Few filmmakers could — and even fewer should — attempt what writer-director Quentin Tarantino has accomplished across his three decades of movie-making magic. Armed with an appetite for ultra-violent action, a knack for crafting dialogue sharper than a samurai sword, an infectious appreciation for the art of filmmaking, and, yes, a bit of a thing for feet, the two-time Oscar winner famously said: “You don’t have to know how to make a movie. If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion, you can’t help but make a good movie.”
Though he was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and spent some years living in Austin, Texas (where the legendary director hosted an annual movie festival called “QT Fest” from 1996 to 2007), Tarantino grew up mainly in Los Angeles, California. As a young man, Tarantino was a staple of the now-closed Video Archives rental store in Manhattan Beach, where he worked while writing, directing, and starring in his first unfinished film, titled “My Best Friend’s Birthday,” and drafting scripts for both “True Romance” (directed by Tony Scott) and “Natural Born Killers” (directed by Oliver Stone, who would enter a public feud with Tarantino over the project years later.)
Tarantino finally made his feature debut in 1992 with “Reservoir Dogs”: the story of a diamond heist gone wrong starring Harvey Keitel, who championed the project after producer Lawrence Bender helped get a copy of Tarantino’s script to the “Mean Streets” actor. “Pulp Fiction” arrived in theaters two years later and marked Tarantino’s first major box office success. The non-linear crime thriller won Best Original Screenplay at the the 67th Academy Awards, but lost both Best Picture and Best Director to Robert Zemeckis’ “Forrest Gump.”
Still, “Pulp Fiction” marked a career high for Tarantino at that time and established relationships with many of his most important collaborators for years to come. From Oscar-wining actors Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman to co-story writer Roger Avary and the late film editor Sally Menke, Tarantino’s many talented friends have played an integral role in the director’s continued success and singular body of work.
Before Tarantino delivered a poignant reflection on cinema itself in the 2019 Best Picture nominee “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” the filmmaker wrote two episodes of “CSI,” enjoyed a cameo role as an Elvis impersonator in an episode of “Golden Girls,” helmed exactly one scene from “Sin City,” and directed nine other feature films, including “Jackie Brown,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Kill Bill,” and “Django Unchained” among others.
So now — to paraphrase “Pulp Fiction” philosopher Jules Winnfield — IndieWire presents the cornerstone of any nutritious film education: All 10 feature films written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, ranked.
Note: The 1995 anthology comedy “Four Rooms,” which includes a segment titled “The Man from Hollywood” directed by Tarantino, has been excluded primarily because it is nowhere close to feature-length, but also because the project was a notorious flop. Additionally, Tarantino’s acting cameos have been broken out by title. In instances where no character name has been provided, a description of the role serves as substitute.
10. “Death Proof” (2007)
“Sin City” director Robert Rodriguez teamed up with Tarantino to produce the double-feature film event “Grindhouse,” which delighted — but, to some extent, also confused — action-loving audiences in 2007.
For his part, Rodriguez created the Rose McGowan-starring “Planet Terror” featuring the iconic image of a one-legged woman using a machine gun for a prosthetic leg. If audiences stayed to enjoy the second half from Tarantino (which, sadly, due to the double-feature concept having fallen out of vogue, not all did), the zany antics of “Death Proof” awaited.
“‘Death Proof’ has got to be the worst movie I ever made,” Tarantino said in a 2012 roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter. “And for a left-handed movie, that wasn’t so bad, alright? So if that’s the worst I ever get, I’m good.”
The underwhelming but still jam-packed thriller marks Tarantino’s second collaboration with stuntwoman Zoë Bell (who plays a fictionalized version of herself here and previously appeared in “Kill Bill”) and his first film with Kurt Russell (who plays a charismatic stalker named “Stuntman Mike” and reunited with Tarantino for “The Hateful Eight”). Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Vanessa Ferlito, Tracie Thomas, and more also appear.
For a more well-loved brainchild of Rodriguez and Tarantino, check out the 1996 cult classic “From Dusk Till Dawn” starring George Clooney.
