Death Proof (2007)

Alongside Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino rolled the dice on Grindhouse, a loving piss-take of those crusty exploitation reels that used to rattle through sticky-floored cinemas in the ’70s. Where Planet Terror went all out with mutant limbs and machine-gun prosthetics, Death Proof took the slower, talkier route – a shaggy, petrol-soaked thriller about a washed-up stuntman who turns his car into a murder weapon.

Kurt Russell gives it some welly as the drawling psycho behind the wheel, but the film never quite gets out of second gear. The dialogue, usually Tarantino’s bread and butter, ends up sounding like blokes at a pub quiz trying to remember obscure slasher flicks. There’s charm in the chaos, but it drags its heels for too long, only roaring to life in the final chase scene, which is a belter.

For all its screeching tyres and cinematic throwbacks, Death Proof feels like Tarantino chasing a vibe that never fully lands. It’s all foreplay, no finish – a mixtape of cool ideas stuck on loop.

Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004)

The near-deranged energy of Kill Bill: Volume 1 carries the film like a sugar rush – all blood, blades and B-movie bravado. There’s no time for a proper, complicated story – and for what Tarantino’s chasing here, who gives a toss?

Uma Thurman leads as the Bride, slicing through the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Gordon Liu and Michael Parks all return to the fold, lending a strange sort of gravitas to what is, essentially, a stylish revenge cartoon on speed.

Where Volume 1 was all spectacle, Volume 2 leans into the slow burn. It’s talky, theatrical and oddly meditative, as if Tarantino wanted to prove he could do Sergio Leone just as well as Sonny Chiba. The violence is more pointed, the characters less cartoonish, and for the first time in the saga, there’s a hint of real emotional fallout. It doesn’t always land – some scenes drag like a Sunday hangover – but there’s something satisfying in watching the Bride finally reckon with the mess she’s made.

Still, for all its tonal shift, Volume 2 raked it in at the box office and gave Tarantino the chance to show he could just about stick a landing, even if he did fumble the dismount.

Django Unchained (2012)

A violent revenge film concerning a freed slave who sets out to rescue his wife from a plantation with the help of a German bounty hunter, Django Unchained addresses the slave trade of the 15th century with a heavy hand.

In part, an aid to blacksploitation cinema, as well as Sergio Leone’s westerns, a terrific Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz elevate the material, only until Tarantino’s token cameo anchors the film into absurdity.

Discussing his project, Tarantino once commented: “To do movies that deal with America’s horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like Spaghetti Westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they’re genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it’s ashamed of it, and other countries don’t really deal with because they don’t feel they have the right to.”

In what is now a typical trend in Tarantino pictures, the cast was jam-packed with high profile names. Joining Foxx and Waltz on the line-up included the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L Jackson, Kerry Washington and many more.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Though on the surface, Inglorious Basterds, about a group of Jewish soldiers on a mission to assassinate Nazi generals, seems indulgent, for the most part, it showcases some of Tarantino’s finest work this side of the millennium.

The introduction scene is one of his very best, meticulously orchestrated, with tight dialogue and striking use of sound. Though ultimately it falters similarly to many of Tarantino’s works, bludgeoning its overt style, edge and ego over your head, tossing its well-constructed story to the pavement.

While it may not be his most celebrated effort, Tarantino did state that opening scene of Inglorious Basterds, one in which the menacing Hans Landa interrogates a French dairy farmer, is the “favourite thing he’s “ever written”.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

The eighth project in Tarantino’s canon, The Hateful Eight devoted itself to the genre that has long inspired the director in question.

Fueled by the unmistakable atmosphere of the late Ennio Morricone’s fantastic score, the film becomes a microcosm of the genre itself, set within the restricted confines of a wood cabin in the dead of winter.

Distrust and deceit run riot through the cold desolate pines and the bleak interior of the cabin itself, inhabited by a bounty hunter, his prisoner and six other untrustworthy characters. What the film may lack in story, it makes up for in atmosphere, creating a palpable sense of unease.

Tarantino leans heavily on dialogue here with long, winding conversations that double as chess matches, all building towards inevitable bursts of violence. It’s theatrical to the point of claustrophobic, and while some scenes test the patience, there’s a strange satisfaction in watching the tension simmer just below the surface. The Hateful Eight takes its time, but it lingers.

Kill Bill (2003)

Veering away from stylish, relatively minimal crime stories, Kill Bill is in many ways the hinge of Tarantino’s career, marking a notable move toward revenge stories of violent consequences.

Nonetheless, Kill Bill is a cinematic playground showcasing Tarantino at his most free and expressive, utilising an exaggerated soundtrack and gaudy cinematography in his homage to B-movie martial-arts cinema.

The film offered many different challenges for Tarantino. Despite battling with the exceedingly long run time, the director once commented that the most troubling part Kill Bill’s creation was “trying to take myself to a different place as a filmmaker and throw my hat in the ring with other great action directors”.

