Just watched this again last week for the first time in a while (I'd seen it at least a dozen times before that, one of my most frequently seen movies ever). Still love it, always will. In fact, I'm in the middle of watching the enhanced trivia track right now on the SE DVD, some very cool stuff in there. I watched all the extras back when I got the disc, right when it was released in fall '02, and now I'm re-visiting just about everything. With Kill Bill Vol. 2 coming up, I guess I was in the mood again (although I didn't re-visit this before KB Vol. 1 came out).
Though I've always been blown away by Sam Jackson's performance, one of my favorites by any actor in any movie, I gotta give props to Travolta. I definitely appreciate how good he was the more I watch it.
I also recall how ominous Ving Rhames was as Marcellus back when the movie came out, making it all the more effective when you don't see his face for the first several scenes he's in. Ving wasn't a very familiar figure in the movies at the time (I remember that I'd never heard of him), so the unfamiliarity helped bring a really unsettling edge to his on-screen presence.
Why don't we throw in some of our favorite subtle details of this movie? Here's one I enjoy that's easy to miss. In the needle-plunging scene, after Mia snaps out of it and they realize she's ok, there's a funny little thing in the background. Jody (Rosanna Arquette) says, "That was fuckin' trippy" and laughs to release the tension, while Lance and Vincent collapse from their nerves. And then--the detail I'm talking about--Jody's friend, Trudy, who's also been watching what's happening, goes back to her bong and takes another hit! Show's over, crisis averted, back to the ganja. Great stuff.
