Quentin Tarantino Reveals Which Of His Movies Is His ‘Masterpiece’—And Which Is His Favorite

The acclaimed auteur holds three of his films in especially high regard.

Even Quentin Tarantino has a favorite Quentin Tarantino movie. During a two-hour appearance on the Church of Tarantino—a podcast dedicated entirely to discussing the acclaimed filmmaker’s work—Tarantino named a trio of his films that he believes are especially great.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is my favorite, Inglourious Basterds is my best,” Tarantino said of his filmography. “But I think Kill Bill is the ultimate Quentin movie, like nobody else could’ve made it. Every aspect [of] it is so particularly ripped, like with tentacles and bloody tissue, from my imagination and my id and my loves and my passion and my obsession.”He continued, “I think Kill Bill is the movie I was born to make, I think Inglourious Basterds is my masterpiece, but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is my favorite.”

As Collider points, Tarantino has won only two Academy Awards over his three-decade career—both of which were Original Screenplay awards for Django Unchained and Pulp Fiction. Interestingly, he ranks neither as his best script.

“I think Inglourious Basterds is my best script, and I think Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time In Hollywood are right behind,” Tarantino revealed. “But there’s an aspect of Hateful Eight that I actually think is probably my best directing of my material, i.e., the material is written and it’s solid. So it’s not like I have to create it, like Kill Bill, it’s solid, it’s right there and I actually think it’s my best servicing [of] my material as a director.”

In the same episode, the auteur explained why he decided to let director David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven, The Social Network) helm The Adventures of Cliff Booth, his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel that sees Brad Pitt reprise his role as a veteran stuntman. “I love this script, but I’m still walking down the same ground I’ve already walked,” Tarantino revealed. “It just kind of unenthused me. This last movie, I’ve got to not know what I’m doing again. I’ve got to be in uncharted territory.”

That lack of vigor also led Tarantino to abandon making his script for The Movie Critic, which was billed as his final movie and had full backing from Sony Pictures. “I wasn’t really excited about dramatizing what I wrote when I was in pre-production,” Tarantino said. “There was nothing to figure out,” he added. “It was too much like the last one.”

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