Tarantino’s “perfect” film list spans multiple genres and a few remote outliers.
Quentin Tarantino has listed the seven films he thinks are “perfect”. Citing the movies during a recent appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Kimmel, the acclaimed director prefaced his list by admitting that while they may not be anyone else’s “cup of tea,” there’s “nothing you can say to bring [the list] down.” He went on to claim that “there’s not many” films he considers “perfect,” which reflects how “the film art form is hard.”
Tarantino then listed the films that are a shoo-in for his top four, citing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Jaws (1975), The Exorcist (1973), Annie Hall (1977), Young Frankenstein (1974), and Back to the Future (1985). While that collection mostly spans horror-thrillers — led by Steven Spielberg’s classic creature-feature *inserts Jaws theme song* — Tarantino also veered towards the comedy genre, with the time-travelling Michael J. Fox vehicle, Back to the Future.
Tarantino went on to add Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 western film, The Wild Bunch to the list, in-line with his own collection of Western-inspired films like Django Unchained and The Hateful 8. It’s the latest instance of the director singing praises for films other than his own, having expressed his enjoyment of movies like Dazed and Confused, Parasite and Taxi Driver in the past.
The director’s shortlist comes on the heels of his new book, Cinema Speculation — a part memoir, part film criticism project which hit shelves late last month. Tarantino’s Kimmel interview also saw him refute Kanye West’s claims that it was him who conceived the idea for Django: “There’s no truth to the idea that Kanye West came up with the idea,” he told the talk show host.
