The well-known selection emerged during a TV conversation about Cinema Speculation. It includes horror, comedy, adventure and western, 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 27 October 2022, Tarantino talked about films he considered perfect. The question stemmed from Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The conversation also mentioned 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 organised to determine a definitive canon.
The word perfect was tied to the power of a work even for someone whose tastes were different. That idea does not amount to promising the absence of any continuity error, nor to declaring that everyone ought to enjoy the same films. Tarantino was offering a critical judgement, with the emphasis and approximations typical of an interview on an entertainment programme.
There are two nuances that shortened lists often miss. Young Frankenstein appears as a choice he could understand if someone put it forward. 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.
Nor was a ranking from first to seventh established. The order of a conversation follows associations and questions, not necessarily a hierarchy. For anyone looking for films to watch, the selection is useful as a tour through very different forms of cinematic effectiveness. Its variety is more interesting than an invented score between them.
Horror, comedy and adventure achieve different effects
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre organises an experience of disorientation and physical threat. Its power does not depend on explaining every aspect of the world it presents. The spaces, the sounds and the persistence of certain images make the viewer perceive a hostile world. Analysing that effectiveness does not require sharing every interpretation of the film, nor attributing every formal observation to Tarantino.
The Exorcist works through a different progression. Disturbance invades a domestic setting and forces different characters to seek an explanation. Its combination of family drama and horror allows the extraordinary to have concrete emotional consequences. The threat is not reduced to a spectacle of effects: it affects relationships and convictions that the film has given time to recognise.
Tarantino'sdefence of Jaws fits into his admiration for popular cinema capable of organising a collective experience. Spielberg's film combines a clear threat with disagreements between people who have to respond to it. The wait, the incomplete information and the way the protagonists coexist 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 it can parody without ceasing to build its own characters and situations. Humour demands precision, even if its effects do not resemble those of suspense. In Annie Hall, changing the order of remembrance alters the relationship with a sentimental experience: the narrator returns to it, argues with it and exposes 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 set-up and consequence. Objects, lines and situations acquire new meanings when the point in time changes. The viewer can recognise connections without the adventure ceasing to move forward. Its narrative mechanism is especially visible because the film invites us to remember details that seemed minor and to observe how they return transformed.
That precision does not mean the experience is exhausted by solving a puzzle. Marty’s situation affects family ties and the image he has of his parents. Time travel allows urgency, comedy and intimacy to be combined. The construction works because the rules and the emotions are related, not because an abstract explanation of time travel sits at the centre of every scene.
The Wild Bunch, released in 1969 and directed by Sam Peckinpah, introduces a different idea of excellence. A work can contain roughness, excess or imbalance and still retain a force that is difficult to reduce to a list of flaws. Tarantino's nuance is valuable precisely because it admits that possibility within a conversation about perfection. The term stops meaning uniform neatness.
These films 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 deterioration of a group. The 2022 selection documents a specific intervention by Tarantino and offers points of entry into these ways of making films. Keeping the nuances of the conversation allows us to enjoy it without turning an off-the-cuff answer into a closed doctrine.
Back to the films recommended by Tarantino.