Olivia Wilde 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 Olivia Wilde-whose latest project "Don't Worry Darling" releases in theaters today. 

Olivia Wilde's Filmography Ranked:

19.Tron: Legacy (D)

18.Year One (D)

17.How It Ends (D+)

16.The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (D+)

15.The Change-Up (C)

14.The Girl Next Door (C+)

13.Ghostbusters: Afterlife (B-)

12.In Time (B-)

11.Deadfall (B-)

10.People Like Us (B-)

9.The Words (B)

8.Drinking Buddies (B)

7.Cowboys & Aliens (B)

6.Butter (B)

5.Richard Jewell (B+)

4.Alpha Dog (B+)

3.Rush (A-)

2.Her (A-)

1.Booksmart (A-)

Top Dog: Booksmart (2019)

A large part of why the expectations for Don't Worry Darling are/were so high is due to how terrific Wilde's directorial debut Booksmart was. She showed tremendous polish as a filmmaker by crafting something that seamlessly blends vulgar, often inventively absurd R-rated high school comedy hijinks with a really moving, realistic portrait of lifelong best friends (Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein) that are struggling to deal with the prospect of their relationship drastically changing when they go off to college. 

Bottom Feeder: Tron: Legacy (2010)

12 years before helming Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski helmed his first blockbuster sequel. Let's just say it didn't work out quite as well as Maverick's return to the Top Gun program did. Tron: Legacy proudly rips a page out of the Avatar playbook as it tries to compensate for its wretched acting, cornball storytelling and needlessly long running time that's made significantly worse by brutally slow pacing with a parade of striking computer-generated visuals. And dare I say it was successful in doing so because I was just as bored and disgusted while watching Tron as I was during James Cameron's global phenomenon a year earlier, so kudos on making a pretty-looking pile of garbage Mr. Kosinski.   

Most Underrated: Alpha Dog (2006)

A slow yet steady escalation of the stakes, sensational performances from Anton Yelchin, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Justin Timberlake-who made his acting debut here and a gut-wrenching ending that is elevated by the strong character work that comes before it allowed Alpha Dog to carve out its own space in the large crowd of 2000's-era gritty crime dramas. 

Most Overrated: Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

The warm embrace of Ghostbusters: Afterlife by its fans is a perfect example of the very disconcerting trend that's emerged in entertainment over the past several years of people only enjoying franchise movies that feature heavy amounts of nostalgia-driven fan service. There's not a single idea, moment or emotional beat in Ghostbusters: Afterlife that wasn't painstakingly catered to appease the appetites of the franchise's most vocal fans. Does this make the movie bad? No, Afterlife is a harmless, relatively engaging homage to the classic franchise that will probably get a whole new generation of people excited about Ghostbusters. It is however a creatively bankrupt, phony creation that effectively only exists to be a cinematic apology note to the fragile dipshits who had their feelings hurt by the 2016 female-led reboot-which despite being a flawed film in its own right is considerably more fun and creative than this long, expensive transmission from the Sony PR department.

Most Overlooked Recent Clint Eastwood Movie: Richard Jewell (2019)

Donald Trump's long perpetuated narrative about the media being dishonest and comical reframing of the term "witch hunt" made Richard Jewell a tough pillow to swallow for some people. The truth is that that unlike the treasonous former president of the United States, the media actually DID conduct a witch hunt on Jewell. What Eastwood did here is tell a brutally honest true story that explores how law enforcement and the media's desire for being hailed as heroes in their respective fields has led to powerful people running with erroneous, poorly supported claims before they can their vet their accuracy while investigating a high-profile incident as well as the brutal emotional and psychological damage that is inflicted on the people that are being targeted by the public smear campaign. While Richard Jewell will likely only end up being a footnote in his storied career, Eastwood's raw, potent approach to telling Jewell's story makes this the greatest directorial triumph he's had since Gran Torino.