Quentin Tarantino names his 10 favorite movies of 21st century

Quentin Tarantino has revealed his top 10 favorite films of the 21st century, and some of his choices came as a welcome surprise.

The famed director named Ridley Scott’s 2001 war film “Black Hawk Down” as the best movie of the past 25 years during a new episode of “The Bret Easton Ellis” podcast released Tuesday.

“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, 62, said of “Black Hawk Down.”

“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 that 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 continued.

The “Kill Bill” director added that the film, which follows SSG Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett) and SPC John “Grimesey” Grimes (Ewan McGregor) amid the US military’s disastrous 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, successfully manages to “keep up the intensity for 2 hours 45 minutes.”

“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,” Tarantino explained. “The feat of direction is beyond extraordinary.”

The “Pulp Fiction” filmmaker’s top 10 list was rounded out by Lee Unkrich’s “Toy Story 3,” Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation,” Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable,” George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Edgar Wright’s “Shaun of the Dead” and Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.”

“That last five minutes ripped my f–king heart out, and if I even try to describe the end, I’ll start crying and get choked up,” he said of “Toy Story 3” and why he considers it both an “almost perfect movie” and the second-best flick of the 21st century. “It’s just remarkable.”

Although “Dunkirk” came in at No. 4 after “Lost in Translation,” Tarantino admitted that he wasn’t a fan of the World War II film when it was released in 2017.

However, his feelings about the movie have since changed.

“What I now love about it is that I feel there’s a real mastery to it, and I came around to it watching it again and again and again,” the “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” director shared.

“The first time, it’s not like it left me cold – it was so kind of gobsmacking, I didn’t really know what I saw, it was almost too much, and then the second time I saw it, my brain was able to take it in a little bit more, and then the third time and the fourth time, it was just like, wow, it just blew me away,” he added of “Dunkirk.”

As for “There Will Be Blood,” Tarantino faced backlash for saying that the 2007 period drama would have been higher on his list if it weren’t for Paul Dano, 41, in the lead roles of Paul and Eli Sunday.

The “Hateful Eight” filmmaker declared that Anderson’s movie, which scored Daniel Day-Lewis an Oscar, “would stand a better chance to be in No. 1 or No. 2 if it didn’t have a big giant flaw in it, and the flaw is Paul Dano.”

“I’m not saying he’s giving a terrible performance,” he added of Dano’s dual roles. “I’m saying he’s giving a non-entity performance.”

Tarantino previously revealed his top 11 through 20 favorite films of the 21st century during another episode of “The Bret Easton Ellis” podcast released last month.

Those 10 films included Kinji Fukasaku’s “Battle Royale” at No. 11, followed by Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s “Big Bad Wolves,” Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass: The Movie,” Richard Linklater’s “School of Rock,” Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects,” Prachya Pinkaew’s “Chocolate,” Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball,” Eli Roth’s “Cabin Fever” and Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” at No. 20.

The “Django Unchained” director made headlines for pointing out the striking similarities between Fukasaku’s “Battle Royale” and author Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” series.

“I do not understand how the Japanese writer didn’t sue Suzanne Collins for every f–king thing she owns,” he charged. “They just ripped off the f–king book!”

“Stupid book critics are not going to go watch a Japanese movie called ‘Battle Royale,’ so the stupid book critics never called her out on it,” Tarantino added. “They talked about how it was the most original thing they’d ever f–king read.”