Quentin Tarantino loves movies. The man would tell you that himself, either through films that serve as extended love letters to the medium, like 2019’s Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, or his semi-recent book of film essays, Cinema Speculation. And, sure, the former takes place in 1969, while the latter cuts off its film appreciation in 1981, but that can’t mean anything about the director’s attitude toward recent films, right? Not so much, as Tarantino revealed in a new essay for Sight And Sound this week, in which he formally declared that, actually, modern movies kind of suck. “These days,” he writes, verging on the kind of filmic blasphemy normally reserved for true foes, like Paul Dano, “I’d rather read a book.”
Obviously, it can’t be that the 63-year-old Tarantino has caught a tragic case of Old, but that the pictures, as a famous character from a movie era that Tarantino likes more than this one once opined, have gotten so dang small. “Flaws, implausibilities, audience pandering, miscast performers, or just plain stupid shit usually torpedoes every new movie coming out of the flavorless sausage factory that used to call itself Hollywood,” Tarantino wrote in the piece (per Variety), noting that “it’s almost impossible” for him to watch a movie now without criticizing it to death. “These days, the entire concept of what is a movie is more inclined to inspire contempt in me than generosity. Which is fair enough, because by comparison the movies of the last six years make the 80s seem like the 30s.” While acknowledging that he’s seen a few films he at least moderately enjoyed over the last few years—including Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake and both of Kevin Costner’s Horizon movies—there’s “Nothing that really held me in its grip and swept me away to the magical land of enjoyment that I use to visit regularly and was the reason I loved movies above all other artforms.” With one key exception, that is. Say it with us, folks: The only good movie of the past half-decade is, obviously, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s 2026 Netflix cop thriller The Rip.
Now, to be fair, critics were generally warm on Joe Caranahan’s movie, with our own B-grade review calling it a “dependable mid-tier action movie” featuring strong and tense performances from Damon and Affleck. But we, alas, have not viewed it through Quentin Tarantino’s eyes: In that world, “A suspenseful new movie has come out that did grab me and held me for its entire duration. The film is an exciting cop thriller with a novel premise that manages to deliver the goods in really clever ways. The whole package worked for me: Carnahan’s direction, the splendid cast, the look of the film (courtesy of cinematographer Juan Miguel Azpiroz)—but the real powerhouse component of this splendid collection is the sensational screenplay by Carnahan and Michael McGrale.” You might have thought The Rip was just fun and appropriately tense, but in fact it’s literally the only film made since 2020 that Tarantino is willing to say anything really nice about—which might help explain why he seems to have bailed on movie-making himself, one whole film earlier than previously planned, and is now busying himself with plays (and ornery old man essays in Sight And Sound) instead.
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