Dana Polan

Pulp Fiction was one of the films that defined American cinema of the 1990s and remains one of the stand-out movies of its director Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino's style—violent, fast, funny, and full of knowing pop culture references—epitomises 90s post-modernism. Pulp Fiction was a phenomenal cult success and one of the first films to generate hot debate in internet chatrooms and...

Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is a film very much of its cinematic moment, combining the gritty realism of entrapment in the everyday with furtive dreams of escape. Dana Polan's compelling study of the film examines its significance to New Hollywood cinema and the science fiction genre. He argues that Close Encounters is a film that...

Martin Scorsese's 1990 movie Goodfellas, starring Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, and Paul Sorvino, narrates the rise and fall of Mafia associate Henry Hill and his friends and family from 1955 to 1980. The film focuses on the half-Irish Henry Hill (Liotta) and his Jewish spouse Karen (Bracco), who envy the gangster lifestyle but can never...