Best Quentin Tarantino Movies

 MFC TOP 5

Quentin Tarantino is one of the most important directors in contemporary cinema. His creative narrative schemes and dialogues, as well as his unbeatable ability to take entire genres and honor them, have established his style as one of the most remarkable within the industry.

Tarantino’s debut as a screenplay writer was in the late 80’s. Nevertheless, his first work as a director, Reservoir Dogs, came out in 1992. For that film, Tarantino wrote an original script full of images that would later define his personal style, recognized for bringing back the themes that defined the various subgenres of the 20^th century cinema and blending them in films that allow us to enjoy classic stories from a contemporary perspective, in addition to the exceptional dialogues and the use of huge amounts of fake blood.

As his birthday is on March 27th, we want to start the celebration by reviewing his filmography. While we wait for his new movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to be released this year, here you have the Top 5 best Quentin Tarantino movies, according to My Family Cinema.

5. Kill Bill (2004, 2005)

Quentin Tarantino explores the martial arts subgenre in Kill Bill. Led by Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction, 1994), it’s a story about revenge told by means of a challenging narrative structure. It is divided into 10 chapters and, what was originally conceived as a 4-hours long film, ended up being a story split into 2 volumes: Kill Bill: Volume 1, which was released in 2003, followed by Kill Bill: Volume 2, released in 2004. It wasn’t until 2011 that Tarantino was able to release the film as it had been originally intended in Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, where both volumes are combined, giving the audience a new chance to enjoy this story.

 4. Django Unchained (2012)

Taking the responsibility of facing the most ignored themes in Western, such as slavery and the approval of violence, Quentin Tarantino wrote a story that won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2013.

Jamie Foxx (Ray, 2004) plays Django, a character that, being a slave in 1858 in Texas, gives a new meaning to the “outlaw cowboy” role in Western films. With awesome performances by Christoph Waltz (Spectre, 2015) as King Schultz, the bounty hunter (role that led him to win his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2012) and Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant, 2015) as Calvin Candie, the cruel owner of the Candyland plantation, Django Unchained is a must-watch for those who enjoy good cinema.

3. Jackie Brown (1997)

Based on Elmore Leonard’s 1992 novel Rum Punch, Jackie Brown is one of the most overlooked movies of Tarantino‘s filmography. The film is about a crime story far different from what the director usually offers, but it can still be recognized as his, thanks to its intricate narrative techniques.

With the participations of Robert De Niro (Taxi Driver, 1976), Samuel L. Jackson (The Avengers, 2012), Michael Keaton (Birdman, 2014) and led by Pam Grier (Mars Attacks!, 1996), Jackie Brown is presented as a tribute to the Blaxploitation genre, which emerged in the 70’s and stood out for narrating stories based on the exploitation of the African-American culture and a marked use of funk music in their soundtracks.

2. Inglorious Basterds (2009)

After ten years writing the script, Quentin Tarantino surprised the whole world with Inglorious Basterds, his first experience with the subgenre of war films of the 70’s.

The story takes place in an alternative Nazi Germany and explores the basis of an extermination group whose only goal is to kill Nazis.  In addition to outstanding performances of remarkable actors such as Brad Pitt (Fight Club, 1999), Diane Kruger (Troy, 2004) and Michael Fassbender (Prometheus, 2012), it is, undoubtedly, the incredible performance of Christoph Waltz as Standartenführer Hans Landa, (that made him won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2009) what makes Inglorious Basterds one of the best movies by Tarantino.

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)

A Quentin Tarantino ranking of best movies wouldn’t be complete without Pulp Fiction, the first movie that won the director an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1995.

Taking its title from pulp literature, low-budget publications whose stories used to be about what was at that time considered “cheap fiction” (noir stories, sci-fi and horror), this film follows the pattern of his former movie, Reservoir Dogs, and tells us a crime story very similar to the previous one. Thus, expanding and consolidating Tarantino’s work.

Pulp Fiction, with its wonderful dialogues and a black humor that appears in powerful scenes of violence, is not only the best example of Tarantino‘s style but also, it’s a movie whose influence and impact has gone beyond the screen, leaving the audience a bunch of symbols and iconic scenes that, nowadays, are part of universal pop culture.

And so, we end the Top 5 best films by Quentin Tarantino, one of the most emblematic directors of contemporary cinema, whose movies are considered by some as a genre in itself. From My Family Cinema, we wish him a happy birthday and we celebrate it with a marathon of his films.