Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)

This is my worksheet from Video Review # 20, for those that prefer reading for some reason.

There really was no reason for today’s movie to come around.  No one requested it and I didn’t particularly want to see it.  But RedBox forced me to see it with my eyes when they put it up on the screen while I was perusing their selection, and then my finger forced me to click it because that mother fucker is haunted.  Then my car forced me to see it because it drove me home.  I think the biggest blame should be place on my DVD player, who decided to play it after I put it in.  It had the option to not play it.  I’ve seen it do it before.  But they did make a sequel to this movie that I also have no interest in, but I’m well aware of the fact that I’ll RedBox that one as well when it comes out.  So let’s talk about Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, based on a novel by Rick Riordan, written by Craig Titley, directed by Chris Columbus, and starring Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Jake Abel, Sean Bean, Kevin McKidd, Catherine Keener, Steve Coogan, Pierce Brosnan, Joe Pantoliano, Uma Thurman, and Rosario Dawson.

On top of the Empire State Building, Zeus (Sean Bean) and Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) meet to discuss the theft of Zeus’ lightning bolt.  After checking in the cushions of the couch, Zeus decides that Poseidon’s demigod son, Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), must’ve stolen the lightning bolt, and unless Percy returns the lightning bolt before the summer solstice, a war between the gods will erupt.  Problematically, Percy has no idea that he’s related to Poseidon.  At least not until he is talked by a Fury disguised as his substitute teacher and rescued by his teacher, Mr. Brunner (Pierce Brosnan) – who reveals himself to be a centaur – and his best friend Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) – who reveals himself to be a satyr, and Percy’s protector.  Percy’s mom, Sally (Catherine Keener), tells Percy about how Poseidon knocked her bottom out and left her with Percy, since the gods aren’t allowed to interact with their demigod children, and then promptly gets killed by a Minotaur while dropping Percy off at Demigod Camp.  Percy must team up with Grover and the daughter of Athena, Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), to find out who actually stole the lightning bolt, and then he must decide if he wants to return the lightning bolt to Zeus, or give it to Hades (Steve Coogan) to save his mother.

When the movie you’re watching is preceded by a commercial for Space Chimps 2, you can kind of get an idea of what you’re in for.  This wasn’t a horrible movie, but it struck me as really dumb.  Maybe it was poorly conceived, maybe it was poorly written, or maybe I just know too much about Greek mythology to let some things stand.  This movie has the line, “Omnipotence has blind you,” right in the opening scene.  I know omnipotence doesn’t technically mean all-seeing, but my first thought was that he was saying, “Seeing everything has made you not see things.”  They also have a scene where Percy’s mom starts telling his backstory when they get into a car, and then cut to the end of the story as they pull into their destination.  Might we have been able to hear some of that information?  It probably would’ve been super boring, but it might have had some pertinent information.  And when they get started on their adventure, it’s all about finding three jewels to go into the underworld.  What a bloody waste of time.  My recommendation for how to get to the underworld?  Suicide pact!  There’s also a whole useless section of this movie where they get trapped in a casino because they’re made to think they love it there with some hallucinogens (a lotus flower) and underage gambling.  Drug use and gambling.  Fun for kids of all ages!  The biggest problem with this movie was the whole reason for the movie: the theft of the lightning.  None of the big gods seemed to even entertain the idea that anybody but Percy could have stolen the lightning!  You could’ve looked in on him and found out that he has no clue that gods are real and yet you think he was the only possible person that could have stolen electrostatic discharge somehow?

One thing I took a lot of issues with in this movie was the fact that Percy knew so many uncommon things about Greek mythology, but was completely unaware of the things everyone knows.  I would wager that most people don’t know what a demigod is like Percy knows (before he knows that he is one, mind you), but who doesn’t know what a centaur is?  And when they’re neck deep in Greek mythology and they walk into a place filled with stone statues of people, how do they not put together that Medusa is comin’ around?  They even know the tactic that Perseus used to defeat the Medusa, but they did not bother to explain how Medusa survived it the first time.  I’m not sure, but I think this movie came out after TWO version of Clash of the Titans, so they could’ve thrown us that.  And then Percy doesn’t know how Hydras work, being totally happy with himself for cutting off all of its heads before someone tells him that this makes two grow back in their places.  Isn’t that fairly common knowledge, especially for someone who knows a thing or two about Greek mythology?  Of course, no one in this movie really seems to have great knowledge on the subject.  His teacher announces that it’s exceedingly rare for someone to be born of one of the big three gods (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades).  Are you kidding me?  Zeus got his dick wet more than anyone in written history (Ironically since you’d think Poseidon was the one with the wet dick).  Zeus was the Wilt Chamberlain of Greek mythology!

