Reviewing the Best Movies Ever Made: Pulp Fiction, Gone with the Wind, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Three very different movies from three different eras of cinema are featured in this seventh part of Reviewing the Best Movies Ever Made. Will any of these films score a 9/10 or better, a feat seven of the 18 movies reviewed thus far have accomplished, or are they more overrated films that don’t hold up quite as well by today’s standards?

Pulp Fiction (1994)

IMDb No. 8

Miramax Films, 153 minutes

The word “pulp” in Pulp Fiction refers to pulp magazines. The movie handily gives us two definitions for the word, but the one as it pertains to the film is: A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper. In fact, pulp magazines were also known for gritty and violent crime stories with witty, hard-hitting dialogue. If that’s the sort of thing that interests you, then Pulp Fiction will deliver in spades.

With Pulp Fiction, writer-director Quentin Tarantino offers viewers intertwining crime tales featuring a colorful cast of characters. There aren’t many filmmakers who have achieved such a unique a style as Tarantino. This movie probably best showcases what it means to be a Tarantino film – there is violence with black humor and punchy, unique dialogue, with characters sometimes speaking in monologues unseen in most modern movies.

I actually feel very mixed about this movie’s script. On one hand, Pulp Fiction is masterfully written. The dialogue is unique and different from anything else. On the other hand, Tarantino is trying so hard to be transgressive, to push every boundary he can think of, that it sometimes doesn’t work. It feels like if you took a 13 or 14-year-old boy and gave him the power to write a phenomenal script, and so he wrote a great script that he thinks is really cool and edgy. (No offense to young teen boys.) It comes off, to me, as sort of immature in a way. It’s a script trying so hard to be as masculine as possible.

Tarantino also chooses for all characters to use every racial slur that he can think of. I have no problem with characters speaking a certain way if it fits his or her role, but in Pulp Fiction every character speaks this way. It seems like Tarantino just thinks this is the way “cool” people speak, but it’s so over the top that it actually becomes distracting.

While I have mixed feelings on the script (fantastic, yet immature), the acting in Pulp Fiction is pretty great throughout. John Travolta, as Vincent Vega, and Uma Thurman, as Mia Wallace, deliver two of my personal favorite performances. This is still an expertly crafted movie overall.

I think that if you enjoyed Pulp Fiction when it first came out, you’ll still enjoy it now – it holds up concerning the quality of the film. I think, as a society at large though, people might take more issues with the movie. Yes, I get that Tarantino is trying to be over-the-top, but that doesn’t mean it works. I’m not sure a movie like Pulp Fiction would get made today if it was written by someone largely unknown. It definitely wouldn’t be produced by the man who was at the helm of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, since he’s in prison.

I always enjoyed Inglorious Basterds as my favorite Tarantino film, and that’s definitely still true after rewatching Pulp Fiction. This one is an expertly acted, never boring crime drama, that’s trying too hard to be transgressive.

Grade: 7/10

Gone with the Wind (1939)

AFI No. 6

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 222 minutes

Gone with the Wind is a movie that’s as overrated as it is not good. And it’s pretty overrated. This a film that does a few aspects of what goes into a movie really well, but other aspects of it just aren’t up to par. It’s also really, really long and has held up about as well as a glass of milk left out in the hot sun for a week.

We’ll start with the positives. The cinematography and costumes in Gone with the Wind are fantastic. The colors just pop so much and there are a lot of great shots from a visual standpoint. Take any freeze frame from this movie and there’s a solid chance it’ll be beautiful to look at. The costumes are equally impressive. If you’re really into these components of movies it might be worth checking out some (brief) scenes from Gone with the Wind just to appreciate the visuals of the film.

Unfortunately, the positives mainly stop there. In my review of Citizen Kane, another overrated movie, I said, “I think that for a film to be deserving of a spot on any list of the best movies, it has to do all aspects of what go into making a movie extremely well, and some elements of the film need to be truly great.” With the exception of what I discussed in the last paragraph, nothing in this movie even clears the bar as good.

The plot of Gone with the Wind is nothing to write home about, but what really makes the movie a difficult watch (besides, of course, the fact that it’s racist) is that the lead character, Scarlett O’Hara, is insufferable. She’s an awful human, and this isn’t the type of movie where it’s fun to watch an antihero – she’s just a greedy, extremely flawed person without any real redeeming qualities. She also spends 99% of the film infatuated with a man named Ashely who clearly isn’t interested in her.

