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 selections within a larger poll
Sight and Sound periodically brings together votes from critics and filmmakers to compile its surveys of great films. Individual responses and aggregated results are separate documents. The fact that a work appears in Tarantino's selection does not mean it occupies the same position in the result for all directors, and another film's victory in the survey does not make that work his personal favourite.
The historical 2002 and 2012 selections attributed to Tarantino contain twelve titles each. The usual label of a top ten should not force the removal of two entries just to make the document fit a more convenient format. Nor is it appropriate to complete a list with films taken from a different interview when a specific selection already makes clear what he voted for.
In 2002, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Rio Bravo, Taxi Driver, His Girl Friday, Rolling Thunder, They All Laughed, The Great Escape, Carrie, Coffy, Dazed and Confused, Five Fingers of Death and Hi Diddle Diddle appear. The combination brings together western, comedy, crime cinema and martial arts, 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, His Girl Friday, Jaws, Pretty Maids All in a Row, Rolling Thunder, Sorcerer and Taxi Driver appear. The selection retains several core titles from the earlier one and adds others without therefore becoming a retraction of everything that had been left out.
The overlaps allow us to recognise continuity
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly occupies a prominent place in Tarantino's public cinephilia and appears in both selections. Sergio Leone's film combines epic scale, characters defined through actions and an extraordinary attention to waiting time. The final duel allows us to observe how gaze, distance and music can organise a scene before it is resolved through a decisive gesture.
His Girl Friday offers a very different experience, based on the speed of exchanges and on relationships negotiated through words. Its presence alongside Leone makes it impossible to reduce these lists to an exclusive fascination with violence. Verbal energy and the building of groups are also part of the films chosen, even if each one handles them with different tools.
Dazed and Confused and The Great Escape make it possible to think about the coexistence of a large ensemble cast. One follows youthful encounters and movement; the other organises a collective enterprise within an environment of confinement. Comparing them does not mean their stories are equivalent. It helps us recognise the value 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 though they offered the same moral explanation. Each work constructs its own point of view, setting and journey. The list records admiration; analysing what these films do requires preserving their differences, rather than turning them into illustrations of a single personality in 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 poll requires selection from a limited number of titles, and a response can change through re-readings, associations or priorities at the time. To claim a later rejection, a statement identifying it would be needed.
The additions in 2012 also broaden the range. Sorcerer presents tension linked to transporting a dangerous load; Apocalypse Now develops a war journey on a very different scale and in a different form. The Bad News Bears uses the sports team and comedy to explore relationships between adults and children. The set does not propose a single recipe for excellence. Dazed and Confused, for instance, gives value to movement between encounters; Sorcerer concentrates much of its pressure in a physical task. Their lengths respond to very different narrative needs.
The 2012 list should not be labelled a 2022 vote simply because it circulates on an updated page or in a recent compilation. The dates are part of the document's meaning. They let us know which moment in the director's career we are looking at and prevent us from mixing preferences from different decades under a supposedly definitive and always current ranking.
To use these votes as a viewing guide, it is useful to keep 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 an obligation to reproduce them. Its value lies in opening conversations about the works and showing that even a highly recognisable taste contains comedy, adventure, horror and different ways of being with the characters.
Back to the films recommended by Tarantino.