I suppose the cast did fine enough in their performances.  Logan Lerman did fine, but Percy got on my nerves.  They give him a pen that turns into a sword early on in the movie, and he didn’t even go for the joke that he should just use it in pen form, since it’s mightier that way and all.  And he didn’t even try to write the Minotaur a citation or something.  Also, he finds out in the middle of the movie that he can absorb water to heal wounds and power himself up and he doesn’t spend the rest of the movie chugging Dasani like he was breathing?  And since he’s the son of the god of the sea, I’ll allow this movie that he can heal himself with water, but how is he able to pour water on other people to heal them?  They’re not the spawns of the sea!  She’s the daughter of Athena, goddess of wisdom.  You should heal her by hitting her in the face with a dictionary or something.  Also, he got over the death of his mom pretty quickly, didn’t he?  Grover just apologizes for sucking at his job and Percy moves on.  Kevin McKidd wasn’t in the movie very long, but I still managed to have problems with Poseidon as a character.  If they wanted us to like this character, they probably should’ve thought of a decent reason why he left his family beyond just he was losing his powers.  Would that have been so big of a sacrifice to spend the rest of your life with your family?  How about something like if you weren’t there to watch the oceans, shit started going crazy.  The Exxon Valdez, the Titanic, etc.  Also, they probably should’ve chosen someone other than Rosario Dawson to play Persephone.  If Hell is an eternity spent with Rosario Dawson, I’m about to go on a murder-suicide spree.  I’d probably get the suicide out of the way first, just because it seems easier, but then some people are getting all killed up.  Uma Thurman was WAY over the top in this movie, but thankfully she wasn’t acting in it very long before she became a prop.  Also, I thought it was just adorable that they made Joe Pantoliano’s character’s last name Ugliano.  Just in case our writing doesn’t express that you’re not supposed to like him, let’s toss Ugly into his name.  Then everyone will hate old Aidsrape Hitler Ugliano.

Find the video review here.

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Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004)

It’s the Wood That Should Fear Your Hand, Not the Other Way Around

The inevitable followup to watching and reviewing Kill Bill is Kill Bill: Volume 2.  When Fabio suggested Volume 1, it was simply implied that Volume 2 was part of the deal.  And after watching the first movie, why wouldn’t you want to finish it up?  But there’s a problem here: there’s a pretty drastic style change between Volume 1 and Volume 2.  The people that really liked the first movie may not necessarily appreciate the changes that were made.  Of course, the other possibility is that it’s equally good in it’s own right.  Let’s see what happened in my review of Kill Bill: Volume 2, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Gordon Liu, Chris Nelson, Perla Haney-Jardine, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Parks, Bo Svenson, Samuel L. Jackson, Larry Bishop, Sid Haig, and Helen Kim.

We start off back at the wedding rehearsal between The Bride (Uma Thurman) and her groom-to-be (Chris Nelson).  The Bride’s former leader – and former lover – Bill (David Carradine) shows up and asks if he can sit on The Bride’s side of the church.  The Bride is pretty trepidatious, but welcomes him to the ceremony.  Unfortunately for her, Bill’s brought along the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad – O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), Budd (Michael Madsen), and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) – who promptly kill up the place.  Four years later, after awaking from a coma, The Bride sets off to get her revenge.  She already killed O-Ren Ishii and Vernita Green in the first movie, so now she sets her sights on Budd.  But Budd is waiting for her, and shoots her in the chest with a shotgun blast full of rock salt, and then proceeds to bury her alive.  A little trick she learned from her master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu) helps her escape and allows her to go after Budd again, but Elle Driver beat her to the punch.  Now The Bride can kill two snakes with one sword.

