Shawshank and Gump are regular old hollywood movies, good ones but designed to manipulate and win-over.   Pulp is startling, honest, and completely ridiculous.   I'll take it.

And I have no idea what people see in Pulp Fiction. Clever dialogue that I do not care if it is quotable or not.  I respect your opinion.

Usual Suspects > Shawshank > Gump

I'm passing on this ... I was, and still am, a huge watcher of Godard films, and PF, for me, is not fun, or entertaining at all, and is a fun thing for the TV bored American audiences. (In those days, "films" showed what a lot of TV never has shown, even today!) But, I will agree that this is me, and probably because I watch so much foreign film, to the point that only after reading Robert Altman on Robert Altman, have I begun to have an appreciation for his work ... I never had it for the most part, despite a lot of films being fun, but for me many of them felt like a joke and not a film at all ... it was, for all intents and purposes, the most "anti-film" of films for Robert Altman.

The other two are good films and Shawshank had outstanding acting, which really helped the film a lot, as did Forrest, however, Forrest is a sad film for me, because I lived during that time, and a lot of it was not exactly fun, and I suppose that the film wanted to have a nice laugh at those things, but many of them were not fun at all ... heck in the first lottery for the draft, my birthday came up #9. And a lot of other things in the film are sad for me ... and seeing the SF/LA area get ripped up by Aids in the 80's was something that I did not wish to see or remember ... we either were totally reckless or stupid. The film is more positive in that area, but still ... the sad memory remains, but the film deserves a lot of credit for its technical brilliance, which is the director's best ability, although the film has some serious acting chops. Tom Hanks is fine, although I think it was not smooth and he did not get better with it until later in the film ... I think he had issues with the script in the earlier going as there are a lot of moments that are hesitant, and not because of the character, I don't think. As a director, I would have cleaned that up some more, but that's seeing with a director's eyes, so please excuse me on that.

{Best double bill EVER ... Performance and Deep Throat (the real film) at UCSB midnight films!... another time it was Performance and The Rocky Horror Picture Show}

Exactly my thought. Classical Hollywood against unconventional modern cinema. I prefer the latter.

Wot he said.

Shawshank I guess. 

Hi,

I'll second this choice some ... mostly because PF is a rip off and most folks have not seen (at least) 3 or 4 Godard films first, and realize that even some funny words and moments were taken. PF is not very original in my book.

FG is well written, and while a lot of the historical stuff is mangled and pressed in tight, it comes home, even if not too satisfying in the end. Fine acting, though it would only need one or two of the folks to do so.

SR is a very good film with 2 very fine performances. Probably not as "popular" because it is a serious film, and it is not funny. But a great film nonetheless.

^ I cannot disagree more with you here, Mosh. When Pulp Fiction came out I had seen most of Godard's films, but this didn't give me the slightest impression of PF being a Godard - or whatever - rip-off. I don't even understand how you can say this. Of course, there are nods to other films (as in all of Tarantino's work, and his Grindhouse copies being the worst he has done), but claiming this to be a rip-off is more a sign of blatant prejudice than of something else.

When you want to talk about rip-offs, Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump use all the classic and conventional Hollywood codes of storytelling. Yes, they do that in a very good and efficient way, but it remains very conventional Hollywood storytelling, without any cinematographic challenge added to that. Pure Hollywood rip-offs, in that sense. Pulp Fiction breaks away from that classic Hollywood, like Godard, indeed, broke away from classic storytelling and the conventionality of cinematic codes. What a refreshment!