1. Pulp Fiction
After Reservoir Dogs announced Tarantino as a blistering new voice in American indie cinema, the filmmaker took everything that made his debut great and expanded on it. Across a set of interweaving tales, a host of hitmen, armed robbers, fixers and an ageing boxer find themselves entangled in stories of death, drugs, and lucky escapes in '90s LA – all interspersed with self-aware conversations on pop culture, religion, and the nature of crime itself. It's about everything and nothing at once, an exercise in pure style but with substance to match, and dialogue so memorable that entire chunks have entered the cultural consciousness at large. Pulp Fiction embodies everything that made early '90s independent cinema (and Tarantino himself) so exciting and fresh – playful and unexpected, steeped in genre knowledge, the coolest images set to the coolest soundtrack. And with truly iconic performances from John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Bruce Willis and more, the whole thing is an embarrassment of riches. It's not quite perfect, but over 25 years later it remains timeless.
2. Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction might be bigger, but Reservoir Dogs is, arguably, just that little bit better. In a world where most of Quentin Tarantino's films stretch well beyond the two-hour mark, its the lean efficiency, the sharpness of Reservoir Dogs that stands out – it's the nucleus of everything that makes him a masterful filmmaker, packed into a 99-minute runtime. Everything is here – the genre twists, the non-chronological storytelling, the mind-blowing music choices, the seemingly-incongruous conversations about cultural minutiae, the (no longer that) shocking violence, and above all, a sense of pure, unalloyed cool. At its core, it's a heist movie where you never actually see the heist – instead witnessing the set-up and the chaotic aftermath, as paranoia bubbles over and the colour-coded criminals – played by the likes of Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Steve Buscemi – turn on one another. It's slick, funny, intelligent, and uber-stylish, an undeniable crime classic. George Baker's 'Little Green Bag' and Madonna's 'Like A Virgin' have never sounded the same since.
3. Kill Bill: Volume 1
The closest thing to an all-out Tarantino blockbuster. After the more restrained Jackie Brown, the filmmaker cranked his sensibilities into overdrive for a vibrant pop-cultural assault on the senses. Presenting a hyperreal world of eye-popping primary colours, fountains of blood, and leagues of comic-booky assassins, Kill Bill Volume 1 is a glorious celebration of maximalism, indulging in extended anime sequences and all-out yakuza showdowns. Uma Thurman is nothing short of iconic as The Bride, seeking out vengeance against the fellow hit-squad who turned on her, utterly convincing as a nigh-on unstoppable one-woman army – and when her showdown with the Crazy 88 arrives, it's a bravura brawl so slicked in claret that the director was forced to switch to black and white to avoid a more restrictive rating. Here, Tarantino uses every tool in his filmmaking arsenal to construct an unreal world that abides by its own rules but never gets carried away with itself – and the result is ultra-cool, ultra-fun, and ultra-QT.
4. Inglourious Basterds
Tarantino's World War II movie ends on a mic-drop line: "I think this might just be my masterpiece." And if it's not quite the filmmaker's very best, it's close – a sprawling and anarchically anachronistic historical tale that sees French cinephiles and vengeful Jewish soldiers destroy the Nazis. If his greatest strength has always been his writing, the Basterds screenplay is top-tier Tarantino – see the gut-wrenchingly tense opening encounter with Christoph Waltz's Colonel Hans Landa (one of QT's best characters), or the ever-ratcheting stakes of the card came in the La Louisiane chapter. The Basterds themselves are a blast to watch too, Brad Pitt chewing up the scenery as Aldo Raine with his gloriously deadpan Italian accent in the final act, while the flaming finale manages to be both a passionate love-letter to the power of cinema and a gleeful dose of pulpy schlock. As for iconic sequences, Mélanie Laurent's Shoshanna donning her femme fatale get-up to the strains of David Bowie's 'Cat People (Putting Out Fire)' is exquisite.
5. The Hateful Eight
As that title suggests, The Hateful Eight finds Tarantino at his meanest – stranding a bunch of deplorables in a cabin in the American west post-Civil War, where they'll plot, scheme, berate and attack each other across one volatile night. In some ways, its three-hour parade of ugliness is a lot to take (especially when the film indulges in unflinching moments of violence, often directed at the face of Jennifer Jason Leigh's admittedly despicable Daisy Domergue), but it's a deliciously dark work, at once a deliberately-paced epic, on the other hand somewhat of a throwback to Reservoir Dogs, swapping whizz-bangery for tense theatrical conversations that constantly threaten to bubble over into confrontation. If anything, The Hateful Eight feels more relevant now than it did five years ago – a portrait of the ugliest, most toxic facets of America all at war with each other. All that, and it has a brilliantly moody Ennio Morricone score and stunning ultra-widescreen photography.
6. Django Unchained
More recently, Tarantino's films have become lengthy and occasionally unwieldy – and if any of his later outings suffers for it, it's Django Unchained. That's because, for the most part, it's a rip-roaring Southern-as-Western revenge drama that creates a bonafide Black icon in freed slave Django (an excellent Jamie Foxx) and one that, for all its indulgences of revelling in the worst of plantation slavery, also revels in depicting violent vengeance against an array of truly despicable racists. In many ways, all the QT hits are present – anachronistic needle-drops, witty repartee (Christoph Waltz puts in a charmingly genial turn that couldn't be more different to Inglourious Basterds' Hans Landa), and a deep, layered knowledge of genre. It's just… well, too long, with sections that could easily be cut and a bizarre cameo from the director himself with an atrocious Aussie accent. It's arguably more entertaining than a film depicting slavery should be, but its cartoonish climactic shoot-out remains a blood-soaked blast.