The Films of Quentin Tarantino, Ranked

With The Hateful Eight coming out in limited release tomorrow, now’s an appropriate time to take stock of the eight theatrical feature films from writer/director Quentin Tarantino. So sit back and read on; I suspect a lot of you will disagree about this list, but I look forward to seeing the conversation that takes place in the comments.

8. Death Proof

This certainly isn’t a controversial choice for QT’s worst movie. Too long, too self-indulgent, and too niche, this is basically the cinematic embodiment of hubris. At this point, he and Robert Rodriguez seemingly thought they could get away with anything, and the failure of Grindhouse was a bit of a wake-up call for both of them. Death Proof is a movie I’d be OK with never watching again.

7. Kill Bill

Love the first part, was bored out of my mind with the second. To be fair, I’ve seen Volume 1 so many more times than Volume 2 (I’ve probably only seen Volume 2 twice, and the most recent time was around eight years ago), but I remember loving the style and action of the first film and that giving way to long scenes of dialogue that didn’t interest me in the second. So, cumulatively, this takes the #7 spot for me.

6. Jackie Brown

For a long time, I wasn’t overly impressed with Tarantino’s films. I had seen Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, but knowing he incorporated references from other movies into his screenplays to the point people accused him of stealing made me think of him as a guy who just remixed other films and didn’t really add much of his own stuff to the conversation…because I was young and dumb. Jackie Brown was the movie that convinced me Tarantino could actually walk the walk, and this underappreciated gem made me go back and reexamine his whole filmography. To this day, I still don’t think it gets the love it should.

5. Django Unchained

Even though Tarantino originally wanted Will Smith for the role of Django, Jamie Foxx ended up being an excellent replacement. He might be QT’s most mythic character, a slave turned bounty hunter who’s on a quest to find his stolen wife, and he fits wonderfully into QT’s revisionist western history, in which the audience gets so much satisfaction from seeing history’s bad guys (slave owners, in this case) gunned down by righteous heroes. Christoph Waltz is delightful, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as the villainous plantation owner Calvin Candie is some of the best work of his career.

4. Reservoir Dogs

Talk about a hell of a feature film debut. Reservoir Dogs was a major piece of kindling in the indie revolution of the ‘90s, and it announced Tarantino as a bold new presence on the film scene. I still love the idea of a heist film where you never see the actual heist and mainly witness the aftermath, and no one who’s seen this movie will ever hear Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle” and not instantly think of a psychotic Michael Madsen.

3. Pulp Fiction

I imagine this movie would top a lot of other people’s lists, and while it’s undeniably great, it speaks to how much I appreciate his other films that there are still two others I like more than this one. After the well-placed jab of Reservoir Dogs caught audiences off guard, Pulp Fiction was the knockout punch. It became a pop culture sensation, and its non-linear storytelling inspired a generation of lesser knock-offs that plagued much of the late ’90s and early 2000s. This was Tarantino’s first honest-to-God smash hit, and it basically paved the way for him to become the filmmaker he is today.

2. The Hateful Eight

A slow burn western mystery that plays like the twisted love child of Agatha Christie and John Ford, The Hateful Eight might end up being my favorite Tarantino film, but I need to see it a few more times to be sure. As of now, though, it’s in the second place because of it’s amazing script and memorable characters. The whole film feels a bit like a longer version of the underground bar scene in Inglourious Basterds, and if I have one complaint with that, it’s that I’m not certain that level of suspense should be sustained for quite that length of time. I can’t wait to watch this movie again.

1. Inglourious Basterds

Hans Landa is one of Tarantino’s best characters, and Christoph Waltz is the ideal example of the perfect casting at the perfect time for the perfect role. His congenial manner conceals a terrifying willingness to kill, and with Melanie Laurent’s character drifting in and out of the crosshairs, my stomach was in knots the whole time. The title group is basically a collection of side characters not terribly important to the overall plot, but the world-building and Tarantino’s insistence on the power of cinema to save the world (literally) makes this an all-timer for me. The film ends with Brad Pitt’s character saying “I think this just might be my masterpiece,” and only a guy as ballsy as Tarantino could pull off ending a film with a moment as meta as that and — here’s the important part — actually be correct about it. There’s an abundance of arrogance in Hollywood, but Tarantino’s comes from the fact that he’s a walking cinematic encyclopedia with the knowledge that he’s good enough to back up his claims.