His critical texts let you follow a full line of reasoning, with enthusiasms, objections and comparisons that a list of favourite films only hints at.
An archive of signed texts, not a sum of headlines
The section Tarantino’s Reviews on the New Beverly brings together signed written criticism by Quentin Tarantino. It includes long-form essays and shorter formats, with dates and credits that are worth preserving. Not everything published on the cinema’s website belongs to his pen: the news items, programme announcements and pieces by contributors serve different functions. Identifying the author is the first step in knowing what we are reading.
One example is American Graffiti , published on 29 June 2022. Tarantino places Lucas’s film alongside The Last Picture Show and Summer of ’42 , and examines different forms of nostalgia. He also notes Curt’s resistance to leaving his community and raises reservations about the casting of Bo Hopkins. General admiration does not stop him from questioning a particular decision.
The text offers a possibility that is lost when only an isolated phrase circulates: linking an assessment to the element of the film that prompted it. The reader can check whether the example is convincing, whether the argument retains its scope, and whether the objection really alters the judgement of the whole. A review is worth something for that journey as well as for the prominence of the person who signs it.
From the long essay to the brief notes
The archive includes Grindhouse Mini Reviews , a collection of comments on exploitation films. Its credits require particular attention: there are Tarantino bylines, Jim or James Sheldon bylines and co-bylines. The general heading of a page should not erase those distinctions. Sheldon’s identification has generated conflicting attributions; to locate a text, it is worth keeping the credit exactly as published, without resolving that issue by assumption.
The difference in length changes what one can expect. A brief note can identify a memorable performance, a pacing problem or the appeal of a premise. An essay allows comparisons to be developed and a scene to be dwelt on. Neither format is superior by definition; what matters is whether the space used is enough to sustain what is being claimed. A blunt sentence needs fewer words than its demonstration.
The context of the New Beverly Cinema also shapes the reading. A review may prompt a desire to discover a film or to see it again in a particular print. That link with exhibition does not make every text advertising. Criticism can guide audiences while retaining the freedom to point out a flawed interpretation or a construction that never quite works.
It is also worth distinguishing between a written review and a transcript of an interview. In the first, the author controls the course of the text; in the second, a question, an interruption or the rhythm of the conversation may explain a change of topic. Both are valuable sources, but they should not be presented as though they had arisen from the same process. The headline of a later news item adds yet another layer of selection.
How to make use of his critical reading
The review of The Lady in Red , shared by New Beverly and reproduced in February 2020, offers another point of entry. Tarantino champions John Sayles’s screenplay for Lewis Teague’s film and places it among the most ambitious examples of exploitation cinema. His journey through other screenwriters and films shows that this assessment needs a tradition of comparison, not just an enthusiastic adjective.
The example shifts attention to an area that lists of directors can leave in the background: who wrote a film and how its structure supports the characters. Reading it alongside American Graffiti allows two areas of debate to be contrasted: the organisation of a collective memory and the ambition of a story made within exploitation cinema. These are questions about particular films, not only about the prestige of their makers.
Also part of the archive is the essay Wang Yu: Superstar! Super Director! , dated 23 April 2020. Its title makes it possible to locate an intervention devoted to a figure who combines acting and directing. Alongside Lucas and Teague, it broadens the journey towards different industrial traditions and forms of action. The variety of the archive becomes clearer by identifying texts than by turning it into an undifferentiated list of recommendations.
Objections within a favourable review are especially revealing. They make it possible to see what weighs most heavily in the author’s evaluation. A questionable performance may not ruin the whole, while an apparently small detail may alter the credibility of a scene. Reading only negative criticism would turn a practice of evaluation into an inventory of refusals; the page on films Tarantino has criticised belongs to that narrower sphere.
It is also useful to return to the film after reading the text. The argument may have directed our attention to a reaction, a transition or a spatial relationship that went unnoticed. Checking this does not require reproducing the critic’s opinion. Sometimes a second viewing confirms the observation and leads to a different assessment, because what is a flaw for one viewer is part of the appeal for another.
His essays collected in Cinema Speculation offer another format for that conversation, with their own development and structure. The digital reviews retain the value of localised interventions, identifiable by title, byline and date. The best use of the archive is to move from the opinion to the film and back again with a more precise question, without turning the authority of an admired director into an obligation to agree with him.
See the guide to Tarantino’s books, criticism and film fan projects.