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During a recent appearance on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, acclaimed Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino named his 20 greatest films of the 21st century. And given Tarantino’s famed sense of self-importance, it might come as a bit of a surprise that he didn’t select one of his own movies (so far).
Only allowing himself to choose one film per director, Quentin Tarantino unveiled the first 10 selections on his list (#11-20) and included a filmed that some might find surprising: Jackass: The Movie.
Slotted in at #13, ahead of 14th ranked School of Rock and trailing 12th ranked Big Bad Wolves, Tarantino explained that Jackass: The Movie made him laugh more than any other movie has in the last 20 years.
Director Quentin Tarantino has ranked Jackass: The Movie as the 13th best movie of the 21st century so far
“I laughed the most at these last 20 years. I don’t remember laughing beginning to the end like this since Richard Pryor… As I was making Kill Bill I thought this movie was so f—— funny I had to show it to the crew, so we found a print, and we watched the movie and just died,” the Oscar-winning Once Upon a Time in Hollywood director explained.
While it might have been hard to imagine at the time, Jackass has gone on to become a pop cultural staple, with the most recent film in the franchise being released in 2022 and earning rave reviews.
As for the rest of Tarantino’s list, he ranked Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale at #11 (and accused The Hunger Games of ripping it off), Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ at #15, Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects at #16, Prachya Pinkaew’s Chocolate at #17, Bennett Miller’s Moneyball at #18, Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever’s at #19, and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story at #20.
The rest of Tarantino’s top 10 will be unveiled in a subsequent podcast episode so stay tuned for that, as it’ll surely make headlines everywhere.