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9. “Kill Bill: Volume 2” (2004)
Before the “Twilight,” “Harry Potter,” and “Hunger Games” franchises were cutting their finales into chunks, “Kill Bill” had its whopping four-hour runtime bifurcated into a two-film event spanning just as many summers. Spurred in large part by the defunct Weinstein Company (a famous Tarantino supporter for years before its 2017 demise led the filmmaker to sever all ties), the decision has inspired years of spirited debate among diehard fans about which half of “Kill Bill” is better and why.
Of the two parts, “Kill Bill: Volume 2” is arguably more characteristic of Tarantino’s style and delivers a more complete character arc for The Bride, played by an unparalleled Uma Thurman. The sequel to the martial arts-heavy original also builds a steadier tension through its comparatively dense dialogue and is finished off with a decently surprising twist that makes both films more satisfying.
With all that considered, “Kill Bill: Volume 1” still ranks higher on this list because of its mind-boggling action pieces and the essential groundwork it lays for “Kill Bill: Volume 2.” Without it, not even this description makes complete sense.
Tarantino Cameo:N/A
8. “The Hateful Eight” (2015)
When Tarantino kept coming up with Western ideas following the Jamie Foxx-starring “Django Unchained,” the filmmaker started work on a seven-issue comic series about the character’s harrowing journey.
That soon bloomed into the basis for “The Hateful Eight”: arguably Tarantino’s most troubled film that still manages to impress with breathtaking shots from Robert Richardson (who was nominated for Best Cinematography at the Oscars), moving music from Ennio Morricone (who won Best Original Score for the effort), and a fearlesss cast including Jennifer Jason Leigh (a first-time Tarantino collaborator who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress).
After an early draft of “The Hateful Eight” script was leaked online in January 2014, an understandably angry Tarantino vowed to drop the project. However, a staged reading of the script was met with a standing ovation — including from future star Leigh, who was among the audience. Tarantino was ultimately convinced to complete the film.
Although the story is set in Wyoming, shooting for “The Hateful Eight” largely took place in snowy Colorado and a temperature-controlled studio in Los Angeles that was designed to keep the production space just above freezing for added realism. The film chronicles the experience of eight strangers taking shelter from a blizzard (Leigh, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern) and is remarkable within Tarantino’s body of work for its use of spaghetti Western tropes and especially cynical take on the American Civil War.
The project was shot in 70mm as opposed to Tarantino’s typical 35mm. The artistic choice resulted in an infamous dispute between Tarantino, Disney, and the Los Angeles Cinerama Dome — an historic theater that was supposed to screen “The Hateful Eight” during Christmas 2015 but ultimately renegged on its agreement with Tarantino thanks to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
Tarantino Cameo: Voice of an Unseen Narrator
7. “Django Unchained” (2012)
Idris Elba, Cuba Gooding Jr., the late Michael K. Williams, and more top-tier actors were considered for Tarantino’s revisionist history revenge fantasy “Django Unchained.” Will Smith even turned down the starring part, explaining in a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter that he had wanted “to make the greatest love story that African Americans had ever seen” and ultimately wasn’t interested in Tarantino’s more violent vision of slavery in the deep South.
Jamie Foxx snagged the part of Django in the end, acting opposite Christoph Waltz as a German bounty hunter. The film earned Waltz his second Best Supporting Actor win. He previously appeared in Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” which won Waltz his first and only other Oscar in 2009.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays the primary antagonist in “Django Unchained”: a cruel plantation owner who enslaves Django’s wife Broomhilda, played by an electric Kerry Washington. Both DiCaprio and Washington received high praise for their performances, with special attention paid to one infamous scene in which DiCaprio reportedly sliced his hand on a broken glass. The cast completed the scene, featuring a lengthy and menacing monologue from DiCaprio, while the actor continued bleeding profusely.
“Django Unchained” was critically acclaimed upon its release, although it was not without controversy. The film’s use of hate speech was particularly debated. Additional criticism was lobbed at Tarantino’s cameo performance as an Australian mining company worker with particularly harsh digs aimed at his accent work.
