Jamie Foxx Ranked

Welcome to the latest edition of "Ranked", where I rank a franchise or the filmography of an actor/director and hand out related accolades. This week, I'm profiling the work of Jamie Foxx-whose new movie "Project Power" hits Netflix on Friday.

Jamie Foxx's Filmography Ranked:

19.Stealth (C-)

18.Any Given Sunday (C-)

17.The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (C)

16.Held Up (C+)

15.Rio (C+)

14.Robin Hood (B-)

13.Sleepless (B-)

12.Collateral (B-)

11.White House Down (B) 

10.The Kingdom (B+)

9.Horrible Bosses 2 (B+)

8.Jarhead (B+)

7.Ray (B+)

6.Law Abiding Citizen (B+)

5.Due Date (A-)

4.Horrible Bosses (A)

3.Just Mercy (A)

2.Baby Driver (A)

1.Django Unchained (A+)

Top Dog: Django Unchained (2012)

Django Unchained represents Quentin Tarantino at his vintage best. The witty dialogue flows with ease, every single character no matter big or small makes an impression, the bloodshed has a real narrative impact and he's able to strike a delicate tonal balance that refuses to gloss over the heinousness of slavery while making a brutally effective darkly comedic western that exists within the framework of this vile time in human history.    

Lowlight: Stealth (2005)

Defending blockbusters that have become punchlines is something I've developed a habit of doing. I don't know if it's some kind of weird subconscious empathy situation because these movie tend to get ripped on harder than just about anything else that's released or if I just have a higher threshold for loud dumb shit than most (it's probably the latter), but I usually end up having higher opinions on movies  that falls into this ultraspecific category (i.e Suicide Squad, Gods of Egypt, the 2017 version of The Mummy) than most people. However, this doesn't mean there are numerous instances where even I can't find some degree of enjoyment in these films. Enter Stealth- an easily forgotten sci-fi action extravaganza about an AI-controlled stealth bomber that slowly begins to wreak havoc on the trio of elite fighter pilots (Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Foxx) that were brought in to show the roboplane the specifics of the job. Between the overly serious tone established by notorious hack director Rob Cohen (xXx, The Hurrican Heist) and a group of confused actors that treat the production like it's a Shakespearian take on Top Gun with a technological twist, Stealth achieves a level of head-scratching idiocy that is more irritating than fun.           

Most Overrated: Collateral (2004):

Collateral should be a great movie. It's got a pair of terrific lead performances from Foxx and Tom Cruise and a great premise (a hitman kidnaps a LA cab driver to take him around the city to perform executions) that feels like the perfect vehicle to build crippling tension. The problem is that Michael Mann drains much of the life out of these valuable assets by bogging down the proceedings with glacial pacing the eliminates much of the suspense and excitement that a film like this should have.  

Most Underrated: Due Date (2010)

Remember when Todd Phillips still made silly comedies and Zach Galifanakis was a star on the rise? Between the release of the beloved smash hit The Hangover and their greatly inferior sequels, this duo reconvened for a very funny road movie that featured Galifanakis and Robert Downey Jr. as a pair of strangers that end up embarking on an unexpected cross country drive together from Atlanta to Los Angeles. While it's not a revelatory piece of comedy filmmaking by any stretch, it features plenty of highly amusing detours/one-liners and the antagonistic chemistry between the eccentric Galinfinakis and bitter Downey Jr. is great.

Top Carry Job: Any Given Sunday (1999)

Any Given Sunday is a shit football movie that is far too long and features a number of terrible performances including most notably from Al Pacino as the ornery future Hall of Fame coach whose lost his way after 30 years on the job and a horrifically miscast Cameron Diaz as the team's meddling hardass owner. About the only redeeming quality of the film is Foxx's performance as "Steamin" Wille Beamen-a third string quarterback who takes over as starter due to injuries and leads the struggling Miami Sharks on an improbable, season-saving winning streak. While the criticism that his character's attitude change happens too quickly is valid, Foxx does an amazing job of embodying the reckless, premature arrogance that has derailed the careers of many promising young athletes. Having even a little slab of believability in a football movie that feels like it was constructed by people with no knowledge or understanding of the game prevented Any Given Sunday from falling further down the garbage chute.      

Most Underrated Performance: Baby Driver (2017)

With the possible exception of his amazing turn as the falsely accused death row inmate Walter McMillan in last year's Just Mercy, his work in Baby Driver is the best acting Foxx has done since his Oscar-winning turn in Ray. The diabolical intensity Foxx brings to the part of career criminal Bats goes a long way in making him one of the most reprehensible, psychotic and memorable villains to grace the screen in recent memory.