I found myself fairly bored by Volume 2, but I’m also well aware of the reason.  I know that Tarantino’s movies tend to be really talkie, but after the excitement and swordplay of the first one, I went into the second one expecting something different.  This is not to say that Volume 2 is a bad movie, but it’s certainly a different movie, and I didn’t really want it to be.  The first movie was a sword fighting martial arts movie, and the second one was a slower paced spaghetti western.  In the first movie, The Bride kills somewhere in the vicinity of 90 people.  In part two, she kills two people.  It would’ve been three but she, like the movie, was moving too slow to get it done before Elle did.  It’s a bit of a harsh shock, but once you settle in to the movie, you get to liking it a little more.  The story is still a pretty typical revenge movie, but without the over the top sword fighting, I had to find something else to be interested in.  The dialogue was mostly Tarantino quality, so I paid attention to that instead.  I didn’t really dig on the fightin’ words between Elle and The Bride right before they fought.  Tarantino’s trend of having people sitting around and talking too much works at a table in a diner, but not so much right before two people kill each other.  And when that fight was over in three seconds after they finally stopped talking, that was a bit of a bummer.  The aftermath of the fight was pretty hilarious though.  I liked the monologue Bill delivers about Superman because it’s clever and it’s something that I’ve never though of before, but it also had very little to do with the situation.  It reminded me of the conversation about “Like a Virgin” from Reservoir Dogs.  I also liked the conversation between The Bride and the assassin, when The Bride has just found out she was pregnant.  Even though I still liked the movie, I felt it moved a little slow from the expectations I had going in.  I liked the Pai Mei flashback scenes, but the rest of it was too talkie and not enough action for my taste.

I had no real complaints about the performances in this movie.  Uma Thurman was still great, but the character of The Bride was not able to show her true badassness as well in this movie.  David Carradine was also really good.  I had mixed feelings about Michael Madsen’s character though.  I enjoyed the fact that Budd seemed to be the only one in the group that realized they deserved what The Bride was going to bring to them.  Doesn’t mean he intended to just let it happen though.  Problem with that part of it is that, when the time came, he decided to protect himself like a Bond villain.  The movie would’ve been over in the first 10 minutes if he had buckshot in his shotgun instead of rock salt.  And then he had to put the hero of the movie in a dangerous and difficult, but ultimately escapable situation.  If he had performed the coup-de-grace with a rock as he had suggested … well … he’d still be dead because The Bride didn’t kill him, but The Bride would’ve been dead.  Also, kudos to Madsen for burying The Bride in my hometown of Barstow.  I’ve always thought that place was only good for burying people alive in.

Ultimately, Kill Bill: Volume 2 is a really good movie that’s hindered by the expectations it’s predecessor set for me.  The first movie was exciting and spectacular, and the second movie was more low key and talkie.  Still good, but The Bride needed to get her sword wet a little to satisfy me.  I still recommend the movie though, especially since you need it to see the conclusion to the movie I recommended you buy yesterday.  I have this movie on Blu-Ray as well.  Kill Bill: Volume 2 gets “You’re a natural born killer” out of “Bitch, you don’t have a future.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003)

Leave the Limbs You’ve Lost.  They Belong to Me Now.

Fabio came through in a big way after work today.  I was trying to figure out what I should watch next, and he was more than happy to give me a recommendation.  And what’s more exciting about it is that he actually requested a movie that I like.  Technically two.  Today, we’re going into the first movie in the series.  I’ve liked the greater majority of the movies put out by this writer/director, and today’s movie is probably my favorite of his movies.  It takes a great writer/director and allows him to play in a world that both he and I are very passionate about, and today’s movie is the spawn of that passion.  At least of his passion.  Today’s review is the spawn of my passion.  With that, we get into my review of Kill Bill: Volume 1, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Lui, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, Sonny Chiba, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Michael Parks, Michael Bowen, Gordon Liu, and Michael Madsen.

