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Quentin Tarantino finally spilled his picks for the best films of the 21st century on the Bret Easton Ellis podcast, and like much of Hollywood, his list reads like a private club’s scrapbook rather than a map of what moved ordinary Americans. The director’s top 20 — which ranges from Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down at number one to Spielberg’s West Side Story at twenty — is eclectic, unapologetic, and more than a little contrarian. For readers who care about how the culture is shaped, it’s worth paying attention to what an influential auteur chooses to elevate.
Tarantino placing Black Hawk Down at the summit is a strange sort of victory for patriotism, wrapped in the grim aesthetic of big-studio spectacle; he praised the film’s relentless intensity and Apocalypse Now–style punch. Conservatives should be glad a war film that depicts American soldiers fighting with courage and chaos is being acknowledged for craftsmanship, but let’s be honest — making it the definitive film of the century is an elitist flex, not a populist judgment. His praise reads like an admission that Hollywood still confuses technical bravado for moral clarity.
Then there’s the baffling embrace of juvenile shock and gross-out comedy: entries like Jackass: The Movie and Cabin Fever sit cheek-by-jowl with acknowledged masterpieces. Celebrating stunt-based slapstick and splatter films as among the century’s best reveals a cultural rot where teenage anarchy and shock value are mistaken for artistic bravery. If Hollywood’s arbiters keep rewarding spectacle and edginess over substance, the next generation of films will be louder and emptier.
Oddly enough, Tarantino’s willingness to include The Passion of the Christ in his top twenty is one of the clearest breaks from the usual Hollywood consensus, and conservatives ought to notice that. Mel Gibson’s controversial, deeply religious film being recognized by a major director is a reminder that faith-based storytelling can still punch through the entertainment-industrial complex. This inclusion should be celebrated by those who believe life, suffering, and redemption deserve a place in serious cinema, even if Tarantino frames it through the lens of shock and craft.
Tarantino’s list is also defiantly international — from Battle Royale to Thai martial-arts filmmaking — which is artistically admirable but politically revealing: the cultural gatekeepers favor the exotic and the obscure over the movies that shaped Middle America. He packs genres together, elevating arthouse and genre cinema while skipping many films that gave Americans common cultural touchstones. That’s fine for a cinephile salon, but it’s not a popular mandate, and conservatives should push back against the idea that metropolitan taste equals universal truth.
What’s striking is what Tarantino left out: the blockbuster morality plays and crowd-pleasing masterpieces that actually united audiences across red and blue America often don’t get a look. Other reputable critics’ lists — and public polls — show very different priorities for the century so far, reinforcing that elite lists are literary exercises, not democratic verdicts. When establishment critics and auteurs keep promoting niche preferences, they widen the cultural divide and weaken the films that promote shared values and storytelling.
At the end of the day, Tarantino’s list is a reminder that taste in Hollywood still skews toward the flashy, the transgressive, and the arthouse-approved. Hardworking Americans deserve movies that tell clear stories, celebrate courage and character, and respect faith and family — not just edginess packaged as profundity. Conservatives should take this moment to champion creators who make films for real people, not just for the applause of coastal elites.
