Tarantino's Top 20: From Reservoir Dogs to Now

hiddenhound3 said:I don't hold it against him... truthfully, I can't see why I would. He is perfectly entitled to watch pre-adolescent action flicks whether he is forty, fifty, or even a hundred years old, just as I am entitled to point out that it is quite a disaster. One would assume that a person evolves as they age, refining their style and their taste, though it is painfully obvious that Q’s sensibilities have remained entirely stagnant; he simply recreates the same hollow, adrenaline-fueled spectacles that moved him in his youth. It is all much of a muchness, really. Besides, I highly doubt he was even an adolescent back when Keanu Reeves was starring in Matrix and Speed. 😕

speed florin, I'm with you on this.
The best part is, I'm pretty sure Q.T. doesn't actually feel this way—he probably just thinks he'll look like a snob if he finally admits Eric Rohmer is one of his biggest inspirations. If he did, he might actually include some of those slower, more subtle Far Eastern films instead of sticking to the high-testosterone stuff he's been churning out lately.

People change as they get older, their perspectives shift, and their personal top 20 lists follow suit. There’s no reason why Quentin Tarantino's favorites wouldn't look different now than they did a decade ago. If nothing else, it's because a whole lot of great cinema has been released in those ten years... 🙂

Calling this taste mediocre is a bit of a stretch. It's a flawed concept to assume everyone's taste needs to evolve in a specific way just to be considered a "true cinephile." Some people might jump from Robocop to Sense and Sensibility, while others go straight from Sense and Sensibility to Kingdom of Heaven. The real question is how much anyone actually moves the needle—and in what direction.

...But looking at that initial list, there are some genuinely great (and serious) movies in there. So what if he threw in a couple of action flicks? It's still QT we're talking about. And we're talking about very serious action movies at that.

Christian Taylor3 said:So, during the big promotional push for Inglourious Basterds over in the UK, the crew at Sky Movies asked Quentin Tarantino if he’d just sit there and rattle off his top 20 movies of all time on camera. Naturally, he shot that down—kind of like that old joke where you ask a grandma who her greatest love is and she just says, "sailors"—and offered them this instead: his 20 favorite films released from 1992 onwards, which happens to be the year he actually started directing.



VIDEO (2009-8-16)

Source: Sky Movies

1. Battle Royale
2. Anything Else
3. Audition
4. The Blade
5. Boogie Nights
6. Dazed & Confused
7. Dogville
8. Fight Club
9. Friday
10. The Host
11. The Insider
12. Joint Security Area
13. Lost In Translation
14. The Matrix
15. Memories of Murder
16. Police Story 3
17. Shaun of the Dead
18. Speed
19. Team America
20. Unbreakable

All things considered, I'm pretty stoked—we seem to be on the same page for the most part. It was cool to see him include The Insider, and I loved how much he hyped up Dogville; he was also incredibly upfront about what The Matrix means to him, and gave such a great breakdown of Unbreakable. Honestly, nobody should hold it against him for leaving out Oldboy. Apparently, they cornered him in passing and the interview wasn't even scheduled, so he really only had about ten minutes to pull his thoughts together.
I haven't actually seen Battle Royale yet, which is a bit embarrassing 😵

What about you guys? What's your take?

😍