The greatest attribute Quentin Tarantino has given filmmakers and cinephiles alike is the desire to look back at movies they might have never seen or explored. And no one loves movies as much as Tarantino. This is evident in all of his work, but it's especially evident in last year's Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood.
“When I make a film, I am hoping to reinvent the genre a little bit,” Tarantino once said. “I just do it my way. I make my own little Quentin versions of them… I consider myself a student of cinema. It’s almost like I am going for my professorship in cinema, and the day I die is the day I graduate. It is a lifelong study.”
Well, those tendencies have led us to some great movies.
Back in 2008, Tarantino submitted a handwritten list to Empire Magazine that offers up 11 of his favorite films. The genres were all over the map. We know what his favorite overall westerns have been but I loved looking at a complete list of all the best work really got me excited.
Check out the list below.
The 11 Best Movies of All Time According to Tarantino
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – Sergio Leone, 1966.
- Rio Bravo – Howard Hawks, 1959.
- Blow Out – Brian De Palma, 1981.
- Taxi Driver – Martin Scorsese, 1976.
- His Girl Friday – Howard Hawks, 1940.
- Five Fingers of Death – Jeong Chang-Hwa, 1972.
- Pandora’s Box – G. W. Pabst, 1929.
- Carrie – Brian De Palma, 1976.
- Unfaithfully Yours – Preston Sturges, 1948.
- Five Graves to Cairo – Billy Wilder, 1943.
- Jaws – Steven Spielberg, 1975.
It's no wonder Tarantino put Leone's masterpiece first. He once said, “I would go even as far as to say that [Leone] is the greatest combination of a complete film stylist, where he creates his own world, and storyteller. Those two are almost never married. To be as great a stylist as he is and create this operatic world, and to do this inside a genre, and to pay attention to the rules of the genre, while breaking the rules all the time — he is delivering you a wonderful western.”
The rest include his friends Scorsese, De Palma, and Spielberg, as well as directors from across the world.
Do you agree with Tarantino's list?
For me, it seems more like favorites and not the greatest films ever made, but... who knows?
The debate begins in the comments.