A pregnant lady – we’ll call her “The Bride” (Uma Thurman) – winds up on the business end of a gun held by her former boss, Bill (David Carradine).  Something she’s done did not sit right by him, causing him and his posse – O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), and Budd (Michael Madsen) – to attempt to kill The Bride and everyone attending her wedding.  When the police arrives, Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) finds that The Bride survived her head wound.  Four years later, she wakes up from her coma and takes a Pussy Wagon off to get her revenge.  Her first objective is to travel to Okinawa to get a sword from legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba).  With that in hand, she sets her sights on on O-Ren Ishii and Vernita Green.

Mother fuck this is a good ass movie.  There’s a very strong chance that I liked this movie more than your typical movie goer because of my own passions.  If you’ve ever been inside my house, you’ll know that I love swords.  I have a decent collection of swords hanging around my house, and I always feel like I want more.  Every time I watch this movie, I feel like I need to go out and get myself a replica Hanzo.  The story of this movie is a pretty typical revenge movie, but told in a Tarantino fashion.  The Bride’s motivations in this movie are never in question.  That girl deserves her revenge.  You never once doubt that she deserves to kill the people in the way of her goal.  I could’ve done without Tarantino’s signature style of showing the movie out of order, but it also didn’t hinder the movie at all.  There was just no point to it.  Did The Bride kill O-Ren first, or was it Vernita?  And more to the point: who cares?  At that point, why bother?  I also didn’t understand the idea of bleeping out The Bride’s name.  Does it spoil anything in the movie to know that her name is Beatrice Kiddo?  Hells to the no.  So why are you doing it?  Again, it takes nothing away from the movie, but it also adds nothing but the question in my mind.  I also don’t understand The Bride’s notebook.  Does she really have trouble remembering the names of the five people that killed her friends and family, caused the death of her unborn child, and attempted to kill her?  Or is it that she has trouble remember who she’s killed already?  Either way, if it’s something my memory is capable of, your memory should be as well.  On the other hand, she DID get shot in the head in the beginning of this movie, so maybe I should let it go.  This movie is also done in a grindhouse style, and if you read my previous review of Hobo With a Shotgun, you’ll probably assume that I hate this movie because of that.  Not the case.  This is grindhouse done right.  It doesn’t look like shit; it’s just stylized.  It looks great.  They just went a little over the top on the violence so that it wasn’t really realistic.  I don’t mind that.  I also appreciated the one long shot of The Bride walking to the bathroom in the club before the fight with the Crazy 88’s.  I appreciate those kinds of shots because of the potential difficulty in getting an entire scene shot correctly in one go.  The music is also great, as Tarantino is prone to do.  It’s the music you wouldn’t necessarily expect in such a scene, and certainly not music I would’ve ever liked on it’s own, but it helps the movie greatly.  It’s all really memorable too, like Elle Driver’s powerful whistling or “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” by Tomoyasu Hotei.  After seeing the movie, you could probably do a pretty good rendition of either of these two songs at any point in the future.

As much as I liked everything else about this movie, the fights are really what sold me on it.  And they really don’t waste too much time before they get into a good fight.  We barely get into the movie before The Bride and Vernita have having a knock down, drag out fight.  It’s not a particularly pretty or impressive fight, it’s just two chicks throwing down with a couple of knives and a butt-load of glass.  The next fight is an animated one, vaguely reminiscent of the old Akira cartoon.  It’s very violent and pretty awesome.  But the real treat of the movie is the 15 minute sword fight between The Bride and 88 soldiers in O-Ren Ishii’s army.  This is a masterpiece of a massacre, a symphony of slaying, a bolero of blood.  It’s stylized and gory, and never gets boring, even though it goes on for 15 minutes.  The fight with O-Ren afterwards pales in comparison, but only because the previous fight was so freaking good.  If you weren’t sold on The Bride as a badass before this scene, you should be afterwards.  There is one part in the movie (which I won’t say, but you’ll know it once you’ve watched the movie) where a character gets the top of his or her head cut off, and it was really fakey.  I don’t know if it was intentionally bad because it would fit the grindhouse style, but I feel like they should’ve, and could’ve, done it better.

