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Quentin Tarantino’s 11 Favorite Movies Of All Time

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Ignacio Weil

Entertainment - July 23rd 2026, 18:30 GMT+2

Cropped Portada — About This Gallery:

For this gallery, we’ve gathered 11 movies Quentin Tarantino has singled out as personal favorites across interviews, podcasts, and public conversations. Consider it a tour through his cinematic obsessions rather than an official ranking of the greatest films ever made. Which selection feels indispensable, and which one caught you completely off guard? Let us know in the comments. | © Miramax

Cropped Carrie — 1. Carrie (1976)

Brian De Palma turns high school cruelty into operatic horror, with Sissy Spacek making Carrie White both frightening and painfully sympathetic. The prom massacre gets all the attention, but the real damage is done earlier through Piper Laurie’s religious fanaticism and the casual sadism of Carrie’s classmates. Tarantino’s admiration makes sense: split screens, sudden violence, black comedy, and revenge delivered with theatrical precision are all sitting right there. | © Red Bank Films

Cropped Blow Out — 2. Blow Out (1981)

A movie sound technician accidentally records evidence of a political assassination, sending John Travolta into a conspiracy that grows nastier with every replay. De Palma borrows the basic setup of *Blow-Up* but swaps photography for audio, turning clicks, screams, and scraps of tape into detective tools. Tarantino has long championed Travolta’s performance, and the film’s cruel final punch remains one of the bleakest jokes ever smuggled into a thriller. | © Filmways Pictures

Cropped Jaws — 3. Jaws (1975)

Steven Spielberg made generations suspicious of open water without showing much of the shark for nearly half the movie. Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss give *Jaws* its bruised personality, especially once the story leaves Amity Island and becomes a three-man pressure cooker at sea. Tarantino has praised it as an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, where populist entertainment, character comedy, and primal terror work together with almost insulting ease. | © Universal Pictures

Cropped Taxi Driver — 4. Taxi Driver (1976)

Travis Bickle drives through New York as though the city were personally conspiring to ruin his evening, and Robert De Niro never asks the audience to excuse him. Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader build a disturbing portrait of loneliness curdling into violence, accompanied by Bernard Herrmann’s final film score. Its grimy streets, damaged antihero, and explosive finale made *Taxi Driver* an obvious touchstone for Tarantino’s own morally unstable underworlds. | © Columbia Pictures

Cropped The Good the Bad and the Ugly — 5. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966)

Sergio Leone stretches a treasure hunt across the American Civil War, letting Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach lie, bargain, and shoot their way toward buried gold. Ennio Morricone’s score practically narrates the movie, while the cemetery showdown turns three men staring at one another into blockbuster spectacle. Tarantino has repeatedly placed this spaghetti Western at the top of his favorites, and its fingerprints cover his entire career. | © Produzioni Europee Associate

Cropped Five Fingers of Death — 6. Five Fingers Of Death (1972)

Released internationally as *King Boxer*, this Shaw Brothers martial arts hit follows a young fighter mastering the deadly Iron Palm technique before a major tournament. Lo Lieh’s glowing red hands, brutal rival schools, and wonderfully unsubtle sound cues helped introduce kung fu cinema to a broad American audience. Tarantino later borrowed its piercing alarm sting for *Kill Bill*, making this selection less a surprising deep cut than a piece of creative evidence. | © Shaw Brothers Studio

Cropped Unfaithfully Yours — 7. Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Preston Sturges gives Rex Harrison an entire orchestra and lets jealousy turn him into a would-be criminal mastermind. Suspecting his wife of infidelity, a celebrated conductor imagines three elaborate responses while performing classical music, only to discover that real life refuses to follow his elegant scenarios. The contrast between sophisticated fantasy and physical humiliation is wickedly precise, and its mixture of romance, murder, and farce feels tailor-made for Tarantino’s mischievous tastes. | © 20th Century Fox

Cropped Rio Bravo — 8. Rio Bravo (1959)

Howard Hawks keeps the plot admirably lean: John Wayne’s sheriff arrests a powerful rancher’s brother and waits for the inevitable rescue attempt. Most of the pleasure comes from watching Wayne, Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, and Ricky Nelson occupy the same dusty space, trading jokes and slowly becoming a team. Tarantino’s affection for talkative, pressure-cooker ensembles owes plenty to *Rio Bravo*, a Western that understands hanging around can be as satisfying as the shootout. | © Armada Productions

Cropped His Girl Friday — 9. His Girl Friday (1940)

Howard Hawks transformed *The Front Page* by making reporter Hildy Johnson the ex-wife of editor Walter Burns, creating a combustible showcase for Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. Their dialogue arrives at machine-gun speed as journalism, romance, political corruption, and an impending execution collide inside one newsroom. Tarantino’s screenplays are often praised for verbal fireworks, but *His Girl Friday* was turning conversation into competitive combat decades before his characters started discussing hamburgers and Madonna lyrics. | © Columbia Pictures

Cropped Five Graves to Cairo — 10. Five Graves To Cairo (1943)

Billy Wilder traps a stranded British soldier inside a North African hotel newly occupied by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his forces. Franchot Tone survives by assuming the identity of a dead waiter, unaware that the man was secretly working as a German spy. Erich von Stroheim’s calculating Rommel gives the wartime thriller its sharpest edge, while the shifting identities and extended verbal standoffs reveal Wilder already mastering suspense through deception. | © Paramount Pictures

Cropped Pandoras Box — 11. Pandora’s Box (1929)

Louise Brooks became an eternal screen icon as Lulu, whose beauty and sexual freedom attract admirers while pushing her toward an increasingly grim fate. G. W. Pabst’s silent drama, adapted from two plays by Frank Wedekind, refuses to reduce its heroine to either innocent victim or calculated seductress. The result is sensual, psychologically sharp, and startlingly modern, ending with a Jack the Ripper encounter that lands like the darkest possible punchline. | © Nero-Film AG

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Quentin Tarantino has never been shy about championing the films he loves, whether they are established classics, scrappy genre pictures, or gloriously disreputable cult favorites. His personal picks offer a revealing glimpse at the movies that helped shape his dialogue, violence, humor, and encyclopedic approach to filmmaking. These 11 favorites may not form a conventional greatest-movies list, but nobody has ever accused Tarantino of having conventional taste.

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Quentin Tarantino has never been shy about championing the films he loves, whether they are established classics, scrappy genre pictures, or gloriously disreputable cult favorites. His personal picks offer a revealing glimpse at the movies that helped shape his dialogue, violence, humor, and encyclopedic approach to filmmaking. These 11 favorites may not form a conventional greatest-movies list, but nobody has ever accused Tarantino of having conventional taste.