John Goodman 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 John Goodman-whose latest project "Smurfs" opens in theaters on Thursday. 

John Goodman's Filmography Ranked:

35.Captive State (D)

34.Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (D+)

33.The Flintstones (D+)

32.Transformers: Age of Extinction (D+)

31.Once Upon a Time in Venice (C-)

30.Evan Almighty (C-)

29.The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (C-)

28.Death Sentence (C-)

27.Transformers: The Last Knight (C-)

26.One Night at McCool's (C)

25.The Monuments Men (C)

24.The Artist (C)

23Red State (C)

22.The Hangover Part III (B-)

21.Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (B-)

20.Trumbo (B-)

19.The Internship (B-)

18.Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (B-)

17.Speed Racer (B-)

16.The Gambler (B)

15.Monsters University (B)

14.Patriots Day (B)

13Trouble with the Curve (B)

12.The Emperor's New Groove (B)

11.Bringing Out the Dead (B)

10.Flight (B+)

9.Argo (B+)

8.The Big Lebowski (B+)

7.Monsters Inc. (B+)

6.10 Cloverfield Lane (B+)

5.Kong: Skull Island (B+)

4.Atomic Blonde (B+)

3.O Brother, Where Art Thou? (B+)

2.Raising Arizona (A-)

1.Inside Llewyn Davis (A-)

Top Dog: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

Inside Llewyn Davis became one of my favorite Coen Brothers movies as soon as I saw it in theaters in early 2014 and it remains among my favorites today. Oscar Isaac is a force of a nature as a musician struggling to break out in the Greenwich Village folk scene in 1961 whose personal life is just as turbulent as his professional one, the tremendous script avoids struggling musician movie cliches by making Llewyn Davis a miserable prick who's plagued by his poor decisions/attitude just as much as good old fashioned bad luck and the melancholic ending manages to generate a surprising amount of sympathy for a guy that most viewers spent the bulk of the previous 95 or so minutes not liking all that much.        

Bottom Feeder: Captive State (2019)

What a fucking misfire this proved to be. Rupert Wyatt brings absolutely none of the energy, empathy or conviction that made his previous sci-fi movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes so great and instead, settled for wasting a pretty cool sci-fi premise (a rebel group in Chicago aim to overthrow the alien dictatorship that has been holding them captive for the past decade since they invaded Earth) on one of the most boring, narratively muddled movies to hit theaters in the last decade.   

Most Underrated: Raising Arizona (1987)

When it comes to pure goofball, madcap Coen Brothers movies, Raising Arizona is hard to beat. The Coens deliver a masterclass in situational comedy with the smorgasbord of great gags/punchlines they trot out here, and the cast headed up by Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Goodman, William Forsythe. Trey Wilson and Randall "Tex" Cobb is having a ball playing around in such a deeply absurd, silly sandbox.  

Most Overrated: The Artist (2011)

This is a serious question to anybody reading this: When was the last time you heard anybody talk about The Artist? It's barely 14 years old at this point in time and yet it's effectively been scrubbed from history! A Best Picture winner becoming this forgettable is a really remarkable feat to pull off in an era where a lot of people online have shown a great fondness for waxing poetic or ruthlessly shitting on past Best Picture winners. Aside from CODA, we'll probably never get a Best Picture winner this universally shrugged off ever again, so congrats to the team behind this blah movie for making history!