Quentin Tarantino's Favorite Films of the 21st Century (So Far)

Quentin Tarantino's been talking recently, and much of the response has turned on his opinions of a few particular actors...But what about his actual selections?

#20. West Side Story (2021) I still have yet to see this (or the original!), so I have little opinion on it except it seems to me part of the string of films Spielberg did just to appease the Hollywood establishment while he tried to figure out his continued relevance.

#19. Cabin Fever (2003) I greatly respect Tarantino as a director, but I am also very aware that our tastes are not exactly the same.  I'm just not really a fan of the horror genre, so while I know this has a pretty well-established reputation, I've never seen it.  I'm glad it helped catapult Eli Roth's career, though.

#18. Moneyball (2011) Back in 2011 my life kind of fell off the rails, so I didn't catch up with this one until later, somehow convincing myself in the meantime I couldn't possibly be really missing that much.  I was wrong.  It's probably one of the highlights of Brad Pitt's career.  It's crazy, because I'm a fan of baseball, and the A's, and Yuuuke (the Greek God of Walks!), and Brad Pitt!  So I'm glad I came around on it.

#17. Chocolate (2009) Until his list I hadn't even heard of this one, but having looked it up, not a surprising pick for the director of Kill Bill.  

#16. The Devil's Rejects (2005) Never seen it, never will.  But anyone who's familiar with Tarantino, again, shouldn't be surprised by such a selection.

#15. The Passion of the Christ (2004) When I compiled my most recent selections for best of the century and all-time, this was a very difficult cut, because I do believe it's one of the best films ever made, and some later permutation will probably include it, so I'm glad he's got it on his list.

#14. School of Rock (2003) Another famous movie I have yet to see, arguably still the defining film of Jack Black's career.

#13. Jackass: The Movie (2002) There are movies that are easy to take for granted, since many of us remember that there was, of course, the TV show before it, and sequels, but it really is worth remembering something like this.  

#12. Big Bad Wolves (2014) Another of what must be considered very much his deep cuts.

#11. Battle Royale (2000) One of the true cult classics of the new millennium, very easy to take for granted, and another unsurprising selection for the director of Kill Bill.

#10. Midnight in Paris (2011) One of the movies I also truly adore, and I love how Tarantino frames how it helped him appreciate Owen Wilson.

#9. Shaun of the Dead (2004) I am very much aware that this is one of those movies I take for granted, and I suspect a lot of people do.

#8. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) I confess to still be baffled at how much love this one's gotten since its release, and I suspect that'll never change.

#7. Unstoppable (2010) Anyone who knows what kind of movie Tarantino enjoyed in the '70s shouldn't be surprised to see this particular selection.  Another easy to take for granted, but I remember enjoying it upon release.

#6. Zodiac (2007) Another film that can get lost in the shuffle...I think Tarantino's whole point with all this is how lost in the shuffle anything that might've previously stood out has become in recent Hollywood's rush to celebrate basically anything that doesn't look like classic Hollywood.

#5. There Will Be Blood (2007) Tarantino's thoughts became instantly notorious when he criticized Paul Dano in this, which I instantly sympathized with, since I thought at the time Dano was horribly miscast, and ruined the whole movie, so while Tarantino thinks Dano tempered the results just below the classic it's otherwise been embraced to be, I thought it bumped the film well outside contention.  I've never seen Heaven's Gate, but given its notoriety, I would naturally assume it couldn't really be very different an experience.  The ironies of the present age, I guess.

#4. Dunkirk (2017) Christopher Nolan has so thoroughly dominated much of what I consider the best filmmaking of the past quarter century, for me Dunkirk was comparative minor fare, given the likes of Memento, The Dark Knight, Oppenheimer.  But I'm glad Tarantino has him in the mix.  

#3. Lost in Translation (2003) In the twenty-odd years since its release, somehow became yet another of the films whose impact has dulled.  In earlier eras, this would've been impossible.

#2. Toy Story 3 (2010) Another of the movies whose reputation just baffles me...I always figured this one needlessly rehashed everything that worked better in the first two, and it was only the illusion that it "rounded out the story" that made it seem special.  But in that analysis it cheapens the achievements of them, reducing the experience to literally the least important element from them: Andy.  I mean, if these movies aren't about the toys, what are they?  So that's why I was glad when the fourth one made that all the more obvious by finally including one a kid actually made.

