“Go” (Doug Liman, 1999)
When Roger Ebert reviewed “Go” back in 1999, he used the first paragraph to talk about the lasting legacy of “Pulp Fiction,” including the fact that “sooner or later the statute of limitations has to run out” on comparisons between new movies and Tarantino’s game-changing masterpiece. And the critical consensus was pretty much in agreement: even though, as Ebert said, “the shadow of Q.T. falls on many scenes,” Doug Liman‘s energetic, candy-colored follow-up to “Swingers” was a deeply entertaining ride in its own right. (It was also, with the country’s youth currently under the spell of a dance music renaissance, ahead of its time.) The biggest debt “Go” pays to “Pulp Fiction” is in its shifty, interlocking narrative that follows a trio of threads, all loosely connected back to a Christmas-themed rave in Los Angeles, and in its cooler-than-thou attitude, with snappy, tough-talking drug dealers, kooky cops and a coolly detached view of violence and its real-world repercussions. (It’s also worth noting that Liman was once again latching onto contemporary urban hipster tropes.) The power of “Go,” which unfolds with a nearly hallucinogenic vividness (like “American Graffiti” on ecstasy), is that you aren’t actively attributing this debt to Tarantino as the movie is going on. It’s hilarious and involving and warm on its own terms. “Go” is one of the rare son-of-“Pulp Fiction” movies where it didn’t matter if the influence was obvious; it was that damn good. [B+]
“The Big Hit” (1998)
Tarantino is famous (or is it infamous) for liberally borrowing from a whole host of cult Hong Kong action movies—everything from Ringo Lam‘s “City on Fire” (which he appropriated large swaths of for “Reservoir Dogs“) to John Woo‘s immortal classic “The Killer“—and everything in between. The weird boomerang effect was that because Tarantino was ripping off Hong Kong cinema, then Hong Kong cinema must be cool in America now too. Tarantino did a fair share of this himself, introducing American audiences to a plucky performer by the name of Jackie Chan via “Rumble in the Bronx” and releasing Wong Kar-Wai‘s “Chungking Express” through his distribution imprint. Of course the downside to this was that other, less tasteful producers and studios thought that since Tarantino had made it cool, they could also try and import that very specific Hong Kong aesthetic for American audiences … which resulted in heaping piles of shit like Che-Kirk Wong‘s nearly unwatchable schlock-a-thon “The Big Hit.” Wong, who directed the hit Chan film “Crime Story” in 1993, leaves any traces of subtlety or substance behind, in this bloody, garish tale about a hitman (Mark Wahlberg) who gets involved in a bumbling kidnapping scheme. It’s loud, it’s obnoxious, it’s sexist, and worst of all … it’s boring. What makes the whole failed enterprise even more baffling is the fact that John Woo produced this piece of shit, a year after making his best American film “Face/Off.” You can’t blame him for wanting the Hong Kong aesthetic to become viable domestically, but sadly something major was lost in the translation. [D]
“2 Days In The Valley” (1996)
One of the more self-evident “Pulp Fiction” rip-offs, although presumably written after a double-bill of that and “Short Cuts,” with a disparate group of characters, including a pair of hitmen and a few femme fatales, clashing over the titular 48 hours in LA, John Herzfeld’s film is mostly forgettable, joyless and overly convoluted, and correctly remembered really only for introducing the world to future Oscar-winner Charlize Theron. The plot kicks off with hitmen Lee (James Spader, at his most sleepy-eyed disinterested) and Dosmo (Danny Aiello) killing Peter Horton, at the behest of his wife (Teri Hatcher), only for Lee to shoot Dosmo so he can run off and split the cash with his girlfriend Helga (Theron). But Dosmo survives, taking shelter at the house of a British artist (Greg Cruttwell, from “Naked”) and various others gathered there, including suicidal TV producer Paul Mazursky. It’s the kind of movie where no characters really act like human beings, but just perform actions to move the plot along, and the performances, with a few exceptions, are about as memorable as you could get from cogs in a machine. The dialogue thuds rather than sparkles, Herzfeld (last heard of directing “The Making Of ‘The Expendables’ ” ouch) helms with little-to-no flair, and there’s an icky tone of misogyny even for this genre. Really the only reason to watch is the first glimpse of Theron’s impressive screen presence, poured into an even more impressive white catsuit, if for nothing else than a reminder that she’s gone on to much, much better things over the years. [D]
“Amores Perros” (2000)
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu has his foibles—oppressive seriousness, and an at-times comically dour tonal and thematic palette—but the man is still a gifted filmmaker, one of the best of an impressive roster of modern Mexican directors, in fact. That talent was evident from the beginning in his first, and still best, feature to date. Its similarities to “Pulp Fiction” are pretty clear but mostly surface: three interlocking stories that see characters occasionally cross over; a criminal element; harsh violence. But beyond that, “Amores Perros” (aka “Love’s A Bitch”) is its own beast—a gritty, unflinchingly hard-edged portrayal of loyalty and disloyalty, painful cosmic jokes, fate, and the way love can evolve so fluidly into hatred (and vice versa). The film’s success led to two more projects between Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (the also great “21 Grams” and the just OK-with-moments-of-greatness “Babel” which made up their loosely connected Death Trilogy) before they went their own creative ways. Arriaga continued his obsession with the hyperlink film when he wrote and directed “The Burning Plain” whereas Iñárritu left it behind to make the more focused “Biutiful,” so perhaps it was the screenwriter who was more influenced by ‘Pulp’. Regardless, “Amores Perros” is a fantastic film that rises well above any Tarantino rip-off labels. [A-]
I think "Thursday" from Skip Woods is obviously missing on this list. i really disliked this movie. the dialogue is clearly a bad Tarantino rip off. It really was annoying and almost unbearable to watch. A lame story, horrible dialogues and all plot twists were totally predictable. And the rape scene, oh gosh.. so bad.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Seven Psychopaths.
I can\’t believe you mentioned "Very Bad Things" without even uttering a single thing about the obvious influence it had on the "The Hangover," but I suppose that\’s a digression from he overall point of the article. However, here\’s a few I would have added to the list:
"Rules of Attraction" – Avery\’s influence again and Bret Easton Ellis\’ pop-culture inflected writing, but still, very post-Tarantino in style.
"In Bruges" and "Seven Psychopaths" – Later in the game, but still quite evident, especially the latter.
"Hard Eight" – Sure, PTA does his own thing but I can\’t imagine this movie would have been made or seen without the success of "PuLp."
"Clay Pigeons" – Maybe more post-Fargo than post-Pulp, but it certainly was marketed as a gen-x-er crime comedy in the vein of Pulp.
Tarantino is in love with the bad movies he ate up as a kid, so now he regurgitates them as equally bad new movies. All he did with Pulp Fiction is to show that there are critics and moviegoers who also liked those bad movies.
Sorry, but the best was Heaven (1998). And it toke this kind of film a little bit further because we are making the puzzle of how it really happened, and in the end we discover that it didn’t happened in the order we thought it did, but in a completely new order. It’s like if you could make two different imagens prom the same pieces of a puzzle.
Very bad things should more aptly be noted as a noir precedent for the Hangover series. And it was much better than you say it was..
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Check it out.
I\’d add Rules of Attraction
Theres no bigger borrower then the movie Thursday. With Thomas Jane and Erin Eckhart. Awesome movie that few have seen. But the formula is mimicked in that film like bo other.
Tarantino is a legend in his own mind. His box office record sucks.
So in summary, basically to Tarantino fanboys, all movies after Pulp Fiction are Pulp Fiction ripoffs.
You Forgot Truth or Consequences, N.M. it really had that that reservoir dogs feel with the infiltrated cop and the sick musical torture scene with Martin Sheen. Totally captured the Q.T esque feel of the 90\’s.
Red Rock West.
Destiny Turns on the Radio, with QT in the titular role. Ouch.
Tarantino is great to be sure, but the main person being "copied " here is Sam Peckinpah. So many if not all character driven action movies (esp about bad man) were done first and much better by "Bloody Sam". Hateful Eight will have lots of Sam in it, you can be sure of it, Tarantino loves his work
what about truth or consequences, nm
Pulp Fiction was based on a film called Black Sabbath which features 3 none linear stories.
"You are old. 20 years ago this very day (OK, yesterday to be exact)".
Oh wow.. this article was written May 22 this year. My birthday is May 21 and I am exactly 20 years old. Huh.
Wasn't innaritu's primary influence krzysztof kieslowski? Chance and destiny etc? Even the image of the model on the billboard was a homage to that famous image in three colors: Red. Never thought it was directly Tarantino influenced. Now I see it though. Kewl.
I haven't seen a few of those.
My favorite has to be Denver.
Treat Williams, Buscemi, Walken, everybody was great and pulled their weight in that one.
Didn't care for Anwar, but Fairuza made up for that.
Out of the proto-pulp fictions, Kalifornia is 10x what Stone did with NBK.
It would have been interesting to see what Tarentino would have done with his own script though.
