Paul Dano 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 Paul Dano-whose latest project "Dumb Money" is in select theaters now and releases wide today. 

Paul Dano's Filmography Ranked:

16.Okja (D)

15.Ruby Sparks (D+)

14.Love &Mercy (C)

13.Swiss Army Man (C)

12.There Will Be Blood (C)

11.Knight and Day (C+)

10.The Girl Next Door (B-)

9.Cowboys and Aliens (B)

8.Dumb Money (B)

7.The Fabelmans (B)

6.12 Years a Slave (B)

5.The Guilty (B+)

4.Little Miss Sunshine (B+)

3.Looper (A-)

2.Prisoners (A-)

1.The Batman (A+)

Top Dog: The Batman (2022)

Sorry Christopher Nolan and Tim Burton, Matt Reeves made the best live action Batman adaptation in his first crack at bringing the Caped Crusader to the big screen. By choosing to focus on Bruce Wayne's early days as Batman, Reeves delivers a version of these classic characters and Gotham that we've never seen depicted in a movie before. Gotham is a dreary, dangerous place overrun by poverty and the crime that comes with it while Wayne is a sad recluse with noble intentions battling his fiery temper and internal doubts that his efforts to help people are in vain. The vividness of Reeves' vision of a truly dangerous Gotham and the characters that have been corrupted by their trauma and the lawless environment that caused it to various degrees is intoxicating and the entire ensemble (Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Dano, Jeffery Wright, Andy Serkis, Colin Farrell, John Turturro) does incredible work to bring these early, imperfect versions of these classic characters to life. I can not wait to see how Reeves further builds up and advances his Batman world in the sequel that is currently set to release in October 2025.  

Bottom Feeder: Okja (2017)

Even the great Bong Joon-ho is capable of producing a misfire from time to time. The second English-language film from the Korean auteur behind Parasite and Memories of Murder is a plodding, tonal mess that fails miserably in its attempts to deliver a potent animal rights message. 

Most Underrated: The Guilty (2021)

The knives came out from critics and cinephiles alike for this American, Netflix-backed remake of the acclaimed 2018 Danish thriller of the same name. Not only do I feel that much of the vitriol towards The Guilty is completely unfair, I believe that it's actually somewhat of an improvement over the already pretty great original. Jake Gyllenhaal turns in a powerhouse performance that ranks among the best of his career as an embattled LAPD officer working in the department's emergency call center after an incident on the job months earlier, the star-studded cast of voice-only supporting performances (Riley Keough, Peter Sarsgaard, Eli Goree, Ethan Hawke, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Dano) are similarly terrific and Antoine Fuqua does a terrific job of beefing up the police brutality subtext to fit its American setting without sacrificing any of the claustrophobic tension or gut-wrenching twists that made the original so memorable.     

Most Overrated: There Will Be Blood (2007)

There are a lot of takes I have on movies that bring out palpable disgust in others. In terms of the real diehard movie people, the ones that often generate the strongest negative reactions are my thoughts on several of Paul Thomas Anderson's movies. This brings us to the movie in question: There Will Be Blood. It's considered by many to not only be Anderson's finest work, but one of the best movies ever made. To put it simply, I don't agree. While the acting from Daniel Day-Lewis and Dano is tremendous, it's story of a former silver miner looking to strike it rich in the oil business by any means necessary is a pretty standard rise-fall-rise tale of greed, toxic masculinity and moral decay brought on by the pursuit of wealth and power that struggles to be frequently compelling due to its horrendously slow pacing and overlong runtime. Chop 20-30 minutes off this thing (it clocks in at 158 minutes) and Anderson could've been in good shape, but alas the movie is just too slow and repetitive with the exploration of its themes to really work.