Quentin Tarantino has directed nine films over his career, and almost every one of them was critically acclaimed, building him a mᴀssive fanbase. He got his start with the independent crime movie Reservoir Dogs, which led to his breakout film Pulp Fiction. He has said he plans to retire after his 10th movie, which will be his next.

Tarantino’s movies have earned him seven Oscar nominations, winning twice for Best Original Screenplay, but he has never won Best Director, despite three nominations. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was his first Best Picture nominee. However, in a recent interview on The Church of Tarantino, he talked about his favorite films.

Quentin Tarantino Says His Masterpiece Is Inglourious Basterds

When looking at his career directing movies, Tarantino has three films that he feels are his best work. Of these three films, he picked Inglourious Basterds as his masterpiece. Tarantino explained that Inglourious Basterds is his best script, although he pointed out that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Hateful Eight are “right behind.“

Interestingly, Tarantino won his two Oscars for screenwriting for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were nominated, and Hateful Eight was not. Tarantino continued that The Hateful Eight was his “best directing of my material.“ However, based on the final product, Tarantino places Inglourious Basterds as the best film.

“Inglourious Basterds is my best,” Tarantino said in the interview. For critics, it sits behind Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs for review scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and for fans, it sits behind those two movies, Django Unchained, and Kill Bill: Vol. 2. However, it was his first Best Director nomination since 1995’s Pulp Fiction and remains a masterpiece.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Is Tarantino’s Favorite Movie

While Quentin Tarantino called Inglourious Basterds his masterpiece, he said that his favorite movie is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. While he didn’t really discuss what made it his favorite, it does make sense based on what Tarantino did next. After making the movie, he wrote the novelization of the film as a book.

Much like Inglourious Basterds, the movie is a fantasy and changes history for the better. While Tarantino killed Hitler in his World War II movie, he stopped the Manson killings in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Published in 2020, his novelization was his first novel under a new deal with Harper Collins and expanded on the story.

He loved his movie so much that he wanted to expand on everything, create new backstories for characters, and show what happened to the characters next. Tarantino also wrote a second novel as a fictional work about the movies of Rick Dalton, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from the movie.

Finally, Tarantino sat down and wrote a sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but he had no intention of making it into a movie. Instead, he handed The Adventures of Cliff Booth off to David Fincher to direct for Netflix, with Brad Pitt returning to the role in a story taking place nine years later.

Quentin Tarantino Says He Was Born To Make Kill Bill

It should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that the movie Quentin Tarantino said he was meant to make was Kill Bill. Tarantino got most of his film education by watching movies in a video store, and he had an immense love for kung-fu movies, exploitation flicks, and various releases in the horror and action genres.

With Kill Bill, he took everything he loved about movies and put it into one giant masterpiece. He had the wronged woman return from the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ to seek revenge on the people who destroyed her life. There were ninjas, sword fights, explosive musical pindrops, and a river of blood flowing throughout the two-part movie.

“I think Kill Bill is the ultimate Quentin movie, like nobody else could’ve made it. Every aspect about it is so particularly ripped, like with tentacles and bloody tissue, from my imagination and my id and my loves and my pᴀssion and my obsession. So I think ‘Kill Bill’ is the movie I was born to make”

While Tarantino called The Hateful Eight his best screenplay, he said that Kill Bill was different. He said that The Hateful Eight had everything he needed in the screenplay to direct. With Kill Bill, he had a solid idea, and then he had to create the scenes and how they would look and play out. What resulted was another masterpiece.

It is no surprise that Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were not listed, as they were Quentin Tarantino’s first two movies, and he likely sees them as learning experiences. Films like Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood showed him at the top of the game, and he is correct in ranking them at the top.

Sources: The Church of Tarantino via Variety