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Reservoir Dogs
Everything is here – the genre twists, the non-chronological storytelling, the mind-blowing music choices, the seemingly-incongruous conversations about cultural minutiae, the shocking violence, and above all, a sense of pure, unalloyed cool. It's slick, funny, intelligent, and uber-stylish, an undeniable crime classic. -
Pulp Fiction
Across a set of interweaving tales, a host of hitmen, armed robbers, fixers and an ageing boxer find themselves entangled in stories of death, drugs, and lucky escapes in '90s LA – all interspersed with self-aware conversations on pop culture, religion, and the nature of crime itself. It's about everything and nothing at once, an exercise in pure style but with substance to match, and dialogue so memorable that entire chunks have entered the cultural consciousness at large. -
Jackie Brown
In some circles, Tarantino's third film is hailed as his undersung masterpiece – the director's most refined and restrained work. It still oozes all of the QT hallmarks – its use of Bobby Womack's 'Across 110th Street' in the opening credits might be the best ever Tarantino needle-drop, there's classic dialogue and a string of great performances. -
Kill Bill: Volume 1
Presenting a hyperreal world of eye-popping primary colours, fountains of blood, and leagues of comic-booky assassins, Kill Bill Volume 1 is a glorious celebration of maximalism, indulging in extended anime sequences and all-out yakuza showdowns. Uma Thurman is nothing short of iconic as The Bride, seeking out vengeance against the fellow hit-squad who turned on her, utterly convincing as a nigh-on unstoppable one-woman army. -
Kill Bill: Volume 2
The filmmaker himself might argue that both parts of Beatrix Kiddo's rip-roaring rampage of revenge are really one movie – except, they feel like two distinct entities. Where the first instalment is steeped in Eastern iconography, Volume 2 goes Western as the Bride tracks down Budd, Elle Driver, and eventually Bill himself. Slower and less kinetic than the previous film, it nevertheless delivers plenty of bravura sequences. -
Death Proof
It's the only QT film that tends to get a bit of a kicking. It finds the filmmaker in intentionally scuzzy B-movie form, cribbing from his favourite car movies and psycho thrillers to create a thrilling psycho-in-a-car movie. For the most part, it's a zippily entertaining hang-out movie interrupted with bursts of gratuitous violence and Grindhouse gruesomeness. -
Inglourious Basterds
A sprawling and anarchically anachronistic historical tale that sees French cinephiles and vengeful Jewish soldiers destroy the Nazis. If his greatest strength has always been his writing, the Basterds screenplay is top-tier Tarantino – see the gut-wrenchingly tense opening encounter with Christoph Waltz's Colonel Hans Landa (one of QT's best characters), or the ever-ratcheting stakes of the card came in the La Louisiane chapter. -
Django Unchained
For the most part, it's a rip-roaring Southern-as-Western revenge drama that creates a bonafide Black icon in freed slave Django and one that, for all its indulgences of revelling in the worst of plantation slavery, also revels in depicting violent vengeance against an array of truly despicable racists. In many ways, all the QT hits are present – anachronistic needle-drops, witty repartee knowledge of genre. Its cartoonish climactic shoot-out remains a blood-soaked blast. -
The Hateful Eight
The Hateful Eight finds Tarantino at his meanest – stranding a bunch of deplorables in a cabin in the American west post-Civil War, where they'll plot, scheme, berate and attack each other across one volatile night. In some ways, its three-hour parade of ugliness is a lot to take, but it's a deliciously dark work, at once a deliberately-paced epic, swapping whizz-bangery for tense theatrical conversations that constantly threaten to bubble over into confrontation. -
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
An ode to the dying days of Hollywood's Golden Age, allowing the filmmaker to recreate the Tinseltown of his youth while pitching two of his own creations into the middle of it all. Thus you have Leonardo DiCaprio's insecure actor Rick Dalton and his easygoing stunt double, Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth, rubbing shoulders with Sharon Tate (an underused Margot Robbie), Steve McQueen, and Bruce Lee, in a loving and playfully metatextural blend of fact and fiction.