#1. Black Hawk Down (2002) Here's where it's most obvious that Tarantino is thumbing his nose to the establishment with his list, since the critics never saw any value in it.  Me, since I actually went to school with the younger brother of one of the victims (who wasn't featured in the movie), I was never able to even consider dismissing it, and to my mind, represents the bewildering nature of warfare perfectly.

So it's certainly not my list, but it makes sense for all the reasons Tarantino compiled it.  At some point there will be fresh takes on this era, and I figure he's pretty well close to the mark on how history will reckon it.

My Top 100 Films (2025 Edition)

 I've been doing lists like this for years.  Earlier this year I detailed how I intended to complete a more balanced history survey (most of my previous attempts had the recency bias fallacy, and I'd been perfectly happy with such results, until I wasn't).  The New York Times encouraged film fans recently to present their top ten of the past quarter century (my results also featured here), and that also encouraged me.  So now my all-time top ten has a full seven decades represented, which isn't too bad.  My overall top pick hasn't changed since I first saw Alexander, which despite its overall reputation remains for me a stunning, complete cinematic achievement, everything I want to see in a movie (and in its many cuts).  I weighted the original Star Wars where it deserves as an original statement, as too Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane, which if populated by acting (aside from Welles himself, not only one of the great directors, but a master in front of the camera, too) that is otherwise subpar by reasonable definitions (which Welles himself could afford to ignore, since so many of them were his stock ensemble, including Joseph Cotton).  Ranking high for the first time ever, for me, the funniest film I've ever seen, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Throw in The Dark Knight, which is as close to modern myth as superheroes are likely to get anytime soon; Casablanca, which is as classic as classic Hollywood without Welles can get; JFK, which is the defining film featuring American history, real or imagined; The Truman Show, which at one time was my favorite film; Isle of Dogs, the most recent film to be included in this elite number; and The Princess Bride, the other funniest film I've ever seen, and long deserving of more respect on these lists.  And all the way to another Star Wars, at 100.  Ranked fairly low, here, is Conclave, which the more I think about it, the more I think it deserves serious consideration in that top ten, but...I don't want to appear too hasty.  It was just released last year, after all.  About the only film that's not a Hollywood production, or near enough, is Crazy Samurai Musashi, a film just about no one else has even heard of, but I simply adore.  Because I love film as a medium so much, there's a ton of movies I can't believe aren't on my own list, but there are a lot of movies, and a hundred is a hundred.  

1.       Alexander (2004)
2.       Citizen Kane (1941)
3.       Star Wars (1977)
4.       The Dark Knight (2008)
5.       Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
6.       Casablanca (1943)
7.       JFK (1991)
8.       The Truman Show (1998)
9.       Isle of Dogs (2018)
10.    The Princess Bride (1987)
11.    The Fall (2008)
12.    The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
13.    Oppenheimer (2023)
14.    The Last Duel (2021)
15.    Crazy Samurai Musashi (2020)
16.    Gladiator (2000)
17.    Munich (2005)
18.    Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
19.    The Departed (2006)
20.    Warrior (2011)
21.    Inglourious Basterds (2009)
22.    Memento (2001)
23.    Interstellar (2014)
24.    The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2019)
25.    Revenge of the Sith (2005)
26.    Arrival (2016)
27.    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
28.    Yesterday (2019)
29.    Logan (2017)
30.    Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
31.    Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019)
32.    Amsterdam (2022)
33.    Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
34.    The Death of Stalin (2018)
35.    It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
36.    The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
37.    The Matrix (1999)
38.    Silence (2016)
39.    The Maltese Falcon (1941)
40.    High Noon (1952)
41.    The Blues Brothers (1980)
42.    Pulp Fiction (1994)
43.    Mary Poppins (1969)
44.    The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
45.    The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
46.    On the Waterfront (1954)
47.    Forrest Gump (1994)
48.    Man on the Moon (1999)
49.    In Bruges (2008)
50.    Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
51.    Raging Bull (1980)
52.    The Lobster (2016)
53.    Man of Steel (2013)
54.    A Monster Calls (2016)
55.    A Few Good Men (1992)
56.    Django Unchained (2012)
57.    The Wizard of Oz (1939)
58.    Inception (2010)
59.    The Godfather (1972)
60.    Apocalypse Now (1979)
61.    Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)
62.    Scrooged (1988)
63.    White Christmas (1954)
64.    Superman (1978)
65.    The Wild One (1953)
66.    Spaceballs (1987)
67.    Looking for Richard (1996)
68.    The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
69.    The Batman (2022)
70.    Source Code (2011)
71.    The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
72.    Midnight in Paris (2011)
73.    Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
74.    The Tree of Life (2011)
75.    The Third Man (1950)
76.    Seven Psychopaths (2012)
77.    Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
78.    Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
79.    The Ten Commandments (1956)
80.    Back to the Future (1985)
81.    Reservoir Dogs (1992)
82.    The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
83.    Waiting for the Barbarians (2020)
84.    Winter’s Tale (2014)
85.    Touch of Evil (1958)
86.    North by Northwest (1959)
87.    Locke (2014)
88.    The French Dispatch (2021)
89.    Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)
90.    A Complete Unknown (2024)
91.    The Hateful Eight (2015)
92.    Dunkirk (2017)
93.    The Courier (2021)
94.    Conclave (2024)
95.    The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)
96.    A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
97.    American History X (1998)
98.    Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)
99.    (500) Days of Summer (2009)
100. The Force Awakens (2015)

