RANKING: QUENTIN TARANTINO FILMOGRAPHY

Few filmmakers have developed a style as immediately recognizable as Quentin Tarantino. From nonlinear storytelling and unforgettable dialogue to genre-bending narratives, deep-cut pop-culture references and an unmistakable love for cinema, Tarantino has spent decades turning his influences into something entirely his own.

For this ranking, we’re looking back at his complete feature-film catalog—from Reservoir Dogs to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood—and ranking each film from worst to best. With Kill Bill treated as a single film, nine features enter the conversation. The question isn’t whether Tarantino has left his mark on cinema—it’s which of his films left the biggest one.

DEATH PROOF

Death Proof

Released: April 6, 2007
Runtime: 113 minutes
Genre: Exploitation / Thriller / Road Movie
Starring: Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Zoë Bell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Originally released as part of the Grindhouse double feature with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Tarantino’s contribution follows Stuntman Mike, a psychopathic stunt driver who uses his seemingly indestructible car to stalk women.

JACKIE BROWN

Jackie Brown

Released: December 25, 1997
Runtime: 154 minutes
Genre: Crime / Thriller
Starring: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton, Robert De Niro

Tarantino’s only feature film directly adapted from another author’s novel, based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch. The story follows flight attendant Jackie Brown, who becomes caught between an arms dealer, federal agents and a bail bondsman.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS

Inglourious Basterds

Released: August 21, 2009
Runtime: 153 minutes
Genre: War / Drama / Black Comedy
Starring: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger

Set during World War II, the film follows several intersecting stories involving Jewish-American soldiers hunting Nazis, a French Jewish woman seeking revenge and a German officer investigating a cinema-based assassination plot.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT

THE HATEFUL EIGHT

Released: December 25, 2015
Runtime: 187 minutes
Genre: Western / Mystery / Thriller
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern

Set several years after the Civil War, the film brings eight suspicious strangers together inside an isolated Wyoming stagecoach lodge during a blizzard. The film gradually turns into a contained mystery involving deception, murder and competing identities.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

Released: July 26, 2019
Runtime: 161 minutes
Genre: Comedy / Drama
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Margaret Qualley

Set in Los Angeles in 1969, the film follows struggling television actor Rick Dalton and his stuntman/best friend Cliff Booth as Hollywood undergoes a cultural transformation. Sharon Tate and the Manson Family also exist within the film’s alternate-history narrative.

RESEVOIR DOGS

Reservoir Dogs

Released: October 2, 1992
Runtime: 99 minutes
Genre: Crime / Heist / Thriller
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, Chris Penn, Lawrence Tierney, Edward Bunker

Tarantino’s feature-film debut and the film that immediately established his signature combination of nonlinear storytelling, lengthy dialogue, pop-culture references and extreme violence. The story follows a group of criminals whose jewelry heist collapses after one of them is revealed to be an undercover police officer.

DJANGO

Django Unchained

Released: December 25, 2012
Runtime: 165 minutes
Genre: Western / Drama / Action
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson

Set in the American South two years before the Civil War, the film follows Django, an enslaved man freed by bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz. Together they search for Django’s wife, Broomhilda, who is being held at a Mississippi plantation.

KILL BILL

Kill Bill: Volume 1

Released: October 10, 2003
Runtime: 111 minutes
Genre: Martial Arts / Action / Revenge
Starring: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen

Kill Bill: Volume 2

Released: April 16, 2004
Runtime: 137 minutes
Genre: Martial Arts / Action / Revenge
Starring: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Gordon Liu

The first chapter of Tarantino’s sprawling revenge saga follows The Bride, a former assassin who awakens from a coma after being attacked by her former colleagues on her wedding day. She begins hunting down the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.

The conclusion to The Bride’s revenge mission shifts away from the first volume’s emphasis on action and toward character development, dialogue and mythology surrounding Bill and The Bride.

PULP FICTION

Pulp Fiction

Released: October 14, 1994
Runtime: 154 minutes
Genre: Crime / Dark Comedy
Starring: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Harvey Keitel

A nonlinear collection of interconnected Los Angeles crime stories centered around hitmen Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield, boxer Butch Coolidge and gangster Marsellus Wallace. The film became Tarantino’s breakthrough and one of the defining American films of the 1990s.