredibly by how well this film has aged.
The filmmaking is much more straightforward than Pulp Fiction, the cinematography is much brighter, and the humour is amped up to 11. The thing I was most impressed with was the one thing Pulp Fiction didn’t have: Max Cherry (played incredibly by Robert Forster.) Max Cherry is the king of cool characters and watching him in this film is more fun than I can convey to you with words.
The other highlight of this film is Michael Keaton. As ATF Agent Ray Nicollete, Keaton is almost as fun to watch in this film as he is in Tim Burton’s Batman films. There’s something about the entire cast of characters in this movie that is just so electrifying and compelling. This might also be one of the best adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s work.
I know some people were down on this movie, but I would advise you to give it another shot. Now that you don’t have the expectations of “The Follow-up to Pulp Fiction” weighing it down, come at it on its own terms and I think you’ll find that you’ll like it a lot better this time around.
With more than three hours of bonus features, the new Blu-ray has far too many features to wade through in one sitting, but I haven’t found one of them yet I didn’t enjoy watching. There’s retrospectives, behind the scenes, deleted scenes, and even a review by Siskel and Ebert.
At $10.49 on Amazon, is it worth it not to revisit this one?