The main male character we’re supposed to find to be a dashing rebel, Rhett Butler, is almost as unlikeable as Scarlett. Neither of these characters is particularly interesting. So, the movie is basically watching what happens with an extremely unlikable woman in the South (which was great before those Yankees caused that war).

The movie is also pretty racist. By 2023 standards (and by most time period standards if you’re not a huge racist), the portrayal of black slaves is sure to elicit uncomfortableness. Just about every racist trope you can imagine is in this one, with “Mammy,” who serves Scarlett, getting the most screentime.

There’s also a good deal of unwanted sexual advances between characters in Gone with the Wind. Both Scarlett and Rhett are masters at kissing those who clearly do not want to be kissed. It’s not a great look.

I don’t see how anyone could really watch this movie in 2023 and think that it’s a worthwhile film. Sure, it’s got some great shots and excellent costumes, but that’s about it. As far as deserving to be on “Best Movies” lists, Gone with the Wind deserves to be, well, gone with the wind.

Grade: 2.5/10

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Sight & Sound No. 6

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 149 minutes

So, this is going to be a pretty controversial statement, especially coming from someone who went to film school, but I am not a big Stanley Kubrick fan. I’ve just never really enjoyed the far majority of his movies, and while I can appreciate some aspects of several of them, as a whole, I find them to be pretty overrated. 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Kubrick wrote, directed, and produced, aligns with this sentiment.

I respect Kubrick for making a movie about space that isn’t at all intentionally goofy in a way that a lot of space science fiction had been earlier. Having said that, what he’s created here is as artsy as it is pretentious, and also hasn’t aged particularly well.

The entire first act of the movie, in which we see prehistoric human-chimp-people has aged notably poor. The costumes just don’t hold up as looking impressive and it feels like we’re watching a very 1960s-created version of Planet Earth with Party City monkey costumes jumping around.

A lot of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I think the acclaim that surrounded it in decade’s past, has to do with the visuals of the movie and showing off the “futuristic” vision for space that the filmmaker had. In a way, the movie has the same issue one might have if you re-watched the original Avatar movie. It’s a work that at the time it was released was so impressive visually that it mesmerized and astounded audiences. Now though, when one isn’t as blown away by the visuals and is focusing on other aspects of the film, it’s not the same.

That isn’t to say it’s not still worth appreciating what Kubrick accomplished in the late 1960s. However, for a current audience, the look of the movie, in which we see a very 1960s-inspired version of what’s now actually the past (2001), isn’t exciting.

The film is also extremely lacking in terms of any character development (or even real characters). The closest we get to something that feels like an actual movie and not a visual Kubrick art project is for about an hour of the movie’s total runtime where two crew-members deal with the computer, HAL. For the final act, the film goes really off the rails with a light show that’s more boring than mesmerizing.

If you’re a Kubrick fan, you’ll love this one, but for me, it doesn’t do it. I don’t think this is an awful or truly bad movie, and it’s fine to appreciate it for its impact on the science fiction movies that followed. In 2023 though, it doesn’t belong on any “Best Movies”-type lists.

Grade: 4.5/10

Rankings: The 25 “Best” Movies Rated So Far

Schindler's List (1993): 10/10 (AFI No. 8, IMDb No. 6)

The Shawshank Redemption (1994): 10/10 (IMDb No. 1)

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001): 9.5/10 (IMDb No. 9)

The Wizard of Oz (1939): 9.5/10 (AFI No. 10)

Casablanca (1942): 9/10 (AFI No. 3)

The Godfather (1972): 9/10 (AFI No. 2, IMDb No. 2)

Man with a Movie Camera (1929): 9/10 (S&S No. 9)

Singin’ in the Rain (1952): 8.5/10 (AFI No. 5, S&S No. 10)

The Godfather Part II (1974): 8/10 (IMDb No. 4)

The Dark Knight (2009): 7/10 (IMDb No. 3)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003): 7/10 (IMDb No. 7)

Pulp Fiction (1994): 7/10 (IMDb No. 8)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): 4.5/10 (S&S No. 6)

Citizen Kane (1941): 4/10 (AFI No. 1, S&S No. 3)

Raging Bull (1980): 4/10 (AFI No. 4)

Gone with the Wind (1939): 2.5/10 (AFI No. 6)

Mulholland Drive (2001): 2.5/10 (S&S No. 8)

Beau Travail (1999): 1.5/10 (S&S No. 7)