Quentin Tarantino Countdown: Best Movie Moments

Tarantino broke the news during The Hollywood Reporter’s Director Roundtable that also included “The Martian” director Ridley Scott. “Well I’m probably only going to make 10 movies, so I’m already planning on what I’m going to do after that,” Tarantino said. “That’s why I’m counting them. I have two more left. I want to stop at a certain point.”

With his announcement and with the upcoming release of his 8th film “The Hateful Eight” we thought we would take a moment to look back at some of Tarantino’s best movie moments.

Blood Soaked Vengeance (Kill Bill Vol. 1, 2003)

His films are characterized by scenes of extended, complex dialogue, stellar camera work and a gleeful admiration for violence, and in no other film was this more apparent than in the first installment of the Kill Bill series.

Starring Uma Thurman as the titular anti-hero, called The Bride, she embarks on a quest to, you guessed it, kill Bill. During the film’s climax The Bride travels across continents in search of her first target, a female master assassin, played by Lucy Liu, known as The Queen Of The Tokyo Underground, who is protected by a vicious gang known as the Crazy 88’s. With a nod to classic, gore-fest Japanese anime’s of the 90’s The Bride single-handedly slashes, slices, and decapitates her way through the unsuspecting horde in order to make her way to her target. I will never look at a haircut the same way.

The scene was so disturbing and blood-soaked that Tarantino was forced to edit the color out, leaving it in black and white, in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. The funny thing is nowadays you can easily find more violent imagery on television (*cough* the walking dead *cough*).

You Can’t Say That Word (Django Unchained 2012)

With the release of “Django Unchained” Tarantino was met with heavy criticism over his usage of that all-too-famous racial slur that tarnished colonial era America, but once audiences sat down to watch the film they forgot almost entirely it was directed by a white guy. This is a testament to Tarantino’s direction and respect of the source material. There were also some amazing cameos, my favorite director cameo of all-time to be exact, and a whole plethora of other reasons you should really give this one a chance if you haven’t already.

Let’s be honest, we hated Christoph Waltz’s character in “Inglourious Basterds” with an unmatched passion, but Tarantino made up for it and gave us a thousand reasons to fall back in love with the actor in “Django Unchained.”

The Bear Jew (Inglourious Basterds 2009)

He’s beefy. He has slick hair and a baseball bat. His only goal in life, his tunnel-vision inducing psychosis, is to kill as many nat-zis as possible. His name is the Bear Jew, and he is the most feared Nazi-hunter in all of war-torn Europe. His first appearance is foreshadowed by a heavy thump at the back end of a cave, a cadence matching that of a sickly heartbeat, and when he steps from the cave into the light, the first thing he does is bash a Nazi’s head in. Sorry, that description was a little disturbing, but it’s really what happens in the movie.

The Bear Jew, played by fellow director Eli Roth, is one of those mythical characters that often pop up in Tarantino’s films, but nary has there been one quite as glorious and beloved as the Bear Jew. In his final scene he goes out in a fiery explosion after successfully knocking off his number one target.

It Was Mr. Blonde In The Warehouse With The Ear (Reservoir Dogs 1992)

In his breakout film Tarantino held nothing back. Violence, check! Profanity, check! Dark sense of humor, most definitely check! The film depicts the events surrounding a group of men before and after a botched diamond heist. Each of the men have aliases and as the film progresses, the insanity within the warehouse grows exponentially, culminating in an all too infamous scene in which Mr. Blonde, played by Michael Madsen, tortures one of the other men purely for his own amusement, severing the man’s ear while dancing along to the tune of “Stuck In The Middle With You.”

These are just a few examples of a career full of incredible films, and the list could go on for days. What are your thoughts? What was your favorite Tarantino moment? Join the conversation: comment below, share on Facebook!

Additional Image: Photopin

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