Famed movie buff and A-list director Quentin Tarantino recently released a video listing his 20 favorite movies released since he became a director 17 years ago. When the list hit the Net, some movie geeks heralded the films as the 20 greatest movies ever — but this is a list by a movie guy for other movie guys. Tarantino famously worked at a video store and his appreciation of movies is legendary, so as a movie fan, I decided to take a close look at the list and delve deeper into the Tarantino 20. I was familiar with most of the titles, but I told a friend that I hadn't heard of some of the movies on the list. After they asked me to return my movie-buff card, I quickly went to Netflix and looked up the more obscure titles.
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2009.