With the sheer amount of pressure he was mounting on himself, Tarantino was determined to make “one of the greatest, most exciting sequences in the history of cinema”.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Violent betrayal and nasty personalities flood the decaying urban wasteland of early Los Angeles, in Reservoir Dogs, a stylish debut from the writer/director, who stamped his foot into the curb of the early ’90s film industry.

Never one to shy away from openly discussing his influences, the director once confessed that Reservoir Dogs was directed influenced by Stanley Kubrick film The Killing. “I didn’t go out of my way to do a rip-off of The Killing, but I did think of it as my ‘Killing’, my take on that kind of heist movie,” he once said.

However, despite the visionary aid, this is a Tarantino broth boiled down to its sheer basics, with off-beat suave caricatures, a pulpy soundtrack and a simple plot regarding a jewellery heist gone wrong. Reservoir Dogs is all the better for this, however, without the conceit of contemporary Tarantino, it was allowed to flourish as a riveting, contained story of cut-throat crime.  

What Reservoir Dogs lacks in scale, it makes up for in sheer confidence. It’s a film that talks fast, bleeds hard and couldn’t care less if you keep up. From the opening diner chat to the warehouse bloodbath, Tarantino let character and dialogue do the heavy lifting…and somehow, it worked. It’s raw, it’s lean, and it doesn’t waste a second pretending to be anything other than what it is: a low-budget banger with big brass balls.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Tarantino’s most recent outing demonstrates that the restrained approach of his early career remains the most efficient weapon in his armoury.

The director ditches his recent thematic devotion to tales of slaughter and revenge for a more controlled, personal tale of a television star and his stunt double during Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’ of the late ’60s.

This is a bizarrely yet totally coherently entwined with the tale of the infamous Manson Family murders, culminating in a climatic bombshell, crafting a fairy-tale turmoil of terror under the setting sun of Hollywood’s golden age. 

Tarantino famously told cinematographer Robert Richardson about his drive: “I want it to feel retro but I want it to be contemporary,” he said. Despite the open-ended nature of that statement, it sums up the result perfectly.

Jackie Brown (1997)

Bookending Tarantino’s flawless debut trilogy of un-connected films, Jackie Brown shows sophistication in his filmmaking ability, often lost in the fog of chaos and violence.

This is his masterpiece of characterisation, where every individual feels separate and tangible, autonomous and larger than the runtime of the film itself. A tenacious performance from Pam Grier as the title character leads the film down a slow narrative spiral, performing mind-games with the supporting cast of devious villains and slimeballs.

Based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, it’s the only time Tarantino’s adapted someone else’s story, and oddly, it’s where he feels most restrained – and maybe even most grown up. The usual flair’s still there, but it’s rolled back in favour of patience, pacing and properly earned pay-offs. It’s a film about people trying to outwit each other without drawing a weapon, and for once, the tension comes from silence, not splatter.

Robert Forster, Samuel L Jackson, and Robert De Niro are all magnetic in their own way, but it’s Grier who owns the film: sharp-eyed, world-weary, and constantly five steps ahead. Tarantino doesn’t just direct her; he builds a world where a middle-aged, underpaid flight attendant is the smartest person in the room, and somehow it feels effortless. Jackie Brown isn’t just underrated, it’s the film that proves he’s more than just blood and bravado.

This is Tarantino’s left side of his brain, smart, subtle and suave.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

All the knowledge, cinematic vision and unfounded enjoyment of Tarantino’s time working as a video-store clerk, spills onto celluloid with no dams to halt his creativity.

As Pulp Fiction swaggered into cinemas in 1994, its influence spread like cigarette smoke and has since become a touchstone in cultural significance and American filmmaking. “I got the idea of doing something that novelists get a chance to do but filmmakers don’t: telling three separate stories, having characters float in and out with different weights depending on the story,” Tarantino once explained.

Discussing his vision behind the film, the director added: “[It] was basically to take like the oldest chestnuts that you’ve ever seen when it comes to crime stories — the oldest stories in the book … You know, ‘Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife’ — the oldest story about… the guy’s gotta go out with the big man’s wife and don’t touch her. You know, you’ve seen the story a zillion times.”

He added: “I’m using old forms of storytelling and then purposely having them run awry. Part of the trick is to take these movie characters, these genre characters and these genre situations and actually apply them to some of real life’s rules and see how they unravel.”

A delirious ride through a retro-American otherworld, marked with dark humour and a gloriously compiled soundtrack, Pulp Fiction’s rough edges and fantastical feel launch it into a realm unplaceable.

It wasn’t just a film by Tarantino, it was a reshuffle. The kind of thing that made other directors either pack up or completely change course. Suddenly, indie cinema had a new accent: fast-talking, blood-soaked, full of needle drops and bad decisions. It made being clever look easy, and being cool look accidental. But some 20-odd years later, people still nick bits from it like it only came out last week.