Appropriately named, excellently crafted.

Rating: 10/10 (19 February 1999)

This movie is excellent. Why? Most importantly it is original. It can be said, quite accurately, that many elements of this film have been stolen from other films. No one can ever accuse Quentin Tarantino of not doing his homework ("Repo Man", or "La Femme Nikita" as obvious examples). He even rips off much of his own material from "Reservoir Dogs". But the manner in which these elements are chosen and assembled is both inspired and original.
Many people have stated that "Pulp Fiction" has been proven great by the amount of imitation that it spawned. Frankly, I don't think imitation proves anything, AND I don't think "Pulp Fiction" was imitated significantly more than many other highly successful films. However, to my mind, "Pulp Fiction" is great because it manages to recycle a multitude of pop culture icons that were seemingly over-used to death and somehow put them all together into something fresh and interesting.
"Pulp Fiction" also has a few truly original moments. Christopher Walken's wonderfully dry delivery of the "Your father kept this watch in his ass for years" story is hilarious.
There is only one serious flaw in this film: Quentin Tarantino is a very poor actor. Thank god he confined himself to a small role. If he really feels the need to be onscreen, he should just go ahead and pull a Hitchcockian cameo in his films. Sure it's derivative, but at least his screen presence will be minimized.