Quentin Tarantino makes movies.
The Academy Awards , now known officially as the Oscars , is a set of twenty-four awards for artistic and technical merit in the American film industry , given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ( AMPAS ) , to recognize excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by the Academy 's voting membership . Quentin Jerome Tarantino ( [ ˌtærənˈtiːnoʊ ] born March 27 , 1963 ) is an American director , writer , and actor . He is widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation . In the early 1990s , he began his career as an independent filmmaker with the release of Reservoir Dogs in 1992 ; regarded as a classic and cult hit , it was called the `` Greatest Independent Film of All Time '' by Empire . Judged the greatest film from 1983 -- 2008 by Entertainment Weekly , many critics and scholars have named it one of the most significant works of modern cinema .