All told, the film scored both a Best Picture nod and Best Original Screenplay win for Tarantino. Samuel L. Jackson, Zoë Bell, and more of the writer-director’s repeat collaborators also appear. Sadly, the 2012 film commemorates Tarantino’s first project without longtime editor and creative partner Sally Menke, who died in 2010 while hiking in Los Angeles.
Tarantino Cameo:Robert the Baghead / Frankie the Mining Co. Employee
6. “Jackie Brown” (1997)
Tarantino’s third film — an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s “Rum Punch” — was a Blaxploitation homage starring Pam Grier as “Jackie Brown.” Having played in both Jack Hill’s “Coffy” and “Foxy Hill” (each time as the title character) in the 1970s, Grier brought veteran panache to the part of a drug-smuggling flight attendant. Tarantino wrote the film specifically for Grier and, as she tells it, mailed her a copy shortly after meeting her in a chance roadside encounter in Los Angeles involving director Warrington Hudlin.
Describing her first call to Tarantino about the film, Grier recalled at a TIFF event: “I thought I was playing Melanie, the junkie that gets shot. And he says, ‘No! You’re Jackie Brown!’ And I just couldn’t breathe.”
Due to the overwhelming success of “Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown” and its story of a nasty double-cross involving a dangerous drug dealer (Samuel L. Jackson) and two detectives (Michael Keaton and Michael Bowen) resulted in some of the harshest critiques of Tarantino’s work to that point. Still, the rich and whimsical genre revisitation honored and furthered Grier’s sparkling career, as well as earned Robert Forster his only nod for Best Supporting Actor.
Tarantino Cameo:Voice of an Answering Machine
5. “Kill Bill” (2003)
Tarantino has repeatedly described “Kill Bill” as an effort to challenge and test his filmmaking talents. The two-part martial arts movie mixes the tropes of Blaxsploitation and spaghetti Westerns with outright audacious fight choreography to tell the harrowing revenge story of the Bride: a character Tarantino and Uma Thurman conceived while making “Pulp Fiction.”
“Kill Bill: Volume 1” and “Kill Bill: Volume 2” were Tarantino’s fourth and fifth films, respectively. Neither would earn Oscar nominations, but the project did well at the box office and includes some of Tarantino’s most striking visuals to date. References to the Bruce Lee-starring “Game of Death,” the jidaigeki classic “Shogun Assassin,” and Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” can be found in the film. It pays even more overt homage to Toshiya Fujita’s “Lady Snowblood.”
Fighting yakuza left, right, backward, and upside-down, the Bride has remained an icon of female action films for nearly 20 years. The blood-soaked first half of Tarantino’s two-part saga shows uncharacteristic restraint with dialogue. But what it lacks in quippy one-liners (OK, the use of “Revenge is a dish best served cold…” is undeniably excellent), “Kill Bill: Volume 1” makes up for with slit throats, sliced achilles, and the ingenious set up for martial arts icon David Carradine as the titular Bill in “Volume 2.” Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, Julie Dreyfus, Sonny Chiba, and more also appear.
Tarantino Cameo: Unnamed Crazy 88 Member
4. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019)
Who better to bring megawatt talents Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio together than Tarantino?
Having worked with Pitt on “Inglourious Basterds” and DiCaprio on “Django Unchained,” the Hollywood heavyweight cast the aging A-listers as stuntman Cliff Booth and Hollywood has-been Rick Dalton for this revisionist look at Los Angeles in 1969. Margot Robbie also stars as Sharon Tate, whose vicious murder at the hands of the Manson family serves as a kind of upended centerpiece for Tarantino’s nostalgic SoCal fantasy.
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” was ideated over many years and actually started as a novel, which Tarantino finished and published following the film’s release. More than any other Tarantino title, the 2019 Best Picture nominee is an embarrassment of referential riches and puts the cinephile’s profound love of other artists’ work on dazzling display. That said, the film has received criticism for its representations of real-life figures, most notably including the late Bruce Lee whose daughter Shannon Lee described the offending scene as “mockery.”
