Tarantino's Kill List: 20 Movies He Finds Unwatchable

If anyone can be called the Andy Warhol of the movie world, it is Quentin Tarantino. Whether or not you like the director, screenwriter, and auteur's frenetic and undeniably distinctive style, his work is a digested concentration of American pop culture, with all those media phenomena that have become widely recognized symbols.

Each independent Tarantino movie has become iconic in one way or another, overflowing with homages to famous directing styles and narratives. He grew up on Jean Luc Godard's French New Wave, Brian De Palma's thrillers and crime dramas, Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, and, of course, Akira Kurosawa's philosophical samurai films. And he thrives off of them, combining familiar genres and tropes with his own brand of witty dialogue and flashy action, always remaining respectful of the great filmmakers and stars of the past.

But as strong as Tarantino's love for cinema is, his hatred for some very famous movies is just as strong. Sometimes his dislike for some of Hollywood's finest examples seems so unjustified that one wonders if this or that work is objectively that bad, or if it is Tarantino's plain snobbery. Either way, here are twenty movies that Quentin Tarantino absolutely hates.

20. Vertigo (1958)

19. North By Northwest (1959)

18. Brewster McCloud (1970)

17. Salem's Lot (1979)

16. Stripes (1981)

15. Halloween II (1981)

14. Scrooged (1988)

13. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

12. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

11. Groundhog Day (1993)

10. Natural Born Killers (1994)

9. Scream ( 1996)

8. Rushmore (1998)

7. Matrix Reloaded (2003)

6. The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

5. The Hunger Games ( 2012)

4. The Man From U.N.C.L.E (2015)

3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Episode VII (2015)

2. Atomic Blonde (2017)

1. Tenet (2020)

Of course, it is not for us mere mortals to judge the taste of a man whose career is one of the most critically and commercially successful in Hollywood history. Nevertheless, as we can see, the list is quite controversial. While some examples were heavily criticized in their time, or in retrospect were not as great as they seemed at the time of their release, others, on the contrary, are generally agreed to be the pinnacle of human thought and creaivity.

Some of the movies he listed he despises because of the artificial attempts to present them as profound works of art, while others he hasn't seen at all. For example, he hasn't seen The Force Awakens, but it's unlikely he ever will. First, because he prefers Star Trek ( even though Lucas was also inspired by Kurosawa!), and second, because he was once furious at Disney 's policy of releasing a new Star Wars alongside his The Hateful Eight.

Speaking of specific directors, the ones he hates the most are Alfred Hitchcock, Tobe Hooper and Rick Rosenthal, men recognized as maestros of thrillers and horror. But that doesn't mean that Quentin is so averse to these genres, as among his favorite films are works by John Carpenter, Takashi Miike, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Pedro Almodóvar.

'I love having influences because I want people to get excited when they see something in the film or hear me talking about it and then actually go see the movie that inspired me in the first place,' Tarantino once said.

Despite his somewhat arrogant approach to cinema, he never places himself above others, remaining a casual viewer. And it is this subjectivity, the genuine inspiration for some movies, the dislike for others, or the simple misunderstanding, that makes his work so down-to-earth yet compelling. He doesn't have to talk about lofty things to get his movies appreciated, and he doesn't have to pretend to be artsy.

Source: Los Angeles Times.