Quentin Tarantino has begun unveiling his picks for the greatest films of the 21st century, and – true to form – it's violent, horror-leaning, and the director is doing it with both passionate cinephilia and a fair bit of controversy.
The director appeared as the latest guest on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, where last week he revealed entries 20 through 11 and this week's episode (released earlier today) contained his official top 10 list. The only rule? Only one film allowed per director.
20. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021)
Tarantino praised Spielberg’s 2021 remake of West Side Story as the film that "revitalised" the legendary director. “This is the one where Steven shows he still has it,” Tarantino said, adding that he doesn’t believe Martin Scorsese has made anything “this exciting” in the same period.
19. Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever (2002)
“There’s something so charming. Eli’s sense of humor, sense of gore — it just really, really works. People kind of forget how tense it is in the first half because it gets so genuinely funny in the last 20 minutes […] Hostel might be his best movie, but this is my favorite.”
18. Bennett Miller’s Moneyball (2011)
“Brad Pitt’s performance was one of my favorite star performances of the last 20 years – where a movie star came in and reminded you why he was a movie star and just carried the movie on his shoulders.”
17. Prachya Pinkaew’s martial-arts revenge thriller Chocolate (2008)
"Here’s a movie you probably never heard of […] People getting f*cked up in the most spectacular of ways […] they trained this 12-year-old girl for four years to star in this movie […] this is some of the greatest kung-fu fights I’ve ever seen in a movie." Adding to our watch lists immediately.
16. Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2005)
“This rough Peckinpah–cowboy–Manson thing [from Zombie] — that voice didn’t really exist before [in House of 1000 Corpses], and he refined that voice with this movie […] Peckinpah wasn’t part of horror before this," Tarantino explained. "He melded it with sick hillbillies, and it’s become a thing now. You can recognize it across the street, but that didn’t exist before."
15. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Tarantino said: “I was laughing a lot during the movie. Not because we were trying to be perverse, laughing at Jesus getting fcked up – extreme violence is just funny to me – and when you go so far beyond extremity, it just gets funnier and funnier. We were just groaning and laughing at how fcked up this was […] Mel did a tremendous directorial job. He put me in that time period. I talked to Mel Gibson about this and he looked at me like I was a f*cking nut.”
14. Richard Linklater’s School of Rock (2003)
“It was a really fun time at the theatres," Tarantino remenisced. "It was a real fun, fun, fun screening. I do think this one had the explosion of Jack Black combined with Rick Linklater and Mike White – that made it special […] this is as close to Bad News Bears as we ever got."
13. Jeff Tremaine’s Jackass: The Movie (2002)
Tarantino told Ellis this was the film he “laughed the most at these last 20 years. I don’t remember laughing beginning to the end like this since Richard Pryor… 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, and we watched the movie and just died.”
12. Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s Big Bad Wolves (2013)
Unsurprising this one made the list, given Tarnatino told press during a post Q&A screening of the film: "Not only is this the best film in Busan, this is the best film of the year."
11. Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale (2000)
But it was Tarantino’s #11 pick that sparked his most fiery commentary. The filmmaker has long championed the 2000 Japanese cult classic, and he again criticised The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins for what he sees as blatant similarities between the two stories.
“I do not understand how the Japanese writer didn’t sue Suzanne Collins for every f—ing thing she owns,” Tarantino said. He argued that book critics failed to recognise the earlier Japanese film and novel, praising The Hunger Games as “original” while, in his view, overlooking its near-identical premise. Film critics, he noted, immediately drew the comparison: “As soon as the film critics saw the film they said, ‘What the f—! This is just Battle Royale except PG!’”
Tarantino also reminisced about seeing the film before its U.S. debut while scouting locations for Kill Bill in Japan. The private screening left him stunned: “I had no idea what the f*ck I was about to see… It was so wild.”
10. Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2000)
“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.”
9. Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004)
“My favorite directorial debut even though he did a cheapie debut movie he doesn’t like to talk about […] I loved how much he loved the Romero universe he recreated. The script is really terrific, it’s one of the most quotable films on this list, I still quote the line ‘the dogs don’t look up.’ It’s not a spoof of zombie movies, it’s a real zombie movie, and I appreciate the distinction.”
8. George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
“I was actually not going to see it for the simple reason that in a world where Mel Gibson exists, and he’s not playing Max? I want Mad Mel! Weeks and weeks and weeks passed, and people kept talking about how great it was, and Fred, my editor, was saying, ‘I’m serious, you gotta do it.’ Then I saw it. The great stuff is so great, and you’re watching a truly great filmmaker; he had all the money in the world and all the time in the world to make it exactly as he wanted.”
7. Tony Scott’s Unstoppable (2011)
“It’s one of my favourite 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.”
6. David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007)
“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 realised 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... mesmerising masterwork.”
5. Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007)
“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 f*cking 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 f*cking actor in SAG [laughs].”
4. Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017)
“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.”
3. Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003)
“I fell so much in love with Lost in Translation that I fell in love with Sofia Coppola and made her my girlfriend," Tarantino laughed. "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.”
2. Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3 (2010)
A left-of-field pick from Tarantino, but he did call the film an “almost perfect movie". He adds: “That last five minutes ripped my f*cking 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.”
1. Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2002)
“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 of his top pick. “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 two 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.”
