What does Quentin Tarantino insist is the best movie ever made?

Quentin Tarantino believes Steven Spielberg epic, Jaws, is the greatest movie ever made.

Jaws was released in 1975 to critical acclaim. It is considered the first major summer blockbuster as its release was a watershed moment, with it subsequently becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time before the release of Star Wars a couple of years later.

What are the top 10 most popular shows on Amazon Prime right now?

Tuesday 10 February 2026, 14:38

What are the top 10 most popular shows on Netflix right now?

Monday 9 February 2026, 15:27

The formula of the summer blockbuster had been realised - a high-concept action/adventure movie that is accessible to a wide-reaching audience.

Tarantino, a film connoisseur as well as an acclaimed director, thinks nothing can touch Spielberg's monster classic.

READ MORE: Quentin Tarantino wants Bruce Willis to star in his final movie despite dementia diagnosis

"I think Jaws is the greatest movie ever made," the Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs director said on the ReelBlend podcast.

"Maybe not the greatest film. But it's the greatest movie ever made. And then there are other movies that can get in its rarefied air. But as far as a movie, there's no making it better than Jaws.

"There's no 'better' than Jaws. It is the best movie ever made. And it shows how badly timed most movies made before Jaws were."

Not a film, but a movie

Tarantino was quickly to distinguish the difference between a movie and a film, with the latter more likely to earn a director something like an Academy Award.

Spielberg has made a career out of doing both - blockbusters like Jaws and Oscar favourites like Schindler's List.

Tarantino believes that Spielberg was born to make movies, though.

"What I meant by that, to one degree or another, is that Spielberg and a lot of his cohorts grew up seeing those kinds of movies in the theatre," he continued.

"Henry Levin's Journey to Center of the Earth, he's gonna run to go and see that. Richard Fleischer's Fantastic Voyage. He's going to run and go see it. Gordon Douglas's Them! He's going to run and go see. Now... most of them weren't directed that well.

"They were assignments given to journeyman directors who did their best with them. That was how we were used to seeing comic book — that kind of movie experience. As opposed to a Spielberg, who was like, 'No, this is exactly the kind of movie he likes'.

"This is exactly the kind of movies he was put on Earth to make. And he's going to make it, within an inch of his life, as effective as it possibly can be."

Tarantino has written and directed nine movies (or films) in his career so far, and his next is titled The Movie Critic.