BURBANK, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 28: Quentin Tarantino arrives to receive The Vanguard Award at the Burbank International Film Festival Gala Honoring Quentin Tarantino at Marriott Convention Center on September 28, 2025 in Burbank, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
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Oscar-winning filmmaker Quentin Tarantino isn’t mincing words about the state of modern filmmaking in Hollywood in a new magazine essay.
Tarantino, of course, is famously choosy about the films he makes, and has turned to writing novels, essays and movies until he decides what he has said will be his 10th and final film. The auteur, of course, has written and directed several classic films, beginning with Reservoir Dogs in 1992. Since then, he has helmed and penned Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (technically, the two volumes make up one movie as Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair), Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.
The filmmaker has been nominated for eight Oscars over his career and won for Best Original Screenplay for 1994’s Pulp Fiction (along with Roger Avary) and 2013’s Django Unchained.
Apparently, though, Tarantino feels that Hollywood isn’t aspiring to excellence anymore. In an essay for the May 2026 edition of Sight & Sound Magazine (via The Playlist), Tarantino ripped into Tinseltown’s current product, writing, “Flaws, implausibilities, audience pandering, miscast performers or just plain stupid s–t usually torpedoes every new movie coming out of the flavorless sausage factory that used to call itself Hollywood.
“These days, the entire concept of what is a movie is more inclined to inspire contempt in me than generosity,” Tarantino added. “Which is fair enough, because by comparison the movies of the last six years make the 80s seem like the 30s.”
LOS ANGELES, CA – JANUARY 14: (L-R) Producer Steven Spielberg and director Quentin Tarantino attend the 16th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards at the Hollywood Palladium on January 14, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
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Tarantino Named The Films He’s Been Entertained By Recently
In the May 2026 Sight & Sound essay, Quentin Tarantino, while taking Hollywood’s most current offerings to task, wrote that he liked Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of the classic musical West Side Story, as well as Kevin Costner’s epic Western Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 (while Chapter 2 is still awaiting a release, it has played at the Venice Film Festival and Santa Barbara International Film Festival).
Other than that, Tarantino wrote for Sight & Sound that “nothing that really held me in its grip and swept me away to the magical land of enjoyment that I used to visit regularly and was the reason I loved movies above all other art forms. These days I’d rather read a book.”
While both West Side Story and Horizon were made for the big screen, Tarantino also lauded the Netflix original movie The Rip, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s crime thriller that was released on the streamer earlier this year.
Tarantino called The Rip a “suspenseful new movie has come out that did grab me and held me for its entire duration,” and hailed the direction and writing of filmmaking of Joe Carnahan, who collaborated on the script with Michael McGrale. Tarantino also praised the cinematography work of Juan Miguel Azpiroz.