Across the River and Into the Trees (2024) Review

the story: An old soldier tries to find a reason to live.

the rating: ****

the review: I've become somewhat of a Hemingway nut, in the past decade, stemming, ironically or not, from a depiction of Hemingway himself, in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, and have been steadily plugging away at his fiction (and some of his nonfiction, including, of course, A Moveable Feast), and he's become very easily one of my favorite writers as a result.  Across the River and Into the Trees, though, first came to my attention as a home video release (since its theatrical run was negligible), as it's not considered one of Heminway's essential works, and as such hadn't previously showed up on my radar.

So I collected the movie and ordered a copy of the book, and watched the movie and then read the book, and having read the book, rewatched the movie.  As these things tend to go, for those who aren't slavishly devoted to the narrative that "the book is better," I drew more from the movie the second time around, as a result.  

The movie changes things somewhat considerably, but it's the same story, all the same, and anyway, it's really a very fine excuse to spend some time with Liev Schreiber.

Schreiber has been one of my favorite actors since I first saw him, either in Scream or RKO 281, in which he plays Orson Welles as he constructs Citizen Kane, although it was probably another TV movie, one I'm fairly certain I'm in exclusive circles for remembering, much less very fondly, at all, called Since You've Been Gone, just an absolutely great, classic voice, and the knowledge of how to use it.  He's otherwise had a fairly obscure career, most notable as the second actor to play Sabretooth, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  

In some alternate version of history Schreiber is an acknowledged classic Hollywood lead actor with a rich catalog everyone knows.  

In this one?  You could do far worse than to appreciate him in Across the River and Into the Trees.  Which, by the way, is popularly considered one of Hemingway's worst efforts, but I enjoyed it as much as I have any Heminway, and as I've said, the film version is worth watching on its own merits, chief among them being perhaps the long-awaited true spotlight for Liev Schreiber.

They say Bogart wasn't really Bogart until he hit middle age, when he at last became a valuable commodity.  I don't see that being Schreiber's fate.  Today's Hollywood is far too finical for such things.  But that he found such a role, in such a film, is worth celebrating all the same.  The whole performance seems natural, a culmination of everything he's done so well before, everything he was always meant to be, but never quite found in other movies.  

I'm the kind of film fan who can appreciate a movie even if all that's worth recommending is the lead actor.  I can accept a good performance for its own regard.  Fortunately, the movie around Schreiber knows what it's doing, too, and although it's not Hemingway's version, it feels like classic Hollywood in ways that haven't been seen in probably half a century, an international setting (Venice) that's allowed to settle into the backdrop, as Schreiber embarks on his last fateful excursion, with a young lady who finds herself caught up in it, despite every reason not to be.  

Josh Hutcherson, playing a very different role than in a much wider release in 2024, The Beekeeper, is probably the chief beneficiary of the alterations Peter Flannery made to the story, in an expanded, wiser supporting turn than Hemingway envisioned.