Quentin Tarantino names the “gobsmacking” modern movie that “blew me away”

Posted On December 3, 2025December 3, 2025

Quentin Tarantino has finalised his list of the top twenty movies to come out of the 21st century; he deemed one movie in particular “gob-smacking” and admitted he didn’t like it on first watch.

The movie in question landed fourth on his list, as revealed via the Bret Easton Ellis podcast. The 2017 film, Dunkirk, was directed by Christopher Nolan. It follows soldiers from the British Empire, Belgium and France during World War II.

Tarantino praised the movie, sharing, “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.”

However, he didn’t experience this pull upon his first watch. “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.”

Watching Dunkirk was an act of resilience for the director. He added, “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.”

The iconic director has made similar remarks in the past. He previously admitted, “The first time I saw it, I don’t know what I was thinking the first time. I just dealt with the spectacle of it all. I couldn’t deal with anything else but the spectacle of it all. I liked the movie, but the spectacle almost numbed me to the experience.”

Above Dunkirk in his official list, Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation comes in third, Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3 comes in third, and Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down takes that all-important top spot.

Tarantino also called Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 movie, There Will Be Blood, his fifth favourite modern movie. Nonetheless, the praise came with a healthy dose of criticism, as he called out actor Paul Dano’s performance in the movie.

Tarantino shared, “He is weak sauce, man. He’s a weak sister. Austin Butler would have been wonderful in that role. [Dano is] just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy. The weakest fucking actor in SAG [Screen Actors Guild].”

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