I liked every performance I can currently think of in this movie.  Uma Thurman was a boss.  The greater majority of this movie she was a relentless, stone-cold killer.  She also had to drop some emotional performances, like when she realized she had lost her baby.  She had a couple of parts where she was just real and normal, like the part with Sonny Chiba and about three lines of her conversation with Vernita.  Speaking of Vernita, Vivica A. Fox didn’t really work for me in this movie.  I think it was mainly the way she talked shit to The Bride when they were fighting because it sounded less like something a professional killer would be saying and more like something two drunk girls would be yelling at each other while pulling each other’s hair outside of a club.  O-Ren Ishii was a good character though, and Lucy Liu did it well.  She was pretty friendly in parts, then completely sadistic, and in her battle with The Bride I actually started liking her because of how respectful she was being in battle.  I was also a fan of Sonny Chiba.  I know that Tarantino was a big fan of him because of his older movies, but I’d never seen any of those.  I gained my appreciation because of this movie alone.  He seemed like such a nice and friendly (except to his lazy assistant) sushi chef, and then became the legendary swordsmith, filled with regret for the lives that his weapons had taken.  I also really liked Chiaki Kuriyama as Go Go Yubari.  I believed that there was a very good chance that she was crazy.  She was also hot, so I liked that.  And she was good in the fight, so that was nice as well.

Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a fantastic movie.  Putting someone like Tarantino into a genre that he and I are both really passionate about works out to make an amazingly entertaining movie.  The story isn’t entirely impressive, but the way it’s told is.  Amazing action, fantastic style, and some really good performances sells this thing.  I thoroughly recommend this movie, for both watching and purchasing.  I own this thing on Blu-Ray.  I technically own it on Blu-Ray AND DVD right now.  It’s definitely visually appealing enough to go straight to Blu-Ray, and definitely a movie that’s great enough that you should own it.  We’ll find out tomorrow how I feel about Volume 2, but for now Kill Bill: Volume 1 gets “Wiggle your big toe” out of “Lucky for her, Boss Matsumoto was a pedophile.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

And You Will Know My Name is the Lord When I Lay My Vengeance Upon Thee.

I sometimes get worried when I start a review after watching a movie that caused me to take almost no notes whatsoever. This usually doesn’t happen when watching a crappy movie because I think of lots of jokes to take down during those; this mainly happens during good movies. What is there to say about a good movie? Well, let’s find out. This movie was suggested by my friend Chris, a young crippled boy who probably submitted his request through the Make A Wish Foundation. Or he posted it on my Facebook page. Either way, this movie is a classic movie, much beloved by many people I’ve spoken to about it. As with most movies with such a pedigree, it took me a while to see it for the first time, but once I had, I loved it and bought it on DVD. When it was requested, I busted out that bad boy and sat down to write what you are presently reading. This movie is Pulp Fiction, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and starring John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Ving Rhames, Bruce Willis, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Maria de Medeiros, Harvey Keitel, Peter Greene, Duane Whitaker, Alexis Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Kathy Griffin, Phil LaMarr, and Christopher Walken.

This here is a difficult movie to summarize, and even more without spoilers. So there will be spoilers, but I’m going to try to do this chronologically. Two hit men, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), go to an apartment to pick up a briefcase with mysterious, shiny contents. They kill the people in the apartment and leave with their informant, Marvin (Phil Lamarr). On the drive, Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin in the face. They go to Jules’ associate’s, Jimmy’s (Quentin Tarantino), house to clean up the situation, but his wife, Bonnie, is coming home and they need to get it done by the time she arrives. The Wolf, Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel), is called in by their boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). He takes care of the situation and Vincent and Jules go to breakfast. Here, they get involved in a hold-up at the restaurant by Ringo (Tim Roth) and Yolanda (Amanda Plummer). Because Jules is reluctant to give up Marsellus’ case, it devolves into a Mexican standoff between the four. Jules defuses the situation and Vincent and Jules take the case back to Marsellus. Here, they see Marsellus paying off boxer, Butch (Bruce Willis), to take a dive in his fight. After turning over the case, Marsellus asks Vincent to take his wife, Mia (Uma Thurman), out for dinner that night to occupy her. He does, they have a nice night of dinner and dancing, and he returns her home. While he’s in the bathroom, Mia finds a baggie of heroin in Vincent’s jacket and snorts it, mistaking it for cocaine. She immediately overdoses and Vincent must rush her over to the house of his drug dealer, Lance (Eric Stoltz), and his girl, Jody (Rosanna Arquette). They are able to revive her by administering an adrenaline shot directly into her heart. Later, Butch does not take the dive in his match. Instead, he kills his opponent in the ring. His intention is to take the money and his girlfriend, Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros), and run away. But Fabienne has forgotten his watch, given to him as a child – along with a disturbing story of a POW camp and anal storage of said watch – by Captain Koons (Christopher Walken), who was in the POW camp with Butch’s father. Butch returns to his apartment for the watch and kills Vincent, who was there looking for Butch. On the way back to Fabienne, Butch sees Marsellus in the street and hits him with his car. Marsellus chases Butch into a pawn shop owned by Maynard (Duane Whitaker), who stops Butch moments from killing Marsellus. Maynard knocks out Butch and Marsellus. They wake up to find themselves tied to chairs with ball gags in their mouth. Maynard called in his buddy, Zed (Peter Greene), and they decide to rape Marsellus. Butch escapes but decides to go back to save Marsellus with a katana. Marsellus tells Butch to never come back to LA, which he happily does with Fabienne.

