10 Great Filmmakers Best Remembered For The Wrong Films

2. Quentin Tarantino

Best Remembered For: Pulp Fiction (1994), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Django Unchained (2012) Should Be Remembered For: Jackie Brown (1997) Jackie Brown is the runt of Quentin Tarantino's litter - like some long forgotten family heirloom, it resides somewhere in the house of QT, discarded and seemingly of no use to anyone. Everyone knows Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained as well as they know the argument that Tarantino has a penchant for self-indulgence. But that argument would be discounting Jackie Brown, a crime flick like no other in Tarantino's filmography, what most people call his leanest movie, what everyone calls his most 'mature' movie, and what some people consider to be his outright best. Alongside the brash nature of Tarantino's other work, Jackie Brown is a much simpler film, and it's one that's been easily lost in the noise. But it's in many ways the writer-director's most complete movie, and the one that rewards repeated viewings perhaps more than any of his others. The cast is across-the-board outstanding; Robert Forster is remarkably unremarkable as weary bail bondsman Max Cherry, Pam Grier is both feisty and vulnerable as the eponymous drug-running air hostess turned police informant, and the best use of De Niro in years comes in Tarantino casting the renowned actor as a slovenly, dim-witted thief. Props must also go to Samuel L. Jackson, who gives his best performance ever as plainly psychopathic gun-runner Ordell Robbie, who shifts from hilarious to downright terrifying from scene to scene. Yet at the heart of Jackie Brown is the most extraordinary thing for a Tarantino movie: an actual heart, the romance between Max and Jackie achieved through quiet understatement. Mark Kermode considers Jackie Brown the greatest Tarantino movie, and is among a growing number of critics who find it to be Tarantino's most wholly satisfying work.