All in all, the American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is a pretty passionate defender of cinema in all its kinds. A lover of horror, westerns, kung-fu flicks, romantic comedies, and pretty much anything 90 minutes in length and flickering with celluloid light, Tarantino has voiced his admiration for countless filmmakers, including Sergio Leone, Martin Scorsese, Takashi Miike and Wes Anderson.
Still, Tarantino is also a vocal critic, constantly putting himself in the public eye in the form of podcasts and interviews where he has revealed a number of classic films that he actually hated. In general, he isn’t fond of bashing specific movies, assumedly aware of just how much effort goes into their creation, but Tarantino isn’t afraid to go after filmmakers, having named many he doesn’t gel with.
Criticising the likes of François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, and in particular, John Ford, there are, indeed, some filmmakers who Tarantino simply doesn’t see eye-to-eye with. Speaking about Ford, the filmmaker behind 1994’s Pulp Fiction states: “One of my American Western heroes is not John Ford, obviously…To say the least, I hate him,” holding nothing back regarding his honest opinion.
Below, we delve into a number of films from the aforementioned directors, as well as a few surprise picks too.
10 movies hated by Quentin Tarantino:
The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
Tarantino isn’t a massive fan of François Truffaut, as we mentioned in our introduction. In fact, the Pulp Fiction director called him a “very passionate, bumbling amateur”. One of the director’s many films that he’s not fond of is the 1959 coming-of-age classic The 400 Blows, with Tarantino criticising the movie in the novelisation of his ninth movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie.
In the novel, he speaks for Pitt’s character Cliff Booth when he says: “He tried Truffaut twice, but he didn’t respond to him…not because the films were boring (they were), but that wasn’t the only reason Cliff didn’t respond…The 400 Blows, left him cold.”
Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman, 1970)
There’s no doubt that Robert Altman is one of the greatest American filmmakers of all time, with the director making such 20th-century classics as Nashville, McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Player. Though Tarantino liked many of his movies, he stated that Altman’s 1970 film Brewster McCloud “is the cinematic equivalent of a bird shitting on your head” in his 2022 non-fiction book Cinema Speculation.
The writer followed this up by saying, “Brewster McCloud is one of the worst movies to ever carry a studio logo.” Harsh words indeed for a beloved film from one of America’s finest-ever filmmakers.
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
Does Tarantino love Kubrick, or does he hate Kubrick? Truthfully, it’s very difficult to know either way. One thing we know for sure is that he wasn’t too fond of his provocative drama A Clockwork Orange from 1971. “I always thought Kubrick was a hypocrite,” Tarantino stated, “Because his party line was, I’m not making a movie about violence, I’m making a movie against violence.”
Bursting into a verbal rage, he adds: “And it’s just, like, Get the fuck off. I know, and you know your dick was hard the entire time you were shooting those first twenty minutes, you couldn’t keep it in your pants the entire time you were editing it and scoring it.”
Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
Bill Murray might be one of the most beloved actors of the 20th century, but that doesn’t mean that Tarantino is under any obligation to love the comedian. Writing in his book Cinema Speculation, the director revealed he wasn’t too fond of 1993’s Groundhog Day: “Admittedly, when you don’t give a fuck about other people’s feelings, it probably does wonders for your caustic wit. But I’ve always rejected the idea that Bill Murray’s characters needed redemption.”
Continuing, he adds: “Yeah, maybe he charmed Andie MacDowell [in Groundhog Day], but does anybody think a less sarcastic Bill Murray is a better Bill Murray?”.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989)
Everyone’s least favourite Indiana Jones film to date is 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and that’s a fact pretty much across the board. Yet, ever the contrarian, Tarantino revealed that his least favourite of the franchise is actually the classic movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade from 1989, starring Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, River Phoenix, Denholm Elliott and John Rhys-Davies.
Speaking about the franchise, Tarantino states: “I like Crystal Skull more than the Sean Connery one [The Last Crusade]. I don’t like the Sean Connery one… it’s such a boring one… he’s not an interesting character.”
Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962)
We’re going to loop back to our very first entry for just a moment. We’ve already established the fact that Tarantino wasn’t too much of a fan of François Truffaut, but one thing we didn’t mention is just to what extent he disliked his films. He wasn’t a lover of 1959’s The 400 Blows, but he also hated the 1962 classic Jules and Jim, starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre and Marie Dubois.
Writing in the novelisation of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino penned in the voice of Pitt’s Cliff Booth: “The first two films he watched (in a Truffaut double feature) just didn’t grab him. The first film, The 400 Blows, left him cold. He really didn’t understand why that little boy did half the shit he did. And he thought the mopey dopes in Jules and Jim were a fucking drag.”
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, 1983)
Even though Tarantino doesn’t entirely hate the comedy movie classic Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, we thought his opinion on one sketch, in particular, was too good not to share. Speaking to The Irish Examiner, the director explained that ‘The Autumn Years’ sketch, where Terry Jones’ restaurant diner cannot stop being sick, is the only time he has been forced to look away from a movie screen.
“The only time I’ve ever had to look away because I couldn’t bear to watch was The Meaning Of Life, when that fat bastard keeps being sick,” Tarantino recalled: “I felt really nauseous – it was just too much. I was looking around, and I thought, ‘If anyone here is sick and I have to smell vomit, I’m going to hurl’. I just about held onto my lunch in the end, but I still can’t think about that scene without retching.”
Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994)
Quentin Tarantino may have penned the original script for Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, but this didn’t mean that the writer held a personal connection to the movie he later claimed to “hate”. Disliking how much the film had changed since his original vision, Tarantino disowned the project and urged fans of his to avoid it at all costs, stating: “I hated that fucking movie. If you like my stuff, don’t watch that movie.”
A dark satire of the contemporary media industry in the 1990s, Stone’s movie featured the likes of Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Downey Jr, and is still beloved by fans today.
Quintet (Robert Altman, 1979)
We’ve already discussed just how much Tarantino hated Altman’s 1970 film Brewster McCloud, and whilst that choice was somewhat understandable, his hatred of 1979’s Quintet will rub many people up the wrong way. Starring Paul Newman, the 1979 flick tells the story of a future ice age in which a game called ‘Quintet’ decides who lives and who dies in a bleak post-apocalypse.
In his book Cinema Speculation, Tarantino didn’t hold back his opinion, stating: “Quintet is just terrible, boring and pointless.” Certainly one of Altman’s more camp movies, we thought Tarantino would be able to have gotten on board with this one.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)
The final film to grace our list of the ten movies Tarantino hated is the 1992 prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which precedes Lynch’s TV series in the show’s timeline. Telling the story of how Laura Palmer got into the situation she did in series one of Twin Peaks, Tarantino clearly didn’t see eye-to-eye with the movie, stating that Lynch had fully embraced his ego in the worst way possible.
Speaking about Lynch and the movie, he stated: “I’m not ragging on other people, but after I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at Cannes, David Lynch has disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different. And you know, I loved him. I loved him.”