Quentin Tarantino: the other most infamous foot fetishist in showbiz. The man has been stepping all over conventional filmmaking and left his footprint as one of cinema’s most acclaimed directors.
He has stuck his toes in Hollywood’s deep end to work with silver screen legends like Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, and has left behind some large directorial shoes to fill. To get your footing on his work, here are QT’s movies ranked from worst to best.
10. The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino is one of those directors whose gleeful joy is apparent in all of his work … except this one. Brooding and claustrophobic, The Hateful Eight is a film that is at times downright uncomfortable to watch, and not in a good way. The film’s slow and methodical pace fosters a similar cabin fever for the viewer as a it does for its protagonists. “Protagonists” is a generous term. The characters in this movie are downright nasty, brutal, and generally unlikable. They’re not the sort of people you went to spend five minutes with, much less five hours, or however long this film’s interminable runtime is. It’s almost a relief watching these assholes murder one another; at least we know that our time in this frozen cabin is coming to a close.
9. Death Proof
Easily the nastiest film in Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvre, Death Proof hits the eyes like a gas station burrito hits the small intestine. The results aren’t pretty. It’s bloody and over the top, but with a lack of emotional grounding that keeps us … well, grounded through the intense gore of his other films. Death Proof feels like a pair of films that are violent simply for the sake of being violent. Don’t get me wrong; it’s fantastic for entertainment, but it lacks the deeper thematic punches of his other films. But if you want your thrills cheap, it’s the best movie on this list.
8. Kill Bill vol. 2
Kill Bill vol. 2 had an impossible task: follow up on the greatness of its predecessor. The results are mixed. The Kill Bill duology saves its best parts for first, leading to a second act that lacks in thrills. To be honest, a barely remember anything about this movie, something that I can’t say about Vol 1. The Bride’s brutal dismemberment of the Crazy 88, her murder of a single mother in front of her daughter, the head-splitting confrontation with Orin Ishi-I, and the anime backstory sequence are burned forever into my brain. Sure, the Exploding Heart Technique was cool, but did she and Bill really have to talk so much beforehand? The film’s saving grace comes in the form The Bride’s transformation from murder machine to three-dimensional mom.
7. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Set in the decaying empire of Old Hollywood, Once Upon a Time serves as a love letter and eulogy to showbiz days of old. Brad Pitt plays an easygoing stuntman for a middle-aged actor in the twilight of his career. Meanwhile, Margot Robbie shines as the young Sharon Tate, a young starlet whose real-life career was cut short by one of America’s most infamously evil men: Charles Manson. The film serves a poetic “what-if” that rights one of the darkest wrongs in American pop culture history. It’s gleefully fun watching aging Hollywood actors cut a swath through LSD-crazed cult members, but the cartoonish gore somehow seems to make light of the real-life tragedy that inspired the film in the first place.
6. Inglorious Basterds
The movie that catapulted Christoph Waltz into stardom, Inglorious Basterds is a thrilling WWII revisionist tale. The first five minutes of the film should be housed in the Library of Congress, with the confrontation between Waltz’ Nazi officer Hans Landa and a French man attempting to hide Jewish people being one of the most nail-biting scenes in cinema history. Couple that with Brad Pitt’s shit-kickin’ performance of an All-American nahtzee hunter and you’ve got cinematic greatness on your hands.
5. Jackie Brown
An adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, Jackie Brown tells the story of a flight attendant who gets caught up in a drug smuggling conspiracy. Pam Grier shines as the titular heroine, and the film is perhaps Tarantino’s most restrained entry to date. What starts as a standard Tarantino crime drama quickly matures into a tender love story between two people on opposite sides of the law. For those looking for a break from blood and gore, this film is a breath of fresh air.
4. Django Unchained
Django Unchained just feels good. Tarantino once again tells a revisionist story that attempts to right historical wrongs, giving a bloody comeuppance to some of the most infamous criminals in American history: slaveowners. Jaime Foxx and Christoph Waltz play a pair of bounty hunters looking to serve frontier justice to America’s slimiest criminals. The worst of which? The despicably debonaire Leonardo DiCaprio in what is arguably his best role: a faux-genteel slaveowner with a penchant for French cuisine and bloodsport. It’s impossible not to crack a smile watching Django turning an ornate plantation house and its insipid owners into a red ruin.
3. Kill Bill vol. 1
Kill Bill vol. 1 marked a turning point in Quentin Tarantino’s career. His films transitioned from slick crime capers turned into gleeful, blood-spattered love-letters to genres past. Kill Bill vol. 1 is part kung-fu flick, part anime, part revenge drama, all awesome. After her wedding day is ruined by a team of assassins, the unnamed Bride goes on a katana-wielding revenge quest against her former handlers. Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu’s blood on the snow showdown is one of the greatest final acts in cinema history. And the wire-fu fight sequence with the Crazy 88? Jaw-dropping madness. This film is an example of what is arguably Quentin Tarantino’s greatest contribution to cinema: the idea that a great film can actually be fun.
2. Reservoir Dogs
Reservoir Dogs is Tarantino’s legendary first outing as a director. It’s a crime thriller about a heist gone horribly wrong, and the bloody fallout that ensues. While the film’s story isn’t inherently groundbreaking, it’s the style in which it’s told that makes up its greatness. What sort of mad genius would pair an upbeat pop hit like “Stuck in the Middle With You” with scenes of total criminal depravity? Tarantino would. And cinema was changed forevermore.
1. Pulp Fiction
Does it come as a surprise to anyone? Pulp Fiction did for movies what Cowboy Bebop did for anime—proved that “cool” could be a genre all on its own. The plot revolves around a group of characters on the fringes of the law, attempting to track down a mysterious briefcase and its Arc of the Covenant awe-inspiring contents inside. Pulp Fiction is a masterclass in storytelling, with its out-of-order and interweaving plots making for a cinematic Rubik’s Cube that fans have been attempting to solve ever since. For such a violent film, Pulp Fiction is surprisingly philosophical, a debate on the nature of good and evil, and humanity’s power to both create and destroy. It’s a meditation and a nail-biter impossibly rolled into one.
(featured image: Miramax)
