The Sight and Sound lists make it possible to compare preferences expressed ten years apart. Tarantino included twelve titles, and his choices should not be confused with the magazine's collective ranking.
Two personal picks within a larger survey
Sight and Sound regularly gathers votes from critics and filmmakers to compile its surveys of great films. Individual responses and aggregate results are different documents. If a work appears in Tarantino's selection, that does not mean it occupies the same position in the overall directors' result, and another film's victory in the survey does not make that work his personal favorite.
The historical 2002 and 2012 selections attributed to Tarantino each contain twelve titles. The usual label of a top ten should not force the removal of two entries just so the document fits a more convenient format. Nor is it appropriate to fill out a list with films taken from a different interview when a specific selection already makes it possible to identify what he voted for.
In 2002, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Rio Bravo, Taxi Driver, The Moon's Our Home, Rolling Thunder, Everybody Laughs, The Great Escape, Carrie, Coffy, Dazed and Confused, Five Fingers of Death, and Hi Diddle Diddle appear. The mix brings together westerns, comedies, crime films, and martial arts films, as well as works with very different levels of circulation and prestige.
In 2012, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Apocalypse Now, The Bad News Bears, Carrie, Dazed and Confused, The Great Escape, The Moon's Our Home, Jaws, Pretty Maids All in a Row, Rolling Thunder, Sorcerer, and Taxi Driver appear. The selection keeps several core titles from the earlier list and adds others without thereby becoming a retraction of everything that had been left out.
The overlaps make it possible to recognize a continuity
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly holds a prominent place in Tarantino's public cinephilia and appears in both selections. Sergio Leone's film combines epic scale, characters defined through action, and extraordinary attention to waiting. The final duel makes it possible to observe how gaze, distance, and music can shape a scene before it is resolved through a decisive gesture.
The Moon's Our Home offers a very different experience, based on the speed of exchanges and on relationships negotiated through words. Its presence alongside Leone prevents these lists from being reduced to an exclusive fascination with violence. Verbal energy and group dynamics are also part of the films chosen, even if each works with different tools.
Dazed and Confused and The Great Escape make it possible to think about the coexistence of a large cast. One follows youthful encounters and movement; the other organizes a collective enterprise within a confined setting. Comparing them does not mean their stories are equivalent. It helps us recognize the interest of observing how differentiated characters share a space and how a film distributes our attention among them.
Carrie, Taxi Driver, and Rolling Thunder introduce forms of isolation and violence that should not be grouped together as if they offered the same moral explanation. Each work builds its own point of view, setting, and trajectory. The list documents admiration; analyzing what these films do requires preserving their differences, rather than turning them into illustrations of a single personality of the voter.
Changes are not a list of rejected films
Rio Bravo and Coffy appear in 2002 and not in the 2012 selection. That absence does not prove that Tarantino stopped appreciating them. A survey requires choosing within a limited number of titles, and a response can change because of rereadings, associations, or current priorities. To claim a later rejection, a statement identifying it would be needed.
The additions in 2012 also broaden the range. Sorcerer presents a tension linked to transporting a dangerous load; Apocalypse Now develops a wartime journey on a very different scale and form. The Bad News Bears uses a sports team and comedy to work through relationships between adults and children. The set does not propose a single recipe for excellence. Dazed and Confused, for example, gives value to the passage between encounters; Sorcerer concentrates much of its pressure in a physical task. Their running times respond to very different narrative needs.
The 2012 list should not be labeled a 2022 vote just because it circulates on an updated page or in a recent compilation. The dates are part of the document's meaning. They make it possible to know what moment in the director's career we are looking at and prevent preferences from different decades from being mixed together under a supposed definitive and always current ranking.
To use these votes as a viewing guide, it is useful to preserve both the selection and its context. We can compare recurring films, discover less familiar titles, and observe what changes between the two responses. The survey offers a snapshot of expressed preferences, not a requirement to reproduce them. Its value lies in opening conversations about the works and showing that even a very recognizable taste contains comedy, adventure, horror, and different ways of being with characters.
Back to the Tarantino recommended films.