Legendary film director Quentin Tarantino, best known for his movies Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, has now named his top films of the 20th century, and fans are bewildered by the industry icon’s answers.
Tarantino’s first pick was Black Hawk Down, an iconic war movie that follows an elite force of American soldiers on a mission to capture a Somalian warlord’s best lieutenants, but trouble ensues when they find themselves ambushed by a group of heavily armed men instead.
Tarantino said: “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.”
Second up was Toy Story 3, a surprisingly unexpected pick from a crime cinema stalwart. The 2010 animated comedy-drama film follows Andy Davis, now a teenager, who is going to college. When Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the other toys are accidentally donated to the Sunnyside Daycare centre by Andy’s mother, the toys must decide where their loyalties lie.
Speaking on the film, Tarantino said: “That last five minutes ripped my f***ing 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.”
One fan said: “I was scratching my head a bit on some of these, but then I remembered – It’s a list of his FAVORITE films. Maybe not what he thinks are the BEST films? But wow.”
Another added: “Weird to see Japanese cinema and crime films so underrepresented in a list from QT.”
Another person expressed: “Reading this list, I can’t help but think that the last 20 years in film have been total garbage.”
The full list is as follows:
20. West Side Story (2021) directed by Steven Spielberg
19. Cabin Fever (2002) directed by Eli Roth
18. Moneyball (2011) directed Bennett Miller
17. Chocolate (2008) directed by Prachya Pinkaew
16. The Devil’s Rejects (2005) directed by Rob Zombie
15. The Passion of the Christ (2004) directed by Mel Gibson
14. School of Rock (2003) directed by Richard Linklater
13. Jackass: The Movie (2002) directed by Jeff Tremaine
12. Big Bad Wolves (2013) directed by Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado
11. Battle Royale (2000) directed by Kinji Fukasaku
10. Midnight in Paris (2011) directed by Woody Allen
9. Shaun of the Dead (2004) directed by Edgar Wright
8. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) directed by George Miller
7. Unstoppable (2010) directed by Tony Scott
6. Zodiac (2007) directed by David Fincher
5. There Will Be Blood (2007) directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
4. Dunkirk (2017) directed by Christopher Nolan
3. Lost in Translation (2003) directed by Sofia Coppola
2. Toy Story 3 (2010) directed by Lee Unkrich
1. Black Hawk Down (2001) directed by Ridley Scott