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Quentin Tarantino’s 11 Favorite Movies Of All Time

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Ignacio Weil

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

Cropped Portada — About This Gallery:

Quentin Tarantino’s favorite movies make for a wonderfully unpredictable movie night: you could end up watching a tense Western, a vicious newsroom comedy, or a kung fu tournament where nobody fights fair. These 11 picks reveal a filmmaker whose appetite stretches well beyond the genres he’s famous for directing. Some connections are easy to spot; others might send you hunting down a film you’ve never heard of. Which would you watch first? Let us know in the comments. | © Miramax

Cropped Blow Out — 1. Blow Out (1981)

Listen carefully: the difference between a burst tire and a gunshot can get somebody killed. John Travolta plays a sound technician whose recording of a nighttime accident pulls him into a political cover-up in Brian De Palma’s *Blow Out*. Watching him assemble evidence is as gripping as any chase, but technical ingenuity offers little protection here. Tarantino’s beloved thriller turns the tools of filmmaking into instruments of discovery—and devastating personal failure. | © Filmways Pictures

Cropped Carrie — 2. Carrie (1976)

Prom night is expensive enough without having to budget for telekinetic revenge. Brian De Palma’s Stephen King adaptation makes the carnage hurt because Sissy Spacek first gives us a desperately lonely teenager who briefly believes she belongs. Tarantino included *Carrie* in two separate *Sight and Sound* polls, and the appeal goes beyond spilled blood: De Palma makes us want payback, then refuses to let that desire feel entirely comfortable. | © Red Bank Films

Cropped Taxi Driver — 3. Taxi Driver (1976)

Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle would like you to believe he’s the solution to everything wrong with New York. Martin Scorsese gives us plenty of reasons to question that assessment. *Taxi Driver* traps us inside a worldview where loneliness hardens into grievance and violence starts looking like purpose. A recurring Tarantino favorite, it remains disturbing partly because Travis narrates his own deterioration with the confidence of a man finally getting organized. | © Columbia Pictures

Cropped Jaws — 4. Jaws (1975)

Amity Island’s mayor deserves his own place in the horror villain conversation. His determination to protect tourist revenue gives Steven Spielberg’s *Jaws* an infuriatingly believable menace before the shark even gets its close-up. Once Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw head offshore, the film becomes a battle of personalities as much as survival. The fishing trip works because we know these men well enough to dread losing any of them. | © Universal Pictures

Cropped Five Fingers of Death — 5. Five Fingers Of Death (1972)

That shrieking musical warning familiar from *Kill Bill* had already accompanied some very dangerous hands. Also known as *King Boxer*, this Shaw Brothers favorite uses Quincy Jones’s *Ironside* theme as Lo Lieh’s fighter unleashes his fearsome technique. Tarantino later repurposed the cue, but the attraction isn’t merely musical. Rival schools, punishing training, and vicious sabotage give the tournament story enough personal hostility to make every landed blow feel like unfinished business. | © Shaw Brothers Studio

Cropped The Good the Bad and the Ugly — 6. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966)

Three gunmen stare across a cemetery, and somehow it’s more exciting than most action sequences involving an exploding helicopter. Sergio Leone earns that showdown through shifting alliances, Civil War devastation, and Eli Wallach’s gloriously unscrupulous Tuco, who repeatedly threatens to steal Clint Eastwood’s movie. Tarantino placed this spaghetti Western first on his *Empire* ballot. Watch how Leone stretches anticipation against Ennio Morricone’s music, and the student’s enthusiasm needs very little explanation. | © Produzioni Europee Associate

Cropped Rio Bravo — 7. Rio Bravo (1959)

The singing belongs in the movie. So do the flirting, the teasing, and the stretches when nobody seems especially eager to advance the plot. Howard Hawks’s *Rio Bravo* gives John Wayne’s sheriff a prisoner to guard and, more importantly, people worth spending time with. Dean Martin’s struggling deputy supplies its wounded heart. Tarantino champions it as a hangout movie, and its leisurely companionship makes the eventual danger matter far more. | © Armada Productions

Cropped Unfaithfully Yours — 8. Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Rex Harrison can command an orchestra. Executing the perfect revenge plot proves considerably trickier. In Preston Sturges’s *Unfaithfully Yours*, a conductor suspects his wife of cheating and mentally stages three possible responses while leading a concert. The delicious joke is the distance between his magnificent imagination and his practical abilities. Sturges lets a cultured man cast himself in a grand tragedy, then subjects him to the indignities of a slapstick routine. | © 20th Century Fox

Cropped Five Graves to Cairo — 9. Five Graves To Cairo (1943)

Borrowing a dead waiter’s identity sounds like a sensible survival strategy until you discover he was a German spy. That predicament drives Billy Wilder’s *Five Graves to Cairo*, with Franchot Tone’s stranded British soldier forced to improvise under the noses of Rommel and his officers. Erich von Stroheim makes the field marshal an unnervingly watchful opponent. Much of the suspense comes from conversation: every convincing answer risks inviting a more dangerous question. | © Paramount Pictures

Cropped His Girl Friday — 10. His Girl Friday (1940)

Try interrupting Rosalind Russell. Cary Grant spends much of *His Girl Friday* attempting something equally foolish: steering her reporter back into both his newsroom and his love life. Howard Hawks turns overlapping dialogue into a contest for control, with an impending execution providing a distinctly nasty backdrop to the romantic maneuvering. Beneath the exhilarating verbal speed sits a comedy about people who would happily sabotage your future for a better headline. | © Columbia Pictures

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

Louise Brooks barely needs to move to command the screen in *Pandora’s Box*. As Lulu, she brings an unusually unforced presence to G. W. Pabst’s silent drama about desire, possession, and respectable people behaving appallingly. Her admirers want her, then recoil from the disruption she represents. Among Tarantino’s more unexpected favorites, the film rewards looking beyond the famous haircut: Brooks makes Lulu feel alive even as everyone else tries to define her. | © Nero-Film AG

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Quentin Tarantino talks about movies with the enthusiasm of someone who’s just cornered you in a video store—and has no intention of letting you leave empty-handed. His favorites make an intriguing watchlist, especially if you enjoy tracing the influences behind his own films. But the real fun is discovering where your taste overlaps with his, and where you’d spend the entire closing credits arguing. These 11 picks should give you plenty of ammunition.

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Quentin Tarantino talks about movies with the enthusiasm of someone who’s just cornered you in a video store—and has no intention of letting you leave empty-handed. His favorites make an intriguing watchlist, especially if you enjoy tracing the influences behind his own films. But the real fun is discovering where your taste overlaps with his, and where you’d spend the entire closing credits arguing. These 11 picks should give you plenty of ammunition.