Tarantino's Top 20 (1992 - present)

By Nick Dawson On August 18, 2009

Yesterday, a video popped up on the internets of Quentin Tarantino talking about his favorite 20 movies made between 1992 and the present. If that seems a bit random, it's the period of time that Tarantino has been a director.

Tarantino has always been a very vocal cinephile and has actively championed movies, both by putting his name on them (as executive producer, usually) or by paying homage to them in his own films. Martin Scorsese, another great director and movie lover, some years back made a superlative TV series in 1995 called A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies in which he made the decision to talk only about movies made before he himself became a director. So it's an interesting contrast to see Tarantino reversing that focus, particularly when he says his favorite movie made after 1992, the violent and inventive Japanese thriller Battle Royale, is the film he most wishes he had made from that period.

 

 

Tarantino doesn't really go into much detail on many of the films selected, which is a shame. He lays into the sequels to The Matrix, for example, saying that they ruined his enjoyment of the original film, but doesn't reveal why he loves an uncharacteristically sensitive and subtle choice, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (a recent Rewatch subject on FilmInFocus), which would have been very interesting and revealing.