Only 3 Quentin Tarantino Movies Are Better Than ‘Pulp Fiction’

Quentin Tarantino is undoubtedly divisive as a filmmaker. He’s courted controversy and criticism while simultaneously helping to redefine postmodern cinema. Despite their myriad influences, his films are all uniquely his, with a distinct pop-culture-infused voice behind their stylish visuals and colorful characters. The director broke onto the indie scene in the ’90s with the violent, verbose heist thriller Reservoir Dogs, which established his singular style right from the beginning. He would follow that debut up with what many would call his signature film, the neo-noir crime anthology Pulp Fiction. The Oscar-winning film not only codified the new category that critics and film majors would define as Tarantino-esque, but also so heavily affected the film world at large that it precipitated dozens of imitators within the newly established subgenre.

While Pulp Fiction may be Tarantino’s quintessential film, it’s not his best. If the filmmaker is to be taken at his word, he only has one more film left in his directorial filmography, rounding it out at an even ten — assuming you count Kill Bill as one whole bloody affair. In terms of directors that have been active in as many decades as Tarantino has, that’s a relatively modest number of films, though it still leaves room for plenty of debate. Any fan of Tarantino’s is likely to have their personal favorite film of his, and it’s even arguable that he’s never directed a bad film. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but to take a cue from the filmmaker himself, who has never been shy about giving a hot take, it is without any humility that the following three films directed by Quentin Tarantino are submitted as better than Pulp Fiction.

3

‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ (2019)

Tarantino’s potentially penultimate film is this immensely entertaining hangout of Hollywood revisionist history. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood transports viewers back in time to a transitional period amid the shift from the classic studio regime to the rise of New Hollywood, where a fading TV Western star and his longtime stuntman companion must reckon with a landscape they don’t quite recognize anymore. The chemistry between Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, both of whom we’re reteaming with Tarantino from their separate films, is electric, and while they take up the majority of the marquee, it’s Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate who is the film’s heart and soul. For a Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is surprisingly wistful, nostalgically longing for a bygone era of Hollywood and tenderly mourning the loss of Tate to the disciples of Charles Manson. It showcases the empathetic side of Tarantino, which he had engaged with less and less as his films had dived deeper and deeper into genre and exploitation.

In 1969, Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), the former star of a once-popular Western series, is now relegated to guest stints as a villain on other stars’ shows. He commiserates with his faithful stuntman pal Cliff Booth (Pitt), who has a sordid history that has left him just as washed up. As they cruise and booze together, the film treats viewers to a stunning recreation of the era, one that is also filled with impending doom, as we also spend time with movie star Tate and catch glimpses of the members of the Manson Family. The Spahn Ranch sequence is one of Tarantino’s finest, a masterclass in tension that is a microcosm of the film’s entire purpose. The more familiar finale, where Booth and Dalton intervene with history and make bloody mincemeat of the Manson Family members sent to target Tate’s home, is bloody hilarious. However, it’s in the film’s final moments that it makes its fairy tale intentions clear. It isn’t Tarantino’s Spaghetti Western vision of Hollywood; it’s his love letter to it.

2

‘Inglourious Basterds’ (2009)

Tarantino first dabbled in historical revisionism by having his Inglourious Basterds violently murder Adolf Hitler. While this film doesn’t have the aching sentimentality that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood does, it is a rip-roaring action-adventure war epic that features what are undoubtedly some of Tarantino’s best scenes ever and his greatest villain. From the first moment Christoph Waltz steps on screen in the film’s absolutely nerve-jangling opening to when he leaves it screaming as a swastika is carved into his forehead, it is abundantly clear with affectionate repetition that Tarantino has found his greatest acting collaborator since Samuel L. Jackson. In the conflict that arises between Waltz and the titular Basterds, Tarantino delivers his most entertaining, most immaculately crafted war film.

The Basterds are an all-Jewish group of commandos led by the Tennessee-tinged Aldo Raine (Pitt), who intends to have his men engage in cruel and unusual warfare against the Nazis, drawing the ire of Hitler himself. While they wage war, SS officer Hans Landa (Waltz) is hunting Jewish refugees across Nazi-occupied France. The paths of Landa and the Basterds cross at a fateful film premiere hosted by a cinema operated by Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), whose family was brutally murdered by Landa and who has plans of vengeance all her own. Throw in a Mexican standoff in a tavern and an explosive finale, and Inglourious Basterds stands tall alongside its action-war progenitors. The final shot of the film infamously has Raine, after having carved his aforementioned swastika into Landa, declare that it’s his masterpiece, before smash-cutting to Tarantino’s writer-director credit. The intention is clear, and it’s hard to disagree.

1

‘Jackie Brown’ (1997)

Jackie Brown is Tarantino’s most underrated film, but as the direct follow-up to Pulp Fiction, it had a long shadow cast over it. The film is far more subtle and subdued in comparison, but also leagues more mature and measured. The differences are what likely led many to write it off as minor Tarantino, but time has shown it to be his greatest cinematic achievement. As an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, the film is fairly faithful to the text, but Tarantino’s signature is still all over it, in the dialogue and the casting. Giving ’70s blaxploitation icon Pam Grier her greatest acting showcase, alongside fellow undervalued thespian Robert Forster, the film is anchored by their sincere love story, while the marriage of Leonard and Tarantino’s criminal prose proves as effective as that of any filmmaker and author. Jackie Brown is both the best Elmore Leonard movie and the best Quentin Tarantino movie.

Jackie Brown (Grier) is a middle-aged flight attendant who moonlights as a smuggler for gunrunner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). When she gets pinched by the ATF, she has to play all the angles in order to keep herself out of jail and alive. Conspiring with bail bondsman Max Cherry (Forster), Jackie makes plans to get out from under the threat of Ordell and the ATF, and walk away with half a million dollars clean. The twisty crime plot is vintage Leonard, while the characters all sound distinctly Tarantino. It’s not the pulpy plot or punchy dialogue that leaves the most lasting impression, though; it’s the budding romance between Brown and Cherry. Grier and Forster are consummate pros, and they play off each other beautifully, while Tarantino shows a patience and restraint in their scenes only glimpsed in his prior two movies, and which became exceedingly rare in his future films. It’s pointless to wonder whether Tarantino’s career would have taken a different turn had Jackie Brown been more warmly received, and it’s unlikely the director will return to any criminal world crafted by Leonard for his final film, but audiences would be so lucky to get it.