Gotta Call BS on Quentin Tarantino’s Top 10 List

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

So Quentin Tarantino just named his Top 10 Films of the 21st Century, as least that's what we think he did. The list, which we have cribbed from Screenmancer in LA, has so many flaws it is hard to believe it is authentic. Given Tarantino's upciming Dec. 5 release of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, you wonder if it's just a grenade thrown into the Hollywood spin cycle? Either way, we borrowed a page from Screenmancer for the lowdown

Gotta Call BS on Quentin Tarantino’s Top 10 List, Sorry.

by Chad Aiggia, Screenmancer Movie Critic

When we first saw Director Quentin Tarantino’s Top 10 Favorite Movie List, some of us considered it to be totally bogus, a completely fake. In what award-winning filmmaker’s brain would Toy Story 3, although a great movie, rank as #2? Much less for the auteur who broke our eyeballs back in 1994 with Pulp Fiction?

You have no choice but to call bullshit on this list, given that even if QT just picked directors here, how does Lee Unkrich fit in with the Scott brothers, Ridley and Tony, plus Woody Allen?

Why do we need to call bullshit? Just look at these alleged "top" flick picks. Are you kidding me? Look, as Chad Aiggia, Slightly Above Average Movie Critic at Screenmancer, I could pick a better list more aligned with QT’s hole-punching cinematic style, with my eyes closed. And no internet. Say the listed films below really are Tarantino’s favorites?

How does Tony Scott slip in for Unstoppable, but not his signature head-spinner, TOP GUN? Furthermore, Sophia Coppola's awesome Lost in Translation is arguably her best movie to date, but doesn't it smack of tokenism, as the one and only woman included, and is also Italian, like QT, right? It feels rigged. Qualms aside, for now, let’s rip up the floorboards, gut this rickety house of lies that Quentin Tarantino has built out there in the media and on socials with his supposed best-loved ten slate.

Quentin Tarantino’s (Alleged) Top 10 Favorite Films List Black Hawk Down

(2001) Director: Ridley Scott Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana Plot: U.S. soldiers enter Mogadishu on a mission that becomes an extended urban firefight when two Black Hawk helicopters are shot down.

Screenmancer Art Dept.

Toy Story 3 (2010) Director: Lee Unkrich Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty Plot: Andy’s toys are mistakenly donated to a daycare and must escape and return home before Andy leaves for college. Lost in Translation (2003) Director: Sofia Coppola Cast: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson Plot: Two Americans in Tokyo form a quiet emotional connection while each faces personal uncertainty and loneliness.

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Screenmancer Art Dept

Dunkirk (2017) Director: Christopher Nolan Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh Plot: The Dunkirk evacuation is shown through intersecting land, sea, and air timelines following soldiers and civilians.

There Will Be Blood (2007) Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O’Connor Plot: An ambitious oil prospector’s rise leads to increasing conflict and violence as he clashes with a local preacher. 

Screenmancer Art Dept.

Zodiac (2007) Director: David Fincher Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr. Plot: Investigators and a cartoonist pursue the Zodiac Killer over many years as the case becomes an obsession. Unstoppable (2010) Director: Tony Scott Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson Plot: Railway workers attempt to stop an unmanned, speeding train carrying hazardous chemicals.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Director: George Miller Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult Plot: Max and Furiosa flee a tyrannical warlord across a desert wasteland while protecting a group of escaped captives.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) Director: Edgar Wright Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield Plot: A man tries to rescue his loved ones and survive a sudden zombie outbreak in London.  

Midnight in Paris (2011) Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard Plot: A writer visiting Paris finds himself transported to the 1920s at night, meeting historical figures and reconsidering his life.

Yes, Woody Allen - a director whose name is synonymous with "Fire" in a movie theater - makes QT's cut. Up higher on the list, he's got a sequel, Toy Story 3. No director in their right mind names a sequel as a top pick, as it suggests the original Toy Story in this case, a far better movie, isn't as good. 

But how about the percentage here, if we shake up some stats and stoke some comparisons? Apparently Edgar Wright, whose Shaun of the Dead is a bona fide bell-ringer, comes closest to Tarantino's body of works.

Let’s take a chisel to this conglomerate rock of movies, because Quentin Tarantino’s pet rock film list that reads like a virtual signaling steaming volcanic pile. It's incomprehensible, so we tried some Director DNA mapping... [caption id="attachment_7724" width="802"]Screenmancer Generated

Here are some more percentages runner-ups as compared to QT. Nothing, absolutely nothing makes sense about this list.

While percentage comparisons may feel like a garbage data points, pay attention to the Ivy League educations at play here, as we debunk QT’s Terrible 10. As a film critic, you feel and believe on a visceral level the man is ,messing with us, that's all.

Even though you could call this header - Exhibit A: This List Better Be a Quentin Tarantino Prank - calmer heads prevailed at Screenmancer, and we settled on this fancy concept of “clusters,’ or "summary layers" in line with our data obsessed world.

[Caveat: To me the above sounds like bullshit on top of bullshit, so let’s crack open some charts and dig into the QT-verse, or everything we can tear apart in this true story of questionable cinematic choices from one of the world’s finest writer-directors, and even a marginally great actor himself in as evidenced by his Banana Slug t-shirt wearing days in PF.]

Logic fails when you try to link these films together thematically, but that didn't keep us from trying to find other interconnections.

Basically we call bullshit. We also call out the square-jawed genius himself to explain this laundry list to us. Please?

Unfortunately, we know what QT's answer would be? Screenmancer Art Dept.

Okay, he's pals with Fincher, Nolan, Anderson, Coppola, possibly Wright, so maybe he's picking directors here instead of films per se? Or maybe our gore loving auteur spews controversy to grease the launch of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Works or whatever he's calling the Uma Thurman masterpiece these days?

But why would he make himself look this crazy, given the weaknesses of these medium range motion pictures?

Attention: Quentin Tarantino - or audiences everywhere - we need to know why this Top 10?

Sincerely... on the QT.

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