Quentin Tarantino’s Top 20 Films of the 21st Century

If Quentin Tarantino wasn’t an award-winning screenwriter and director, he would have made one hell of a movie critic. Over the years, the Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs filmmaker has made no secret of his unique taste in cinema, often making headlines for his blunt assessments of much-loved productions.

He’s previously labelled a Hitchcock classic ‘mediocre’, slammed the work of Jean-Luc Godard and even revealed that he refuses to watch Denis Villeneuve’s Dune because he’s already seen David Lynch’s version. However, while it is easy to label filmmakers, particularly those as celebrated and decorated as the Pulp Fiction creator, as cinema snobs, it’s important to remember that Tarantino is anything but.

A passionate defender of entertainment in all its vast visual forms, the American cinema legend does not discriminate when it comes to genre, audience or even plot. In a recent interview on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Quentin Tarantino revealed his list of the top 20 films of the 21st century; a wildly unbalanced, unexpected and unpretentious ranking of movies that has raised more than a few eyebrows.

Quentin Tarantino and Aggressive Filmmaking

As you might expect, the list of Tarantino-approved movies is rich with gratuitous violence, horror and dark comedy, but there are a number of interesting omissions. Unlike other film rankings, you won’t find classics like The Godfather, The Lord of the Rings or Mulholland Drive. Rather, Tarantino’s list comprises a vast dichotomy of unseen, under-appreciated or simply overlooked titles, often leaning towards big-budget blockbusters over independent, message-driven cinema.

As he explained to host and author Easton Ellis, the reasoning behind his ranking was largely based on what was ‘memorable’ to him. More often than not, that comes from an ‘aggressive’ style of filmmaking that sticks with him.

“What is iconic to me, what is memorable to me, rather than to match wits with the Arthurs of the world, it’s these experiences,“ Tarantino told Easton Ellis. “The idea was I didn’t look up anything, I just picked 20 movies straight from my brain, and if I couldn’t remember it, then it doesn’t make it. It had to be memorable. There’s a big thing about the filmmaking. Most of them have aggressive filmmaking. I’m impressed by that.“

‘A Masterwork’

Top of the list was the 2001 Ridley Scott epic Black Hawk Down, a gritty, intense warzone thriller with an ensemble cast led by Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor and Australian Eric Bana. Co-produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, from a screenplay by Ken Nolan, the film is based on the 1999 eponymous non-fiction book by journalist Mark Bowden and follows the crew of a Black Hawk helicopter shot down during the Battle of Mogadishu.

According to Quentin Tarantino, the film’s hyper-intense style, matched with the long runtime initially felt combative to him, but over time, he’s come to appreciate Black Hawk Down for what it is; a ‘masterwork’ of combat filmmaking.

“I liked it when I first saw it, but I actually think it was so intense that it stopped working for me, and I didn’t carry it with me the way that I should’ve,“ Tarantino explained. “Since then, I’ve seen it a couple of times, not a bunch of times, but I think it’s a masterwork, and one of the things I love so much about it is…this is the only movie that actually goes completely for an Apocalypse Now sense of purpose and visual effect and feeling, and I think it achieves it.“

Tarantino’s praise of the Ridley Scott epic goes a little against the traditional ranking formula. While the film was a massive hit upon release, it rarely appears in best-of lists and over the last two decades has remarkably, if not unfairly, slipped into relative obscurity.

The sound design, direction and choreography are unparalleled when it comes to war films, and you could argue that the role of SFC Norm “Hoot” Gibson is the finest performance of Eric Bana’s illustrious career. You can bet that with the Tarantino seal of approval, Black Hawk Down is likely to surge into the ‘most-viewed’ category on whatever streaming platform has the rights, and it won’t be the only film on the receiving end of a Quentin Tarantino-boost.

‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Animated Films’

Tarantino, if nothing else, is full of surprises. Coming in at second on his list of the top 20 films of the 21st century was the animated feature Toy Story 3. According to the famed director, the 2010 flick, which follows Tom Hanks’ cowboy doll ‘Woody’ and Tim Allen’s astronaut figurine ‘Buzz Lightyear’, was on par with the Sergio Leone masterpiece, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, in that it is one of finest examples of a perfectly executed trilogy.

In the film, Woody, Buzz and the other toys are accidentally donated to the Sunnyside Daycare centre. Forced to decide where their loyalties lie, each toy faces the unenviable challenge of learning to let go of the past while still making light of the future. It’s a surprisingly deep message for a children’s film and one that struck a chord with Tarantino.

“That last five minutes ripped my fucking heart out, and if I even try to describe the end, I’ll start crying and get choked up,“ he said. “And we don’t even get to talk about the great comedy bits, which are never-ending. I think people never nail the third film of a trilogy. I think the other one is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to me, and this is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of animated films. This is the greatest end of a trilogy.“

Twists and Turns

Speaking on the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Tarantino also took the time to acknowledge the work of Christopher Nolan. The Academy Award-winning legend described Nolan’s Dunkirk as ‘gobsmacking’, stating that, like Black Hawk Down, it was a film that initially didn’t work for him.

“Another film that I didn’t initially like. What I now love about it is that I feel there’s a real mastery to it, and I came around to it watching it again and again and again. The first time, it’s not like it left me cold — it was so kind of gobsmacking, I didn’t really know what I saw, it was almost too much, and then the second time I saw it, my brain was able to take it in a little bit more, and then the third time and the fourth time, it was just like, wow, it just blew me away.”

Also on the receiving end of Tarantino’s praise were Paul Thomas Anderson and Sofia Coppola. The former’s masterpiece There Will Be Blood was lauded for its ‘old-style craftsmanship quality’, while Coppola’s 2003 irreverent comedy Lost in Translation spurred a more visceral reaction in Tarantino.

“I fell so much in love with Lost in Translation that I fell in love with Sofia Coppola and made her my girlfriend,“ Tarantino revealed to Easton Ellis. “I courted and wooed her, and I did it all in public; it was like it was out of a Jane Austen novel. I didn’t know her well enough to get together on my own, but I kept going to events. I spoke to Pedro Almodóvar about this, and we both agreed it was such a girlie movie, in such a delicious way. I hadn’t seen such a girlie movie in a very long time, and I hadn’t seen such a girlie movie like that be so well done.“

Quentin Tarantino’s rundown formed the second part of a monumental rankings list that has been ongoing for weeks. The director previously fronted the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast earlier this month to dish up numbers 20-11, naming films such as Bennett Miller’s 2011 sports masterpiece Moneyball and the Kinji Fukasaku action thriller Battle Royale.

That initial list also included a few surprises, with Tarantino also calling out the stunt-work of Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O, stating that the 2002 smash-hit Jackass: The Movie was “the movie I laughed at the most in these last 20 years”.

“I don’t remember laughing from beginning to end like this since Richard Pryor,” Tarantino said in the podcast. “As I was making Kill Bill, I thought this movie was so fucking funny I had to show it to the crew. So we found a print, watched the movie, and just died.”

To listen to the full episode with Quentin Tarantino at The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, follow the link below, Only paid subscribers will be able to unlock the content.

Quentin Tarantino – Top 20 Films of the 21st Century

The full list of Quentin Tarantino’s favourite movies of the 21st century, as revealed by the director on the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, is listed below. Featuring a mix of mind-blowing action blockbusters, low-budget comedies and genre-defying creativity, the collection offers unique perspective on modern cinema. Here is a list of Quentin Tarantino’s top 20 films of the 21st century: