Quentin Tarantino needs to stop criticizing films and start making them again. Did he just elevate Paul Dano to the alpha league of the world's most loved and admired movie actors? His recent insults aimed at Dano, a costar in There Will Be Blood, sparked a flood of defensive praise, with Daniel Day-Lewis publicly endorsing it. But was Tarantino's pronouncement just bluster and flex? Will he end up casting Dano in his next film, a turnaround akin to Donald Trump making nice with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after threatening him with nuclear war? Or is this a midlife emotional crisis in one of the most brilliant directors of his generation? I speak as a superfan with reservations. In a recent podcast interview with Bret Easton Ellis, Tarantino unveiled his top 20 best films of the 21st century. When asked about Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, Tarantino declared that Dano was the problem, calling him weak and uninteresting. This isn't an accurate assessment of Dano, and Tarantino's feelings about Anderson may be more complicated. The top 10 half of his picks is a normie list, with Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, and other classics. The more recondite titles come in the 10 lower down, including Steven Spielberg's West Side Story and Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. Tarantino's next film, The Movie Critic, inspired by the LA Times's Kevin Thomas, may be a performance of movie criticism. He has said he doesn't want to go past 10 films, and he might find a novel and supercharge the pulp with shock and flair. Paul Dano will be in it.
