Ving Rhames 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 Ving Rhames-whose latest project "Mission-Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One" is in theaters now.  

Ving Rhames' Filmography Ranked:

23.Day of the Dead (F)

22.Entrapment (C-)

21.Mission: Impossible 2 (C-)

20.I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (C-)

19.Surrogates (C)

18.The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (C)

17.Father Figures (C+)

16.Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 (C+)

15.Lilo & Stitch (B-)

14.Piranha 3DD (B)

13.Mission: Impossible III  (B)

12.Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation (B)

11.The Tournament (B)

10.Bringing Out the Dead (B)

9.Mission: Impossible (B)

8.Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol (B+)

7.Piranha 3D (B+)

6.Mission: Impossible-Fallout (B+)

5.Baby Boy (A-)

4.Out of Sight (A-)

3.Dawn of the Dead (A)

2.Con Air (A)

1.Pulp Fiction (A+)

Top Dog: Pulp Fiction (1994)

As Quentin Tarantino continues to prepare his (alleged) final film The Movie Critic, now is as good of a time as any to reflect on Pulp Fiction. On only his second feature film, Tarantino demonstrates his complete mastery of the medium by crafting a non-linear crime opus featuring a zillion different characters that slowly reveals itself to be this brilliant  interconnected puzzle of outcasts and criminals bound by a desire to escape their lives, but are trapped in them with seemingly no way out. Each character big or small is vividly written and brought to life by the perfect actor for the job, the amount of memorable/electrifying/tense/insane/hilarious scenes in this is astounding and Tarantino's palpable love for the art of moviemaking adds a giddiness to the proceedings that makes it feel completely distinct. It's pure movie magic and I doubt a day will come where it's not my favorite movie of all time.   

Bottom Feeder: Day of the Dead (2008)

The direct-to-video Day of the Dead remake is so overwhelmingly awful that it manages to simultaneously disgrace all of George A. Romero's original Night of the Living Dead films, Zack Snyder's excellent remake of Dawn of the Dead and the zombie genre on the whole. It's one of those movies where the low budget is reflected by the horrid production values and a concerning lack of passion from the top down- which leads to a movie that is so boring, soulless and technically inept that it's straight-up torturous to sit through. 

Most Underrated: Baby Boy (2001)

When the late John Singleton was really cooking, he was one of the most interesting and powerful voices in all of Hollywood. The criminally underseen Baby Boy-which shockingly was the last movie of his that he wrote himself-was one of the best examples of this. At times, Baby Boy feels like it could be a spiritual follow-up to Singleton's breakout debut Boyz n'the Hood as it also tells a coming-of-age story set in South Central Los Angeles, but it slowly reveals itself to be a funnier and weirder yet still distinctly powerful movie that explores the difficulties of taking on adult responsibilities before you're "ready" to and showing up/looking out for others when you don't have your own shit together at all.     

Most Overrated: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 (2017)

Someday in the near future, I'm going to re-visit Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 and see if my opinion of it improves after another viewing. As of today however, I view it as the lone directorial misfire James Gunn has put out thus far and one of the weakest films in the entire MCU. While not without its funny or emotional moments, its comedic/serious tonal balancing act is completely out of whack for the vast majority of the movie and it makes the entire story feel disjointed and cheaply melodramatic.