Some Films I Saw

Iris

I hadn't made any effort to watch this film, because biopics are often fawning over people and I'm not a great Iris Murdoch fan. But the film isn't actually about what she achieved, it's about her relationship with her husband, specifically the beginning (which has far too much of Kate Winslet taking her clothes off) and the end, where she suffers badly from Alzheimers. Almost all of the film could have been about any one of a large number of people. And that caught me by surprise. Apart from the clothes thing, well done and well acted.

Pulp Fiction

I thought I had to see this. IMDB has it ranked as the 5th best film of all time (behind The Godfather I & II, The Good the Bad and the Ugly and The Shawshank Redemption). And I really can't see why.

It's a really really well made gangster film. Great acting, all that sort of thing. The storyline, in as much as there is one, is just Tarantino having fun with the genre. So Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta are bantering away and just treat killing as something incidental. Two more crooks have a discussion about why no-one ever robs a diner, and decide to rob the one they're sitting in. Bruce Willis is a boxer who seems very relaxed about killing people and really is in it for the money, regardless of risk and who seems to be avoiding being a soldier.

There isn't really any point. The fact the main sections of the story are shown out of order doesn't seem to serve any purpose. A lot of it just seems to be "slightly fun variations on the theme of gangsters", except with all the bad language and violence and splattered brains kept in. Oh, and despite all that, and a gay rape scene, and drug use and overdosing (again for no real purpose in terms of the storyline), there's no nudity.

If the really nasty aspects of this film don't worry you at all, you've got something wrong with you, but you'll really enjoy the film.