It’s safe to say that Quentin Tarantino is a pretty great, well-respected filmmaker — but which movie is his absolute best according to its Rotten Tomatoes score? That would be his 1994 masterpiece “Pulp Fiction,” which earned a rating of 92% on the review aggregator.
This isn’t totally surprising; “Pulp Fiction” might be Tarantino’s best-known film, and it won him his first Academy Award (for best original screenplay, though it lost that year’s best picture race to “Forrest Gump”). A non-linear jumble of interconnecting stories mostly anchored by hired assassins Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), “Pulp Fiction” is at once breathtakingly brilliant and disgustingly crude and gory, showing off Tarantino’s unique ability to marry bloodshed and impeccable dialogue to create movies that are completely and totally unique. It’s followed closely on Tarantino’s Rotten Tomatoes charts by 1992’s “Reservoir Dogs,” Tarantino’s first-ever feature film — which earned 90% — and the second movie to win him a screenplay Oscar, the deliciously satisfying revisionist history “Inglourious Basterds,” rounds out the third-place spot with 89%.
Clearly, critics like “Pulp Fiction” quite a lot; a film released 30 years ago boasting a 92% review is pretty solid, especially when you consider that critics are now re-evaluating the film’s success to celebrate that particular milestone. So what do they have to say about it?
What did critics have to say about Pulp Fiction?
Throughout 2024, critical takes on “Pulp Fiction” have been shared years after the fact to celebrate the movie’s 30th birthday (with some new reviews thrown into the mix), and the results are pretty unanimous: they love it. As Peter Travers put it for Rolling Stone, “There’s a special kick that comes from watching something this thrillingly alive.” Gene Siskel at the Chicago Tribune agreed, even though he seemed less thrilled with the film’s more unsavory elements: “In between the violence, which does get hard R-rated extreme, the real pleasure of ‘Pulp Fiction’ is listening to these folks talk. If you smile at David Mamet’s dialogue, you’ll laugh out loud at the words of Quentin Tarantino.” Over at The New York Times, Janet Maslin was unreserved with her praise, calling the film “a triumphant, cleverly disorienting journey through a demimonde that springs entirely from Mr. Tarantino’s ripe imagination, a landscape of danger, shock, hilarity, and vibrant local color.”
“There are plenty of brilliantly funny moments, and it is to Tarantino’s credit that he has managed to work modern, junk, and retro culture into his script with such ease,” Amanda Lipman wrote in yet another positive review for Sight & Sound. Desson Thompson at the Washington Post describes “Pulp Fiction” as “brilliant and brutal, funny and exhilarating, jaw-droppingly cruel and disarmingly sweet,” and the late, great Roger Ebert summed it up better than basically anyone else, writing, “Quentin Tarantino is the Jerry Lee Lewis of cinema, a pounding performer who doesn’t care if he tears up the piano, as long as everybody is rocking.”
Quentin Tarantino has been making movies for decades — is he ready to retire?
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