Tarantino Cameo:Unseen Director in Red Apple Cigarettes Commercial
3. “Inglourious Basterds” (2009)
Knowing the name of Tarantino’s tenth film, it’s funny to think “Inglourious Basterds” was almost called “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied Germany.” (Fun fact: The phrase appears in the film as a chapter title card instead.) Funnier still? Leonardo DiCaprio almost played antagonist Hans Landa: the multi-lingual Austrian Nazi character that won Christoph Waltz his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
“Inglourious Basterds” remains a (so far) unmatched standout of Tarantino’s later work, deftly translating the screenwriter’s aptitude for English dialogue across multiple languages and an international cast including Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Jacky Ido, Daniel Brühl, and Gedeon Burkhard, among others. “Hostel” writer-director Eli Roth plays a part originally offered to Adam Sandler, and frequent Tarantino collaborators Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel do not appear but have voice roles integral to the darkly hilarious war film.
The “Inglourious Basterds” cast is helmed by a tenacious Brad Pitt in what’s technically his first Tarantino movie. (Pitt also played in Tony Scott’s “True Romance,” which Tarantino wrote but did not direct.) Lieutenant Aldo Rain, allied with France, heads up a rag-tag crew of Jewish soldiers hunting for Nazi scalps in the sweeping World War II epic.
Tarantino Cameo: A scalped corpse, as well as an American soldier in the Nazi propaganda segment “Nation’s Pride” (directed by Eli Roth)
2. “Reservoir Dogs” (1992)
“Reservoir Dogs” is in contention for the greatest indie movie ever made. With a budget of roughly $1.2 million and serious acting talent attached thanks to Tarantino’s flourishing friendship with Harvey Keitel (Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Chris Penn, Lawrence Tierney, and Michael Madsen appear alongside Keitel and Tarantino himself), the low-budget wonder earned early buzz at Sundance before showing at Cannes and TIFF.
Select critics cowered at the intense violence of “Reservoir Dogs”: namely, its notoriously brutal torture scene involving a straight razor, severed ear, and Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You.” Nevertheless, the 1992 gem was quickly accepted as an unmistakable triumph of independent filmmaking, praised for its relentless energy and ruthless vision.
A story of double-crossing gangsters navigating a diamond heist gone awry, “Reservoir Dogs” kicked off Tarantino’s exceptional run in cinema with what would become characteristic controversy for the artist. The film has repeatedly drawn comparisons — and, in some cases, outright plagiarism allegations — in relationship to Ringo Lam’s 1987 film “City on Fire.” Tarantino quipped in a 1994 interview with Empire magazine: “I steal from every single movie ever made.”
Tarantino Cameo: Mr. Brown
1. “Pulp Fiction” (1994)
True to its title, “Pulp Fiction” is the glorious result of Tarantino stringing together a slew of unused ideas, each more action-packed than the last. The 1994 Best Picture contender — which won Tarantino his first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay — boasts leftovers from “True Romance,” “Natural Born Killers,” and at least one unmade script by co-story writer Roger Avary.
“Pulp Fiction” ties that chaotic tension off with a nonlinear narrative bow for the ages, delivering a puzzle box black comedy that has amused and intrigued generations of moviegoers. What begins as an impromptu diner robbery carried out by a lovey-dovey criminal couple (Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth) becomes a saga involving two hitmen (Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta), a suave fixer (Harvey Keitel), a fearsome mobster (Ving Rhames), that mobster’s wife (Uma Thurman), a professional boxer (Bruce Willis), that boxer’s girlfriend (Maria de Medeiros), and an ill-fated sheriff named Zed (Peter Greene).
Travolta’s role of Vince Vega was written with Michael Madsen’s Vic Vega from “Reservoir Dogs” in mind. But when Madsen turned down the part to appear in Lawrence Kasdan’s “Wyatt Earp,” Tarantino conceived of an in-universe brother for Madsen’s character. “Pulp Fiction” revitalized Travolta’s career, with Tarantino citing the actor’s performance in Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out” as inspiration for the casting.
Tarantino Cameo:Jimmie (directed by Robert Rodriguez)
