Jonah Hill Ranked

Welcome to "Ranked", a weekly series where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out assorted related superlatives. This week, I'm profiling the work of Jonah Hill-whose latest project "You People" is in select theaters now and hits Netflix on Friday. 

Jonah Hill's Filmography Ranked:

31.Hail, Caesar! (D+) 

30.Evan Almighty (C-)

29.Strange Wilderness (C+)

28.Cyrus (C+)

27.The Sitter (C+)

26.The Watch (B-)

25.Megamind (B-)

24.True Story (B)

23.The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (B)

22.Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (B)

21.War Dogs (B)

20.The Lego Batman Movie (B)

19.I Heart Huckabees (B)

18.Funny People (B)

17.Don't Look Up (B+)

16.The Wolf of Wall Street (B+)

15.The Lego Movie (B+)

14.Get Him to the Greek (A-)

13.Sausage Party (A-)

12.Forgetting Sarah Marshall (A-)

11.Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (A-)

10.The Beach Bum (A-)

9.Accepted (A)

8.Mid90s (A)

7.Moneyball (A)

6.Grandma's Boy (A)

5.21 Jump Street (A)

4.22 Jump Street (A)

3.This is the End (A)

2.Knocked Up (A)

1.Superbad (A+)

Top Dog: Superbad (2007)

The movie that turned Hill into a star is also my clear pick for his best movie to date. As somebody who had the luxury of experiencing the insane pop this movie got in theaters on opening weekend and was in high school when this came out, Superbad will always hold an extremely special place in my heart. It's just a deeply funny movie full of great characters and quotable dialogue that also has a thorough understanding of the anxieties that kids experience as they glide through their final days of high school before setting off for the terrifying unknown of college. 

Bottom Feeder: Hail, Caesar! (2015)

If the Coen Brothers really are done making movies together, Hail, Caesar! will go down as their biggest whiff in my book. There's nothing particularly funny or dramatically compelling about their star-studded examination of Old Hollywood and that makes it the kind of unwatchable slog that is an ugly outlier in their catalog driven by smart, thrilling and/or funny films.

Most Underrated: The Beach Bum (2019)

What a beautiful oddball creation The Beach Bum is. Finding happiness in real life got gleeful nihilist Harmony Korine to smooth out his edges just enough where his signature hedonism is spiked with heavy doses of absurdist comedy, positivity and true romance. The episodic narrative puts the audience in the easygoing headspace of its stoner poet protagonist Moondog (Matthew McConaughey in a career-best performance) from start to finish and by lensing the movie through someone whose only concern is to spend his days having a good time with people he loves, Korine is able to tell a surreal, poignant story about the almost anarchistic pleasure of finding joy in a world that is driven by misery. 

Most Overrated: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Martin Scorsese may be an untouchable Hollywood legend, but in the latter stages of his career, he's kneecapped himself repeatedly by not tightening up the runtimes of movies. While The Irishman did its best to come for the crown, The Wolf of Wall Street remains the top offender of this disheartening trend. At 2 hours and change, The Wolf of Wall Street would've been a masterfully incendiary rise-and-fall crime story that would've been ranked among Scorsese's best movies. At 3 hours even, it manages to significantly undermine its own greatness by stringing together about 10 more scenes illustrating how Jordan Belfort's out-of-control ego, substance abuse and greed/spending habits contributed to his downfall that just needlessly reenforces the points it made in the prior 2 hours.  

Exciting Showcase of His Filmmaking Abilities: Mid90s (2018)

Hill might not have the full trophy case and blockbuster helming opportunities that his fellow actors turned filmmakers Greta Gerwig and Jordan Peele earned after their terrific directorial debuts in the late 2010's, but what he did with Mid90s is similarly impressive. The veteran actor made a lively, heartfelt film that portrays teenage male friendship and the familial outcast bond that forms between skateboarders with a clear-eyed honesty and reverence that I found to be especially moving since I saw lot of myself and people that I knew growing up in the characters.