Quentin Tarantino's 20 favorite films of 21st century include Toy Story 3 and Dunkirk

Quentin Tarantino has started to reveal his 20 best movies of the twenty-first century one by one on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. Worldwide cinema central brain, that is the director, he only released the second half of the ranking, numbered from 11 to 20, and commented on why he made this choice for each of them.

In brief, Tarantino’s list is the one that best illustrates his most accomplished and influential films of the 21st century.

Within the interview, Quentin Tarantino pointed out how these movies altered his vision of the art of filmmaking, unveiled under-appreciated international gems, and credited big-budget Hollywood productions. Tarantino’s dissection of the list featured not only his reflections on directors and spectacles he has personally encountered, but also his being a cinephile has an impact on his assessments.

What are Quentin Tarantino’s 20 favorite films of the 21st century?

Tarantino, in an interview on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast on December 2, 2025 revealed the films listed below as positions 20 to 11 on his chart:

1) 20 - West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)

2) 19 - Cabin Fever (Eli Roth)

3) 18 - Moneyball (Bennett Miller)

4) 17 - Chocolate (Prachya Pinkaew)

5) 16 - The Devil’s Rejects (Rob Zombie)

6) 15 - The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson)

7) 14 - School of Rock (Richard Linklater)

8) 13 - Jackass: The Movie (Jeff Tremaine)

9) 12 - Big Bad Wolves (Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado)

10) 11- Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku)

During the podcast, he also said that there was a really long time that Battle Royale was one of the films that he liked most, and he restated his view that it is the biggest similarity of the stories that he sees between Battle Royale and The Hunger Games.

He seemed to be wondering why the people who made Battle Royale didn't sue Suzanne Collins, and he said that the similarities that exist between the two works are significant.

Moreover, Tarantino explained his closeness with the deceased director Kinji Fukasaku and shared that Fukasaku invited him to watch Battle Royale in a private session, whereas he was in Japan location scouting for Kill Bill.

He remembered that he went to see the movie again at the Seattle Film Festival and that there was a lot of excitement about the film coming to the U.S. there.

While elaborating, Tarantino pointed out West Side Story as a decisive moment when Spielberg breathed new life into his oeuvre. He implied that the film's vigor was unlike any other work of the main directors he was familiar with, and as a result, he was very much impacted by it.

More details on Quentin Tarantino explored

Quentin Tarantino was born in 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Over the span of many years, he managed to create not only a career that has been both critically and commercially successful but also a unique artistic voice characterized by a certain stylized violence, verbose dialogue, and references to pop culture.

Before his breakthrough, Quentin Tarantino had an unusual and varied career history, one of which was that he was an usher in an adult theater and later at the Video Archives rental store, where he became the most knowledgeable person in films.

His first works included co-writing and directing My Best Friend’s Birthday and minor acting roles, which were all before his first full-length movie, Reservoir Dogs (1992) came out.

After that, Quentin Tarantino made several genre-crossing, trend-setting, and award-winning movies, thus steadily accumulating an impressive number of Academy Awards and entering the hall of fame of the most influential figures of contemporary cinema one by ‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌one.

Interested viewers can watch Toy Story 3 on Disney+.

Edited by Sakshi Singh