Quentin Tarantino names his best and worst movies
Most of the greatest filmmakers and artists of all time are usually fueled by a pretty big ego. From Madonna to John Lennon and James Cameron to Quentin Tarantino, being a great creative means a delicate balance between self-confidence and arrogance. An enigmatic director, Tarantino has never been afraid to share his opinions about his fellow filmmakers and Hollywood icons, even going so far as to criticise and praise his own movies.
Many consider Tarantino’s best work to be his 1994 Palme d’Or and Oscar winner Pulp Fiction, which had a remarkable impact on late 1990s pop culture. Creating characters and scenes that are still referenced to this day, the movie elevated the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, John Travolta, Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi to international acclaim.
Yet, in Tarantino’s eyes, Pulp Fiction comes further down the pecking order in favour of 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. “I do think that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is my best film,” he stated in an interview with Reel Blend, with the filmmaker following up on his self-proclaimed classic with a novel of the same name in 2021, which continued the stories of Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton and Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth.
Whilst the director has plenty of love for his 2019 film, he is also more than happy to slam another one of his movies, namely the 2007 Grindhouse flick Death Proof.
A celebration of the splatter horror sub-genre that thrived in the underground film scene in the late 20th century, Tarantino collaborated with Robert Rodriguez for the double bill, creating an immersive experience that treated audiences to two movies for the price of one. Rodriguez’s zombie horror Planet Terror was considered the better of the two films, but in general, audiences didn’t really seem to understand what the pair was trying to do with the project.
“With Grindhouse, I think me and Robert just felt that people had a little more of a concept of the history of double features and exploitation movies,” Tarantino once said of the film’s failure, “No, they didn’t. At all. They had no idea what the fuck they were watching. It meant nothing to them, alright, what we were doing. So that was a case of being a little too cool for school”.
Years later, Tarantino doubled down and admitted it was the worst of his career: “To me, it’s all about my filmography, and I want to go out with a terrific filmography…Death Proof has got to be the worst movie I ever made…for a left-handed movie, that wasn’t so bad, all right? So if that’s the worst I ever get, I’m good. But I do think one of those out-of-touch, old, limp, flaccid-dick movies costs you three good movies as far as your rating is concerned”.
In the interest of positivity, take a look at the trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, below, the movie Tarantino considers to be the very best of his career.
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