The well-known list emerged during a TV conversation about Cinema Speculation. It includes horror, comedy, adventure, and westerns, plus one exception that Tarantino himself wanted to qualify.
An October 2022 conversation, not a universal vote
During his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on October 27, 2022, Tarantino talked about movies he considered perfect. The question began with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The conversation also included Jaws, The Exorcist, Annie Hall, Young Frankenstein, Back to the Future, and The Wild Bunch. These are titles mentioned in that context, not the winners of a poll organized to determine a definitive canon.
The word perfect was tied to the strength of a work even for someone whose tastes were different. That idea does not mean promising the absence of any continuity error or declaring that everyone should enjoy the same movies. Tarantino was offering a critical judgment, with the emphasis and approximations typical of an interview on an entertainment show.
There are two nuances that shortened lists often miss. Young Frankenstein appears as a choice that he could understand if someone proposed it. The Wild Bunch receives an explicit caveat: its imperfections are part of its greatness. Turning the conversation into seven identical certificates of flawlessness erases precisely the differences the director introduced in his reply.
No ranking from first to seventh was established either. The order of a conversation follows associations and questions, not necessarily a hierarchy. For someone looking for movies to watch, the selection is useful as a tour through very different forms of cinematic effectiveness. Its variety is more interesting than a made-up score between them.
Horror, comedy, and adventure achieve different effects
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre organizes an experience of disorientation and physical threat. Its power does not depend on explaining every aspect of the setting it presents. The spaces, sounds, and repetition of certain images make the viewer perceive a hostile world. Analyzing that effectiveness does not require agreeing with every interpretation of the film or attributing every formal observation to Tarantino.
The Exorcist works with a different progression. Disturbance enters a domestic setting and forces different characters to search for an explanation. Its blend of family drama and horror allows the extraordinary to have concrete emotional consequences. The threat is not reduced to a special-effects spectacle: it affects relationships and convictions that the film has taken time to establish.
Tarantino'sdefense of Jaws fits within his admiration for popular cinema capable of shaping a collective experience. Spielberg's film combines a clear threat with disagreements among the people who must respond to it. The suspense, incomplete information, and coexistence of the protagonists sustain the interest alongside the attacks.
Annie Hall and Young Frankenstein show that the conversation is not limited to violent stories. The first turns sentimental memory and the way it is told into part of the comedy. The second works with a visual and narrative tradition that can parody while still building its own characters and situations. Humor requires precision, even if its effects do not resemble those of suspense. In Annie Hall, changing the order of remembrance alters the relationship to a sentimental experience: the narrator returns to it, questions it, and presents it from a distance that is also part of the joke.
Back to the Future and the exception of The Wild Bunch
Back to the Future offers an example of clear relationships between setup and consequence. Objects, lines, and situations take on new meanings when the point in time changes. The viewer can recognize connections without the adventure stopping its forward momentum. Its narrative mechanism is especially visible because the film invites us to remember details that seemed minor and to see how they come back transformed.
That precision does not mean the experience is reduced to solving a puzzle. Marty’s situation affects family ties and the image he has of his parents. Time travel makes it possible to combine urgency, comedy, and intimacy. The construction works because the rules and the emotions are connected, not because an abstract explanation of time travel sits at the center of every scene.
The Wild Bunch, released in 1969 and directed by Sam Peckinpah, introduces a different idea of excellence. A work can contain rough edges, excesses, or imbalances and still retain a force that is hard to reduce to a list of flaws. Tarantino's nuance is valuable precisely because it accepts that possibility within a conversation about perfection. The term stops meaning uniform polish.
These movies make it possible to compare experiences rather than impose a single taste. Some concentrate their energy on threat, others on verbal speed, memory, adventure, or the strain on a group. The 2022 selection documents a specific intervention by Tarantino and offers entry points into these ways of making films. Preserving the nuances of the conversation lets us enjoy it without turning a spontaneous answer into a closed doctrine.
Back to Tarantino's recommended movies.