“Pulp Fiction” - excellent; “Reservoir Dogs” - excellent, but a bit overboard on the gore; “Jackie Brown” - very, very good; “Kill Bill I” - crap; “Kill Bill 2” - crap squared; “Grindhouse” - waste of time.
I still find it hard to believe Tarentino did the “Kill Bills”. Listen to the dialog in “Pulp Fiction” or “Reservoir Dogs” and it grabs your attention even if you’re not looking at the pictures (which I do a lot with a flic on the tube while I’m working); try the same with the “Kill Bills” and the dialog is so wooden you’d think it was written by a high school student.
And I really liked Pitt in “Snatch” (it helps if you turn the closed captioning on, though).
Uma had a lot of input on those films; it's obvious that Tarentino didn't write or approve that dialogue alone. His touch is definitely there, though (any movie that borrows a piece of the White Lightning soundtrack can't be all bad).
I agree that most of Grindhouse was abysmal, but the segment with Kurt Russell and the homage to Vanishing Point isn't too bad. At least you can tell it's Quentin's work.
Agree with everything you've said - especially the part about the captioning and "Snatch" - except for the your dislike of Kill Bill. I don't think it's Tarantino at his finest, but it wasn't horrible. Jackie Brown one of the most underrated movies of the last dozen or so years. Grindhouse was bad and it's companion piece - name escapes me - was even worse.
The wife and I actually watched "Meet Joe Black" just this past weekend - it too gets a little better with time and Pitt wasn't bad in that either.
Later when QT shot Jackie Brown (actually from a Leonard novel) he acknowledged that he wrote Pulp Fiction as if it were a Leonard work.