Quentin Tarantino, the 63-year-old Oscar-winning director, published a scathing essay in Sight & Sound magazine lambasting modern Hollywood as a “flavorless sausage factory” riddled with pandering, miscasting, and “just plain stupid s***.” He admitted it is “almost impossible” for him to watch contemporary films. Yet in the same piece, Tarantino revealed one movie that broke through his cynicism and held him captivated: the 2026 Netflix crime thriller The Rip, starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

The Sight & Sound essay that tore into 'just plain stupid s***'

According to Sight & Sound, Tarantino's essay did not hold back. He described the movie output of the last six years as so poor that even the 1980s—often derided as a low point in Hollywood—now looks like a “golden age” by comparison. The director lambasted what he sees as pervasive implausibilities, audience pandering, and miscasting, calling the result “just plain stupid s***.” He confessed that the very concept of a contemporary film inspires more “contempt than generosity” in him. Tarantino concluded that these days, he would “rather read a book.”

Why 'The Rip' — a 77% Rotten Tomatoes cop thriller — broke through Tarantino's cynicism

Despite his bleak outlook, Tarantino singled out The Rip director Joe Carnahan and the screenplay, as well as the “splendid cast” including Sasha Calle, Teyana Taylor, Steven Yeun,Kyle Chandler, Scott Adkins, and Catalina Sandino Moreno, along with cinematographer Juan Miguel Azpiroz. he described the film, which follows Miami cops who discover a massive stash of cash that leads to pervasive distrust, as an “exciting cop thriller with a novel premise” that “manages to deliver the goods in really clever ways.” The movie currently holds a 77% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, but for Tarantino it was a rare visit to the “magical land of enjoyment” he said he no longer regularly visits.

A familiar pattern: Tarantino's blunt critiques from 'There Will Be Blood' to now

This is not the first time Tarantino has courted controversy with his unfiltered opinions.. As Sight & Sound noted in its report, late last year he faced significant backlash after calling actor Paul Dano “weak” and “uninteresting” in a podcast appearance, specifically criticizing his performance in There Will Be Blood and suggesting Austin Butler would have been better. Numerous celebrities—including Matthew Lillard, George Clooney, and Daniel Day-Lewis—came to Dano's defense. Dano himself addressed the comments publicly in January, expressing gratitude for the support he received. The pattern of Tarantino making sweeping, dismissive statements about films, actors, and the industry at large is well established , but the Rip praise offers a rare glimpse of what actually still excites him.

The one-film exception: what Tarantino's praise says about his relationship with contemporary cinema

Tarantino's admission that little else has “really held me in its grip and swept me away” leaves open key questions. Is his critique of Hollywood a genuine artistic judgment or a symptom of a director who has simply stopped engaging with new releases? The source does not include any response from Netflix, director Joe Carnahan, or the cast of The Rip regarding Tarantino's compliments. It remains unclear whether Tarantino plans to see any other recent films, or if his self-imposed exile from cinema is permanent. What is clear, however, is that a single Netflix thriller managed to earn the rarest of accolades: Tarantino's approval—and even that came with the caveat that it is the exception, not the rule.