13. Quentin Tarantino
This will probably be a controversially low placement of Tarantino given his reputation within the film industry but what I believe to be Tarantino's greatest films were all released before the cutoff date of 1998. However Tarantino has still managed to make some of the more interesting films of the last decade and a half. Tarantino's first film in the modern era are the two Kill Bill movies, which were an interesting homage to martial arts films. His 2007 film Death Proof is generally considered his weakest film but he rebounded in 2009 with one of his finer efforts, Inglorious Basterds. Presenting an alternative version of WWII in which Hitler is shot to death in a burning movie theatre, Inglorious Basterds brought German actor Christoph Waltz to the attention of moviegoers with his breathtaking portrayal of SS colonel Hans Landa. The film earned eight Academy Award nominations and remains one of Tarantino's best films. In 2012, Tarantino continued his alternate history series with Django Unchained, in which a German bounty hunter frees a slave named Django as he can help him identify a bounty. Later, he agrees to help Django free his wife from captivity. While the film was a bit of a mess in parts, there was still enough in the film to make it enjoyable although it probably did not deserve all the Oscar nominations it received. A legend of modern cinema, Tarantino still has years to create more of his very unique films but for right now most of his great movies are more than 15 years old.
Eligible Films: Kill Bill: Vol.1 (2003) , Kill Bill:Vol. 2 (2004), Death Proof (2007), Inglorious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012)