Quentin Tarantino has officially unveiled his list for the top 10 films of the 21st century. And as expected from a diehard cinephile like Tarantino, the results couldn't be more surprising.
In a countdown comprised of everything from period Westerns to sweeping Pixar films, Tarantino topped off his list with Ridley Scott's 2001 war film, Black Hawk Down, as his pick for the best movie of the past 25 years.
“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 of the film on The Bret Easton Ellis podcast.
“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," he added.
"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," the Pulp Fiction director continued. "it had me and never let me go, and I hadn’t seen it in a while. The feat of direction is beyond extraordinary.”
Released in 2001, Black Hawk Down incorporates a somewhat fictionalized portrayal of a 1993 military operation in Somalia by U.S. Special Forces. Featuring a large ensemble cast that includes Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, Jason Isaacs, Tom Sizemore, Orlando Bloom, Sam Shepard, and Tom Hardy, it earned a largely positive response at time of its debut, garnering two Oscars for Best Sound and Best Film Editing.
Other notable films Tarantino included on his list were Toy Story 3, Lost in Translation, Dunkirk, There Will Be Blood, Zodiac, Unstoppable, Mad Max: Fury Road, Shaun of the Dead, and Midnight in Paris.
