With the possible exception of Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction remains the filmmaker's best work, exhibiting the cinematic flair and intertextual gameplay of his more recent output—Kill Bill, Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds—as well as a moral intelligence that has seemingly fallen by the wayside since. Broken into three distinct narrative segments and arranged in a non-linear fashion that expertly serves the picture's central theme of redemption, Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1994 and the Academy Award for Best Screenplay the following year. While revenge has been Tarantino's central theme ever since—perhaps inspired, some have suggested, by the events of the last decade—nowhere has he explored an idea as well, or as cleverly, as he does here. With a remarkable cast, soundtrack and screenplay—"They call it a 'Royale with Cheese'." "Royale with cheese." "That's right."—one of the most influential films of the 1990s screens at Perth's Moonlight Cinema tonight.

The Australian, 13 January 2010