Quentin Tarantino’s Best Movies of 21st Century: ‘Black Hawk Down’

Quentin Tarantino has named Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down” the best movie of the 21st century, saying Scott’s “feat of direction is beyond extraordinary.” The Oscar-winning filmmaker revealed his top 10 picks during an interview on “The Bret Easton Ellis” podcast (via World of Reel).

The list also features Lee Unkrich’s “Toy Story 3” (#2), Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” (#3), Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” (#4), Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (#5), David Fincher’s “Zodiac” (#6), Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable” (#7), George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” (#8), Edgar Wright’s “Shaun of the Dead” (#9) and Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (#10).

“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 said about selecting “Black Hawk Down” as 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 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.”

Tarantino called his second place pick, “Toy Story 3,” an “almost perfect movie,” adding: “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.”

In a more surprising reveal, Tarantino said that he did not actually like Nolan’s “Dunkirk” when he first saw it. The…