Member-only story
Pulp Fiction is My Kind of Violent Film
Finally, an AFI Top 100 movie I could relax and enjoy in spite of the body count.
Pulp Fiction was the AFI Top 100 film I needed to see this week. I have not loved most of them so far. Do The Right Thing came the closest, but there was a constant feeling of dread that something bad and far too real was going to happen. Yankee Doodle Dandy and The Last Picture Show made me question whether I like “good” movies at all. Call me whatever the opposite of a movie snob is, but I prefer to be entertained and not just impressed by technical achievement or cultural significance. Pulp Fiction finally filled that need for me.
It has been a long time since I first saw it when I was just out of high school, and I appreciated it so much more this time around. Back then, my favorite movie was Beauty and the Beast. Yes, high school me found Stockholm-syndrome-set-to-music to be romantic (yikes) and super fun to sing along to. To say I didn’t challenge myself with my film choices would be both an understatement and completely futile — I had zero interest in expanding my cinematic horizons at the time. When I did finally get dragged to see Pulp Fiction (by a boyfriend, of course), I remember hating the violence and finding the Mia + cocaine storyline stressful and annoying.
