Legendary filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is no stranger to “best of” lists. Almost every year, he shares his picks for the most notable films of the year, and these lists don’t always include the same films featured during the awards season. Needless to say, his taste and insight into cinema is truly unique, and his latest selection of the best films made in the 21st century is the perfect example.
The Oscar-winning director behind modern classics like Pulp Fiction and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood recently showed up on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, where he shared his picks for the 20 best films of the 21st century, starting with the bottom 10. With the premise of having to select just one film per director, Tarantino’s list is far from traditional. From Steven Spielberg’s most underrated film of the last decades to a Jackass entry, the director’s final selection is diverse, unexpected, and hilarious. You can check out the list, and his explanations, below:
11. Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku)
12. Big Bad Wolves (Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado)
13. Jackass: The Movie (Jeff Tremaine)
14. The School of Rock (Richard Linklater)
15. The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson)
16. The Devil’s Rejects (Rob Zombie)
17. Chocolate (Prachya Pinkaew)
18. Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
19. Cabin Fever (Eli Roth)
20. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
Which 21st-Century Films Did Tarantino Choose as His Favorite?
Tarantino is yet to reveal the full list, but judging from his first ten, it’s safe to assume that he’s not adding any filters regarding wide critical acclaim. No, he’s shooting from the hip with this one. The director chose Academy Award darlings like the Brad Pitt-led sports drama Moneyball, which he says has one of his favorite performances of the last 20 years: “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.”
He also includes Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, saying, “I was laughing a lot during the movie. Not because we were trying to be perverse, laughing at Jesus getting f-ed up — extreme violence is just funny to me — and when you go so far beyond extremity, it just gets funnier and funnier.”
The director also adds Battle Royale (while blasting The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins for ripping off the film) to the list. Other picks include Big Bad Wolves, School of Rock, Chocolate, and West Side Story, of which he says, “This is the one where Steven shows he still has it. I don’t think Scorsese has made a film this exciting [this century]. It revitalized him.” However, the most unexpected picks by far are Jackass: The Movie, The Devil’s Rejects, and Cabin Fever. We’ll let Taraninto explain himself…
Jackass: The Movie
“This 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 […] As I was making Kill Bill, I thought this movie was so f-ing funny I had to show it to the crew. So we found a print, watched the movie, and just died.”
The Devil’s Rejects
“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. 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.”
Cabin Fever
“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.”