Films like Pulp Fiction put great dialogue and a scrambled structure ahead of the plot. Reservoir Dogs is Tarantino's tighter first version, Out of Sight has the best-written adult conversation in nineties crime, and Snatch runs the same interlocking chaos at double speed. Tell TasteRay how much of the talking you want.
Pulp Fiction is a crime film in which almost no crime is depicted competently. What it actually delivers is conversation: foot massages, French hamburgers, divine intervention argued over a diner table. The chronology is scrambled less for cleverness than to let each conversation land without the plot getting in the way.
The films below share at least one of those two traits. Some have the structure. Most have the dialogue. The best of them have both and know that the shootout is the least interesting scene available.
What makes a good Pulp Fiction-like
A Pulp Fiction-like needs dialogue that would work without the guns, and a structure that earns its rearrangement. Non-linearity used as decoration is obvious immediately: the reordering has to change what a scene means. That is why so many nineties imitators feel hollow, and why the ones that survived are the ones with something to say between the killings.
8 movies and TV series like Pulp Fiction (1994)
Sources and further reading
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FAQs about Movies Like Pulp Fiction
Which Tarantino should I watch after Pulp Fiction?
Reservoir Dogs first, because it is the same voice with a smaller budget and a tighter frame, and the structure trick is easier to see working. Jackie Brown after that: it is his most patient film, adapted from Elmore Leonard, and the one his admirers underrate most consistently.
Is Out of Sight really comparable?
It has the best-written adult dialogue in nineties American crime, and Soderbergh uses freeze-frames and time jumps in the same spirit. The register is cooler and more romantic than Tarantino's, so it plays as a grown-up companion piece rather than an imitation. Start with the hotel bar scene.
Which of these has the most complicated structure?
Memento, which runs one half backwards and the other forwards until they meet. It is the most rigorous use of non-linear storytelling on this list, and unlike most, the structure is the subject rather than a stylistic choice. Watch it before reading anything about it.