Julianne Moore Ranked

Welcome to the latest edition of "Ranked", where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out various accolades. This week, I'm profiling the work of Julianne Moore-whose latest project "Spirit Untamed" hits theaters on June 4th.

Julianne Moore's Filmography Ranked:

21.Next (D)

20.Freedomland (D+)

19.Gloria Bell (D+)

18.The Kids Are All Right (D+)

17.Maps to the Stars (C-)

16.Don Jon (C+)

15.The Lost World: Jurassic Park (C+)

14.Boogie Nights (B-)

13.Far from Heaven (B-)

12.Still Alice (B-)

11.The Ladies Man (B)

10.The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 2 (B)

9.The Woman in the Window (B)

8.Evolution (B)

7.Eagle Eye (B)

6.The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 1 (B)

5.Children of Men (B)

4.Crazy, Stupid, Love (B+)

3.Non-Stop (B+)

2.Kingsman: The Golden Circle (B+)

1.The Big Lebowski (B+)

Top Dog: The Big Lebowski (1998)

While I'm not fully onboard The Big Lebowski hype train, it is certainly a great film that's worthy of admiration. With its dry wit, rampant absurdity and deep roster of eccentric characters, The Big Lebowski represents the Coen Brothers at their smartest and funniest.    

Lowlight: Next (2007)

Leave it to legendary hack Lee Tamahori to turn a film where Nicolas Cage plays a sleazy Las Vegas magician with the ability to see a few minutes into the future who's recruited by the US government to stop some Russian terrorists from dropping a nuclear bomb on Los Angeles into something exceptionally boring. So how did Tamahori and co. manage to screw up this golden premise? Very simple: Instead of mining its incredible B-movie potential, the overwhelming focus is put on a shitty cornball love story between Cage's character and some mysterious woman (Jessica Biel in a career worst performance) that he believes holds the key to thwarting the nuke plot. Based on the horrible creative instincts he displayed here, it's no wonder that Tamahori's workload started to shrink considerably after Next (he's only directed 2 movies since-the last of which was a small indie called Mahana that was released in his native New Zealand back in 2016) 

Most Underrated: Non-Stop (2014)

Liam Nesson's late career transformation into a grizzled B-movie star has been an interesting, lengthy experiment that has produced a wide variety of results. This plane-set whodunit thriller from frequent collaborator Jaume Collet-Serra(Unknown, The Commuter) easily ranks near the top of these efforts. Collet-Serra makes excellent use of the setting's confined space to tell a story that keeps the tension and intrigue at a consistently high level before dropping a suitably ridiculous killer reveal that gives way to a near perfect over-the-top action climax.     

Most Overrated: Boogie Nights (1997)

Paul Thomas Anderson's breakout film Boogie Nights stands out among the array of vastly overrated creations he's birthed on the basis of being the most puzzling misstep he's made to date. In what is an ass backwards sort of way a remarkable accomplishment, he was able to make a movie about the crime, sleaze and drug-driven early days of the porn industry boring. Scandal, intrigue and frantic energy are practically baked into that subject matter yet Anderson approaches the material with zero urgency or emotion, leaving the Oscar-worthy efforts of his incredible ensemble cast (Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Moore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Don Cheadle, Alfred Molina) as the only sources of life that keep this bloated DOA ship from completely going under.

Top Sequel That's Almost as Good as the Original: Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is about a half step weaker than the cult favorite 2015 original, which qualifies it as a very successful sequel in my mind. Moore makes for a better cartoony villain than Samuel L. Jackson did in the first film, the new actors (Pedro Pascal, Halle Berry, Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum) are all quality additions that fit in well with the established cast and most importantly, the over-the-top stylized action/goofy humor balance remains in tact. If Matthew Vaughn is able to find similar success with the long delayed early 1900's-set agency origin story The King's Man, Kingsman will go down as a mighty impressive trilogy.