Quentin Tarantino's Top 10 Films of the 21st Century

Tarantino's Top 20 Films of the 21st Century

1. Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott)

“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 […] 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. It keeps up the intensity for 2 hours 45 minutes, or whatever it is, and I watched it again recently, my heart was going through the entire runtime of the movie; it had me and never let me go, and I hadn’t seen it in a while. The feat of direction is beyond extraordinary.”

2. Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)

“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 […] It’s just remarkable. It’s almost a perfect movie. 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.”

3. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)

“I fell so much in love with ‘Lost in Translation’ that I fell in love with Sofia Coppola and made her my girlfriend [laughs]. 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.”

4. Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan)

5. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)

“Daniel Day-Lewis. The old-style craftsmanship quality to the film. It had an old Hollywood craftsmanship without trying to be like that. It was the only film he’s ever done, and I brought it up to him, that doesn’t have a set piece. The fire is the closest to a set piece. This was about dealing with the narrative, dealing with the story, and he did it fcking amazingly. ‘There Will Be Blood’ would stand a good chance at being #1 or #2 if it didn’t have a big, giant flaw in it … and the flaw is Paul Dano. Obviously, it’s supposed to be a two-hander, but it’s also drastically obvious that it’s not a two-hander. [Dano] is weak sauce, man. He is the weak sister. Austin Butler would have been wonderful in that role. He’s just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy. The weakest fucking actor in SAG [laughs].”

6. Zodiac (David Fincher)

“When I first watched ‘Zodiac,’ I wasn’t that into it, and then it started playing the movie channels, and first thing I knew, watching 20 minutes of it, 40 minutes of it, and I realized this is a lot more engaging than I remember it being, and it kept grabbing me in different sections, so I decided to watch this goddamn thing again, and it was a whole different experience from that point on. I found myself, every six or seven years, watching it again, and it’s a luxurious experience that I give myself over to […] mesmerizing masterwork.”

7. Unstoppable (Tony Scott)

“It’s one of my favorite last movies of a director. I’ve seen it four times, and every time I see it, I like it more. If you asked me years ago, I would have put ‘Man on Fire’ on the list, but ‘Unstoppable’ is one of the purest visions of Tony’s action aesthetic, the two guys are great together, and it gets better and better. It’s one of the best monster movies of the 21st century. The train is a monster. The train becomes a monster. And it becomes one of the greatest monsters of our time. Stronger than Godzilla, stronger than those King Kong movies.”

8. Mad Max: Fury Road

9. Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright)

10. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)

“I really can’t stand Owen Wilson. I spent the first time watching the movie loving it and hating him. The second time I watched it, I was like ‘ah, okay, don’t be such a pr*ck, he’s not so bad.’ Then the third time I watched it, I found myself only watching him.”