Pulp Fiction was very clever. From the moment the title theme changed, complete with static, like someone changing radio stations, you knew that it was going to play all sorts of novel tricks. Still, a movie that cannot conceive that a man with his face masked is still a human being, even if he's some sort of weird gay pervert, is rather lacking in the humanity department. And, no, feeling intense empathy with Bruce Willis, THE HERO, doesn't count. Everybody can do that, it's like feeling sorry for yourself. (In this kind of writing, the hero is always in some sense yourself, after all.) Clever is amusing and entertaining but I've never, ever had a desire to watch this movie again. In my opinion rewatchability is an acid test of real quality and Pulp Fiction has zero.
Ditto Forrest Gump. The fundamental messages are that being an athlete is vastly more important than having a mind, and that the mentally retarded are especially sweet because they don't have sexual thoughts. These came from the original novel (Winston Groom?) attacking hippie thinkers and human enlightenment generally? They tried adding some humanity to the story but like Pulp Fiction it didn't really work.
Heavenly Creatures or Ed Wood would have been vastly prefereable as Academy nominees in my opinion. As is, I voted Shawshank Redemption.
