Quentin Tarantino may be the George R.R. Martin of making movies, which is to say that he doesn’t do it so much anymore, but he still spends every waking hour (and probably a good amount of sleeping hours) thinking about movies. Recently, that manifested in an appearance on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast during which Tarantino named his 10 favorite movies of the 21st century, and — big shocker — he had some hot takes to share. For starters, his top pick is a somewhat surprising choice: Ridley Scott’s 2001 war movie Black Hawk Down.

Based on the true story of an American military operation during Somalia’s civil war in the ‘90s, Black Hawk Down stars Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, and Tom Sizemore, and it makes a point to emphasize the brutal intensity of the conflict over the human stories of the people involved. It was a pretty big hit and was nominated for awards, but Black Hawk Down isn’t necessarily held up as one of the canonical Best Movies (it has a respectable, though not stunning, 77% on Rotten Tomatoes). Tarantino’s argument, via Variety, is that it’s “the only movie that actually goes completely for an Apocalypse Now sense of purpose and visual effect and feeling” and that it’s “beyond extraordinary” how Scott was able to maintain the tension for the entire runtime.

What Are Quentin Tarantino’s Favorite Movies of the 21st Century?

Image via Pixar Animation

Tarantino’s second favorite movie of the 21st century was Toy Story 3, which he called an “almost perfect movie” (he also noted that he’ll cry if he so much as describes the end of the movie), followed by Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation at number three and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk at number four. Number five is a controversial one, not because of the pick — Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant There Will Be Blood — but because of Tarantino’s comments about it: He said on the podcast that it would be higher on his list if not for Paul Dano, who he calls the movie’s “big giant flaw.” He says Dano is “weak sauce” and a “weak sister,” adding that he hasn’t liked him in any roles and that he gives a “non-entity performance.”

The rest of the top 10 is less antagonistic, but it does include Woody Allen’s cloyingly sentimental Midnight in Paris, so there are still things to argue about. That one came in at number 10, behind David Fincher’s Zodiac, Tony Scott’s Unstoppable (a very Tarantino pick), George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead. On a previous episode of the podcast, Tarantino named movies 11-20 on his list, which included Battle Royale, Jackass: The Movie, School of Rock, The Passion of the Christ, and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake.

One movie that is not on the list, though, is Fincher’s The Social Network, which Tarantino said in 2020 was his favorite movie of the 2010s. That means the takeaway from this, other than “Quentin Tarantino really does not care for Paul Dano,” is that the list is fluid and shouldn’t necessarily be interpreted as anything other than a famous movie guy’s favorite movies at this exact moment in time. It’s not like we all have to consider Black Hawk Down as the best movie ever made now just because some dude on a podcast said so, regardless of who that dude is.

Still, if you’d like to see it, Black Hawk Down is available on VOD services, plus free platforms like Kanopy and Hoopla (where a lot of these movies are available, actually).

Release Date

December 28, 2001

Runtime

145 minutes

Writers

Ken Nolan, Mark Bowden