The Definitive Ranking of Quentin Tarantino Movies

Miramax/Weinstein Group

At the top of July, Quentin Tarantino will launch his newest movie, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Like each different Tarantino film, I’ll see it in a movie show, although I hardly ever see films in film theaters nowadays. And I’ll in all probability go opening weekend, even though I by no means do this anymore.

For me — and, I’m certain, many different dudes who’re 41 or thereabouts — Tarantino is a kind of artists whose work spans a lot of their lives. His arc can be your arc. His films are as a lot recollections out of your previous as they’re stand-alone entities. He was there for you in highschool, whenever you first began caring about films. In faculty, you place a Reservoir Dogs poster on you wall, like everyone else within the dorm. Over time, you got here to care about different administrators extra. But you by no means actually give up QT. The technique of rating these films is an ongoing venture that spans many years.

For this listing, I merely determined to write down down what stays a piece in progress in my head. The highest praise I pays Tarantino is that I’m fairly hopeful that Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will contend for prime of this listing. Maybe not the very prime, however undoubtedly prime three. I can’t wait to search out out.

9. The Hateful Eight (2015)

Tarantino’s most perverse movie in additional methods than one. For occasion: It’s a talky chamber drama that takes place largely within a snowbound cabin, and but it’s grandly filmed in 70mm. What was the purpose of placing this intimate-to-the-point-of-claustrophobic movie on such a big canvas? Was Tarantino one way or the other compelled to rub this disagreeable forged of characters in our faces? Or did he merely want for us to gaze upon the grandeur of Michael Madsen’s brow? Whatever it’s, I usually should remind myself each time I revisit The Hateful Eight that it got here out earlier than Trump was elected. Because it in any other case feels very very like a post-Trump movie, a caustic exploration of the racism and self-interest of all-American deplorables. It’s not a nasty movie, actually, although it lacks Tarantino’s typical exuberance. A hangout film loaded with characters you lengthy to flee.

8. Death Proof (2007)

Coupled with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror for the B-movie omnibus Grindhouse, Death Proof was a field workplace failure that briefly rattled Tarantino’s typical brash self-confidence. Now, Death Proof is often framed as a misstep that provoked the prestige-minded and film star-driven QT of Inglourious Basterds and past. But Death Proof deserves higher than its standing as an also-ran in Tarantino’s filmography (irrespective of it’s comparatively low rating right here). In distinction with the dude-centric movies he’s made within the ’10s, Death Proof culminated Tarantino’s decade-long run of “powerful women sticking it to bad men” films that began with Jackie Brown. Before revisiting it not too long ago, I had forgotten what number of scenes there are by which girls have lengthy, meandering conversations about intercourse, weed, and automobiles. (One of those scenes takes place over breakfast in a diner, and Tarantino’s slowly spinning digicam evokes Reservoir Dogs.) And but Death Proof, like Dogs and the primary Kill Bill, can be the uncommon Tarantino transfer that clocks in at beneath two hours, so it by no means overstays its welcome — particularly because it all builds to a automobile chase spotlighting Zoe Bell’s thrilling stunt work.

7. Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)

The again half of the Kill Bill saga now exists beneath a cloud in mild of Uma Thurman’s allegations of misconduct involving a automobile crash that occurred close to the top of manufacturing. But even with out the backstage controversy, Kill Bill Vol. 2 feels a little bit padded, particularly after the breakneck, slam-bang pacing of the primary Kill Bill. The greatest a part of Vol. 2 happens within the remaining 40 or so minutes, when The Bride (Thurman) and Bill (David Carradine) lastly have their surprisingly quiet and emotional confrontation. Everything earlier than that appears like preamble, even when it’s…