Wild at Heart was another Proto-Pulp Fiction that Tarentino seemed to borrow from almost as equally as Goodfellas.
Layer Cake was pretty good.
But I can never really get into British Gangster movies.
Maybe because that accent is almost exclusively marketed in america for its fussy sophistication to peddle political agendas, documentaries and goofy products in infomercials that it just never seems intimidating.
Love and a 45 had moments.
Young and skinny Rene Zelwegger looking amazing probably chief among them.
One film that I didn't see on this list was Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain. Released the same year as Pulp Fiction. Manchevski, who both wrote and directed, breaks down and plays with the story's three acts much the same way QT did. They where both writing their stories at the same time presumably without knowing much about what the other was doing. A lot more serious than QT's, though I love them both, Before the Rain is a film that flew under the radar and was missed by a lot of people. Watch this film guys.
A little more recent but the mention of Very Bad Things reminded me of how much The Hangover lifted from that film and how it has a very Tarantino-esque style (drenched in cans of Keystone Light) to it.
I only see two movies that resemble pulp fiction the first one the foreign movie about the dog amorres something same time structure and the movie go that one really had the pulp fiction thing the story titles on screen as well, and the whole time structure that's what really makes go seem like pulp fiction that was awesome I loved the movie go. Pulp fiction is my number one favorite movie.
Amores Perros is a rip-off only because the "three interlocking stories that see characters occasionally cross over; a criminal element; harsh violence", those are mere similarities, Tarantino did not invent the structure of hyperlink cinema nor stories with characters that "cross over", those were invented way before he was even born, in fact he hasn't invented anything. Plus Amores is a drama, Pulp is a black comedy, not even the same genre, unlike most of the other real rip-offs. I'd put Amores Perros with the other "The Not Really Rip-Offs". Do us a favor, please do some research before vomiting.
1 -THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOURE DEAD andy garcia
2 -AMERICAN STRAYS eric roberts
3 -WAY OF THE GUN ryan phillipe
4 -GO katie holmes sarah polley timothy olyphant
5 -THE BIG HIT mark wahlberg
6 -2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY charlize theron
7- AMORES PERROS gael garcia bernal
8- GET SHORTY travolta
9- BE COOL travolta
10- SUICIDE KINGS christopher walken
11- 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG joe pesci
12- PALOOKAVILLE vincent gallo
13- VERY BAD THINGS cameron diaz
14- THE BOONDOCK SAINTS willem dafoe
15- INTERMISSION colin farrell cillian murphy
16- REINDEER GAMES ben affleck
17- PHOENIX ray liotta
Your review of "Boondocks" was perfect and hilarious.
What about the underrated "Lucky Number Slevin"
The fact that this "entertainment journalist (haha)" has absolutely no ability to appreciate some of the flourishes that does in fact distinguish Boondocks from other films of the genre regardless of your feelings of the film, speaks volumes of the authir's shortcomings. It also ignores (or simply isn't aware of) some obvious entries that only an actual film fan would include (Thursday with Tom Jane and Aaron Eckhart, Best Men, and Truth and Consequences N.M. Directed by Kiefer Sutherland spring to mind). Although many on this list are pretty weak (although how can you not admit that Vaughn and The Rock were so funny in the otherwise horrific Be Cool together it should have just been about them and nothing else) there are a number of flicks here that may not be Oscar calibre but are entertaining in their own right (Reindeer Games and even the sometimes very funny 8 Heads, which is far better than Gone Fishin…..you realize that right?). It was good to see Denver get some good nods and especially Way of the Gun. In general it does seem like the author needs to get himself a Netflix membership and get a better number of films under his belt before he attempts another list.
This article and the comment section proves that some people just try way to hard to compare films with one-another just because plots feature black comedy and intertwining and non-linear narratives, a lot of curse words, and violent crime.
Going by the logic this article uses, Pulp Fiction is merely a copycat of a novel called "Trainspotting" (not the film), which was written and sold in 1993, a year before Pulp Fiction. This novel is not only non-linear like Pulp Fiction (with about 8 different narrators) with intertwining plots, but it is also darkly comedic almost in the same vein as Pulp Fiction. The novel is also pretty graphic as well. The dialogue has its own electric style. The first page has three instances of "c%%nt", one of "f!!ck" and one of "f!!ck!ng". So the curse words are there too. Furthermore, Trainspotting draws on a lot of pop culture of the 1980s. So that's there too. There's also a lot of quotable passages.
This is just one novel that came out before Pulp Fiction. Using this article's logic, Tarantino created a copycat film that spawned from Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting.
