Denis Villeneuve Just Picked His Favorite Tarantino Movie, and It's Not Reservoir Dogs

Denis Villeneuve is often compared to Christopher Nolan: neither has made a major creative misfire in their long careers, and both are the last hopes of modern entertainment cinema, making big, beautiful, yet conceptual films.

Although the director started out with dramatic films like Incendies, Villeneuve's most recent work has been in the sci-fi genre. This is not surprising – among his favorite films, the filmmaker often mentions 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Denis Villeneuve Chooses His Favorite Quentin Tarantino Film

But like any talented director, Villeneuve is not limited to one genre. For example, in a recent interview with LA Times, he named his favorite film by Taratino, a director as far away from sci-fi as possible:

“Pulp Fiction. I saw that in a theater with a full audience when it came out, and still to this day, I remember the excitement of seeing that new voice coming out into the world.”

Villeneuve also admitted that he saw Pulp Fiction before Reservoir Dogs, which came out earlier. Perhaps it influenced the director's choice – Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs have been competing for the title of Tarantino's best movie for almost 30 years.

Tarantino Created a New Subgenre With Pulp Fiction

The 1990s and early 2000s saw an increase in Tarantino-style films. These gangster action flicks imitated the director's recognizable postmodern style: charming gangsters chatting about burgers, going to cheap diners, and listening to rock 'n' roll in between shootouts and showdowns.

But none of these films could really copy Pulp Fiction, because Quentin Tarantino created a new genre of gangster movie.

Pulp Fiction turns gangsters into pop culture heroes. Tarantino's violence ceases to be serious, and the movie becomes a juggling act of references.

But deep inside this postmodern and cynical image lies a story about a miracle, about divine intervention that changes people, gives them a chance and a moral choice.

Tarantino Refuses to Watch Denis Villeneuve's Dune

Interestingly, Tarantino himself does not have warm feelings for Denis Villeneuve's works, at least not for the most famous one – Dune. Quentin noted that he has seen David Lynch's 1984 adaptation several times and has no need to see space worms and the fight for the spice again.

He complained that the television and film industry has lost its originality and criticized his colleagues for their choice of material.