That is basically the entire movie, condensed to a paragraph. You get a two and a half hour movie out of that by filling it with lots and lots of dialogue. Normally, this would make for an excruciating movie, but this is written by Quentin Tarantino. Much like the oft-mentioned Kevin Smith, Tarantino is an expert at taking scenes where nothing is happening beyond people talking, and that conversation has nothing to do with moving the story along, but make it super compelling so you don’t mind or get bored. The dialogue is definitely the most appealing part to this movie, but that is not to say that the story should not be lauded. Take out all the dialogue and you’d still have a good movie, but not a great one. It’s funny in a lot of parts, dark and violent all over the place, and always intriguing. Though it works in this movie, I’m generally not a fan of the movies being shown out of order. In this movie, it’s fine, but it also makes it a little hard to follow the order of things. But now I’ve written it down in chronological order, so all is well. As with most Tarantino movies, the music is fantastic as well. He loves to throw in those old songs, most of which probably wouldn’t be remembered now were it not for him. Take Miserlou, for example. I like the song, but there is no way I would know that song if it weren’t for this movie.

The acting is pretty much all the way perfect in this movie. John Travolta was a quiet badass who remained calm throughout the greater majority of the movie, even with Bruce Willis pointing a gun at him moments before his death. The only time he lost his shit was when Uma Thurman was dying in front of him, and that was more about getting killed by Marsellus than it was about her death. Samuel L. Jackson was really intimidating at most parts of this movie, more so when he was staring a gun down it’s barrel in the restaurant and when he was quoting the bible at people he was about to kill. “I’m sorry. Did I break your concentration?” Priceless. Uma Thurman was probably as hot as she’s ever been in this movie, and very real as well. I’m not usually one to dig on Uma for whatever reason, but something about that hair do worked for me. Ving Rhames was a great, powerful character in this movie that had that power taken away by a good ass-raping. And he reacts to that much as I assume I would: with a shotgun blast to the rapist’s penis and a threat against anyone who may mention it ever again. I could go through everyone in this movie, but I’ll have the same thing to say about every character from the biggest to the most minor: very real, very good. I think the person that impressed me the most was right in the opening scene of the movie: Amanda Plummer. She comes off first as a sweet lady out to eat with her boyfriend, talking innocently about robbery possibilities. When it’s time to bust out the guns and rob the joint, she is frightening as hell. And later, when Roth has a gun pointed at him, her tough persona cracks drastically as she is terrified she’s about to lose her man to this endeavor.

No surprises here, people. If you’re looking to be shocked by my reviews, keep walking. But I can’t hate on every movie, people. I like stuff too! WHY DON’T YOU GET OFF MY BACK!?! …Sorry. Anyways, great story, fantastic dialogue, and amazing performances land this movie firmly in position for you to own it. Everyone either does or should. So go get it or watch it. Pulp Fiction gets “I want that trophy, so dance good” out of “I don’t need you to tell me how fucking good my coffee is.”

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