This fact is going to make some of you scratch your heads, but I'll say it anyway: until last week, I had never seen "Pulp Fiction." I know that's incredible, what with me being a heterosexual male over 20, but there you have it.

Finally, the hype got to me. I think I've mentioned that I'm going through the list of top movies ever made on IMDB, and it came time to view "Pulp Fiction."

I waited until the perfect time to watch the movie, I'd say, because I really enjoyed it. Mostly, that's because I really appreciated the characters.

I'm not a huge John Travolta fan, but in "Pulp Fiction" he played a truly likeable character. He wasn't sickeningly sweet (like in "Look Who's Talking"), he wasn't entirely sympathetic, and yet I found myself caring what happened to him more than I've cared for a lot of characters in similar movies. His discussion with Samuel L. Jackson near the beginning of the movie was what did it for me, I think. They were talking about a guy that was supposedly thrown out a window because he gave his boss's lovely wife a foot massage.

That conversation at the start of the movie might strike some people as dead air, but to me it was a great early moment in the movie. It was humorous, it was insightful and it gave the two people engaged in the discussion a certain humanity that carried them right through to the end.

Most of the moments I liked in the movie, not surprisingly, centered around those two characters. There were other unique events too, though, mostly based on the exploits of Bruce Willis. I didn't care for his character as much as Travolta's--he was almost dull to me, despite the surprising story of his father's watch as related by Christopher Walken in a characteristically great cameo--and the tension between the two of them eventually erupted in a way that disappointed me a great deal.

When you get right down to it, there were only a few things I didn't like about the film. Mostly, they were related to Bruce Willis. Late in the movie, there was a span of what felt like 15 or 20 minutes that was quite bizarre but, somehow, rather boring. My wife was watching the movie with me and she couldn't believe that I had picked another "weird" movie. She seems to have this notion that I never watch anything worthwhile.

In any event, I'm avoiding spoilers like a mofo and there's not much more I can say about the movie without deviating from that course. Also, though I didn't appreciate the volume of the profanity, I was relieved at least to find that it was nowhere near as pervasive as in "Running Scared," which you might recall I reviewed awhile back. The difference in the levels was obvious to me. "Pulp Fiction" uses profanity to add color. "Running Scared" uses it to repel.

Wow. Remind me not to write another blog entry/review after spending days coding. But, uh... anyone want to discuss "Pulp Fiction" now? We can even go into spoiler territory, if you like!