Nothing by Elmore Leonard should be on this list. Indiewire = teens with laptops.
i like Very Bad Things & Reindeer Games. sorry.
"Feeling Minnesota"
"The Immortals" (1995)
"Blood Guts Bullets and Octane"
"Thursday"
"Destiny Turns On the Radio"
"Albino Alligator"
"Truth or Consequence, N.M."
"Fall Time"
"Love & a .45"
"Freeway"
"Smokin' Aces"
Don't forget TWENTY BUCKS as an impressive predecessor.
I just want to let whoever wrote the bit about "The Boondock Saints" know that I am still standing and applauding. I hate that movie so much that I can't even come up with something intelligible to say about it other than "**** that movie."
Magnolia is definately Pulp-esque, and David O. Russell has a lot of strong similarities to Tarantino.
I've never seen this, but wasn't Boondock Saints a giant cult hit?
Pulp Fiction is one of the most overrated films ever. Fact.
Very bad things should more aptly be noted as a noir precedent for the Hangover series. And it was much better than you say it was..
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Very bad things should more aptly be noted as a noir precedent for the Hangover series. And it was much better than you say it was..
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In terms of intertwined narratives, i can see the influence of Pulp Fiction in both Magnolia and Playing by Heart. Oh, and Crash too, to be honest…
American Hustle was like a Tarantino movie without the action. If even one head had exploded, it would have been on this list.
Just a thought: Joe Carnahan's BLOOD GUTS BULLETS & OCTANE (1998)
Requiem For A Dream
Thursday
Keys To Tulsa
I think 90s was indie film bonanza. I loved many indies for that era.
So, no one was really influenced by Robert Rodrigues?
You left out the horrible THURSDAY, a Siskel & Ebert's bete noire.
You left out the horrible MAD DOG TIME, by Joey Bishop's kid.
I might be the only one but I though the Brazillian film City of God had a Pulp Fiction feel to it.
Go rocks. Very overlooked.
the female assassin genre movie "Domino" with Kiera Knightley, Christopher Walken, and Tom Waits? "Broken Arrow" with Travolta. "Face/Off" with Travolta and Cage. "Con Air" and "The Rock" with Cage. "Crimson Tide"'s uncredited Tarantino rewrite. "Plump Fiction" the lame parody movie. Every direct to DVD "From Dusk Till Dawn" sequel. "The Rules of Attraction" by Roger Avary name drops Tarantino, as do "Die Hard with a Vengeance" and "Captain America:The Winter Soldier". "Destiny Turns on the Radio" starring Tarantino. "Curdled" with the character Angela Villalobos. "Romy & Michelle" had a Big Kahuna Burger. "Space Jam" had a Pulp in-joke.
I always dug PALOOKAVILLE and WAY OF THE GUN. Also? BIG TROUBLE!
How could you forget Boogie Boy w/ Mark Dacascos, Karen Sheperd and Frederic Forrest? Advertised as from the producer of Pulp Fiction, Roger Avary. Yeah, right!
I love The Way of the Gun. Why it landed Christopher McQuarrie in director's jail for ten years still mystifies me. Ryan Phillippe is particularly outstanding as "Parker". I thought for sure it'd make an A-lister out of him. I'd still very much love to see McQuarrie's original 2.5 hour cut of the film.
Big fan of Way of the Gun.
"Ringo Lam's "City on Fire" (which he appropriated large swaths of for "Reservoir Dogs") "
Wait I just read the rest of the article. Another clueless idiot who has clearly never actually bothered to watch City on Fire, just repeats a movie nerd trivia thing he heard on the internet once.
What on earth are you talking about with Way of the Gun? The third act is almost entirely a great gunfight (even better than Heat's) that the film had been building toward and half the "memorable moments" you listed are IN IT. Are you remembering it right?
2 Guns from last year with Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg felt like it had Tarantino written all over it.
It had all the hallmarks of a Tarantino ripoff – the long speeches, the explosions of violence, etc.
Happy Palookaville got a good notice. It's solid. Much like "Bottle Rocket" in the bumbling crime/comedy vein. These other films are mostly trash (aside from Amores Perros, good grade there too).
Um, Tarantino is a copycat (just a very good one), but this article seems to make him out like some kind of original that others immediately followed. But really what happened is Pulp Fiction blew up and so all these scripts and ideas people already had been wanting to do in a similar tone suddenly got greenlit and found financial backing from people wanting to strike on the Pulp Fiction train.
How about Things to do in Denver when your dead(1996). It even has Walken.
If you were really interesting you would list the films Tarantino ripped off making Pulp Fiction.