Sunday 24 January - RESERVOIR DOGS (1992)
I'm not sure what to make of Quentin Tarantino films. They have cult fame and for a long time I've told myself that they are excellent movies and that I'll love them all. I think the first of his I watched was Kill Bill, which was entertaining, and then last year Inglorious Basterds, which I also liked. A little over a month ago I saw Pulp Fiction, perhaps the highest-praised Tarantino film. However, partly due to that hype and partly due to my cynical wariness of the hype, I was disappointed by the film, perplexed by its bizarre narrative style. This altered my expectations of Reservoir Dogs, but luckily I enjoyed it a lot more than Pulp Fiction.
Like Tarantino's later films, Reservoir Dogs is an unorthodox movie, with the story jumping around within the narrative timeline between characters. My problem with Pulp Fiction was that it pretentiously emphasised its dialogue, which I found to be delivered with an unnatural smoothness. Its plot was fairly compelling, but like I said, it unfolded in a peculiar fashion which didn't sit well with me. A lot of people will argue that's the quality that charactierises Tarantino's work, and I understand it's a deliberately sideways take on cinema, but Pulp Fiction didn't appeal to me. Anyway, enough on that--Reservoir Dogs I enjoyed a lot, being much more straight-forward and resembling the more traditional crime thrillers. The bottom line is that it was a strange movie that I enjoyed more than I had hoped, without embracing it to the extent of cult fans. 7/10
