Phil's Top 10* movies directed by Quentin Tarantino, presented for no particular reason, complete with rambling commentary. * Yes, I know he considers Kill Bill to be a single film but for features he directed this gets me to ten, so what the hell. 01 - Once Upon A Time In Hollywood - This might be the recency bias showing but, man, I just loved this movie. It was a sprawling shaggy dog journey into full on nostalgia for QT and I was delighted to be there just basking in it. This may drop a bit over time but I really enjoyed just hanging out in late 60s LA for two and a half hours and probably would have been happy to do so for another hour or so easy. That said, it wasn't just hanging out, with some incredibly tense moments, such as the ranch sequence and the finale. Bonus points for an incredible soundtrack that avoids a lot of the overused touchstones of the era and features interludes from famed, Roger Corman-adjacent disc jockey The Real Don Steele. 02 - Kill Bill Vol. 1 - Even if it's half a movie this still comes close to topping my list. It's just the perfect amalgamation of all of Tarantino's interests: 70s crime films, yakuza movies, kung fu movies, chanbara movies, amazing needle drops, and long, lingering, loving looks at feet. We love you, Quentin! Don't ever change! Absolutely deserves bonus points in my book for perhaps singlehandedly causing the Lady Snowblood films and manga to be published in English. 03 - Pulp Fiction - In terms of structure probably his finest film, with all the back and forth continuity coming together and the final scene with Jules' speech providing a powerful finale. But, hey, let's not forget the boundless style, black humor, soundtrack cues, hyper violence, and gimp action. Not to mention Christopher Walken delivering the most amazing speech of his entire career with a completely straight face. So damn good, not least because I saw it and bought the soundtrack as soon as possible afterward and for the rest of the semester throughout the dorm you'd periodically hear someone cranking up "Miserlou". 04 - Kill Bill Vol. 2 - With a build up like Vol. 1 it was pretty much impossible that this was going to be able to live up to it, but QT takes a pretty great swing at it either way. I'm wondering how I would have reacted to Kill Bill in a world where it was released as a single film, the long-awaited Whole Bloody Affair edition, and first experienced it as a four hour theatrical film; that mighta been way too much Kill Bill for anyone to absorb in a single go. As it is, the Western pastiche elements are fun but perhaps not as amazing as the yakuza/Bruce Lee homages in the first volume. On the flip side, the Shaw Brothers training montage tribute here is just phenomenal and really elevates the whole movie for me. Plus: Sonny Chiba! David Carradine! Death blow punches! Damn, now I want to re-watch both Kill Bill flicks. 05 - Inglorious Basterds - QT tackles the WWII film by way of Macaroni Combat flicks outta Italy and made a fun historical revisionism romp...which he then cast Christoph Waltz in, thus making the film 10 times better than it would have been otherwise. Well, that's exaggerating - this would have been a helluva fun time either way - but Waltz is just amazing, to the point where I'm now eying the KBV2 ranking and wondering if I should adjust things. Either way, it's a hoot, interspersed with moments of incredible tension. 06 - Django Unchained - The historical revision phase continues with QT tackling the blaxploitation spaghetti Western. And, I mean, it's fucking awesome. Jamie Foxx kills it (and everything in sight, really) as Django, Leo reveals his amazing comedic chops, and we get even more Christoph Waltz, fuck yeah. Plus hateful racists die en masse in the least subtle, most satisfying reaction to the horrors of slavery possible. Plus, Franco Nero cameo, gotta love that. 07 - Jackie Brown - I know full well that I have ranked this too low, since I haven't seen this movie in over two decades. So, I should re-watch it and probably bump it up three or four ranks at the least. Though, I'm not entirely sure if that would happen - on the one hand, being a direct adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel means that this is probably the most conventionally structured of QT's flicks but at the same time it means it doesn't quite have the same touch as his other movies. I figure this makes it the sort of outlier where if you don't care for Tarantino's work - and it's stylized enough that despite my love for it I can certainly see that - this might be your absolute favorite. All that being said: it's an amazing crime film, Robert Forster is incredible, DeNiro is having a great time and hasn't quite yet hit his phoning it in phase, Sam Jackson is as great as ever - but, my god, Pam Grier is just as amazing in this as she ever was in classics like Coffy or Foxy Brown. It's a good movie no matter what but Pam Grier just elevates the whole thing to another level. Obviously what we need is a QT film co-starring Christoph Waltz and Pam Grier. 07 - Reservoir Dogs - Man, Tarantino is just killing it right outta the gate. Okay, so maybe he lifted the plot directly from the Hong Kong gangster film City On Fire, but he reworked it so thoroughly, especially with the structure of the film as a precursor to Pulp Fiction, that he makes it totally his own. Harvey Keitel is amazing, Steve Buscemi gets to deliver the monologue of his career with the "Like A Virgin" speech, Michael Madsen is terrifying in the "Stuck In The Middle With You" sequence, and a bunch of dudes marching in unison to music hadn't looked better since Buckaroo Banzai. This flick is still a real kick in the teeth after almost thirty years. 09 - The Hateful Eight - I've put his eighth film in ninth place but that doesn't mean I don't really enjoy it. Admittedly, my efforts to see it in 70mm wound up with less than amazing seats but it was still an incredible theatrical experience. And, for QT mining his spaghetti Western nostalgia some more I dug that he was taking inspiration from stuff like Cut-Throats Nine, a truly nasty film set in the depths of winter. And as a locked room mystery of sorts this is still pretty fucking great. Why does it hit lower in my rankings? I mean, something has to be down there at this point. Plus, while there's plenty to love here - a tremendous speech by Sam Jackson, an amazingly crochety appearance by Bruce Dern, and a delicious sense of tension throughout - it still maybe doesn't gel together quite as well as I mighta hoped. Obviously I should revisit it and see how it holds up, even if I'm not gonna get to see it again in 70mm any time soon. 10 - Grindhouse: Death Proof - Well, something had to be last, and I'm pretty comfortable putting Death Proof here. Now, if we were taking Grindhouse as a unified whole - both halves of the double feature, including the amazing trailers and commercial interludes, the ranking for this as a pure theatrical experience would be much higher. The sum of Grindhouse is definitely greater than its parts in this case. Taken by itself, however, Death Proof is perhaps the most Tarantino of all Tarantino films, with the first half featuring a truly indulgent amount of chatty dialogue and somehow even more extensive foot gazing than the "wiggle your big toe" bit from Kill Bill. It's fine, but it also sort of drifts on by rather than really building up tension for the second act. And, hey, my love of OUATIH shows that I'm not opposed to just kinda hanging out and meandering with Tarantino. Still, I do find that first half to be slow going. Now, the second half kicks it into gear with Kurt Russell being just fucking great as Stuntman Mike and having a helluva great time with the part, plus Zoe Bell gleefully showing off her stunt chops and badass women kicking vehicular mayhem ass in the finale is pretty magnificent in a Corman-esque drive-in sort of way. So, even if it comes in last it still has a big place in my heart. There you go, my top ten, apropos of nothin', with plenty of rambling thoughts included. I'm excited to see where Tarantino's purportedly 10th and final film falls in my rankings and seeing how these rankings change with revisitation. More importantly, I do hope Tarantino gets over this whole "ten films and I'm done" bit and provides us with amazing cinema for many years to come.