Kathryn Newton Ranked

Welcome to "Ranked", a weekly series where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out assorted superlatives. This week, I'm profiling the work of Kathryn Newton-whose latest project "Abigail" releases in theaters tomorrow night. 

Kathryn Newton's Filmography Ranked:

10.Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (D+)

9.Pokemon Detective Pikachu (C)

8.Lisa Frankenstein (C+)

7.The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (B-)

6.Bad Teacher (B-)

5.Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (B-)

4.Ben is Back (B)

3.Freaky (B+)

2.Blockers (A-)

1.Lady Bird (A-)

Top Dog: Lady Bird (2017)

Greta Gerwig's path to directorial domination started here. In her first solo venture as a filmmaker, the veteran actor proved that she was even better behind the camera with this remarkably confident, funny coming-of-age story that is led by a pair of outstanding performances from Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf .  

Bottom Feeder: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Two movies come to mind when anyone asks me to name the worst superhero movies released in recent years: Morbius and Quantumania. Using the character of Scott Lang/Ant-Man-who's previous two headlining features were largely contained, goofy movies with small stakes-as the gateway to setting up the Multiverse concept didn't seem like a great idea on paper. In practice, it's somehow considerably worse since the story is an incoherent mess that introduces subplots every 3 minutes only to discard about 95% of them before there ever resolved, it looks like absolute shit courtesy of the decision to use The Volume over a normal greenscreen/practical set combo and director Peyton Reed somehow renders the allegedly vibrant sci-fi universe of the Quantum Realm into a completely nondescript creation that isn't worthy of further exploration. Marvel has made plenty of frustratingly innocuous movies over the years, but it was truly stunning to see Kevin Feige and his team of meddling minions be behind something so deeply inept.              

Most Underrated: Blockers (2018)

Aside from Game Night, Blockers was my favorite comedy released in the sneaky great year for the genre that was 2018. Kay Cannon does an incredible job of fusing the more progressive views on sex, sexuality and gender of this era with a string of terrific raunchy R-rated comedy bits that feel like they were ripped straight out of the 90's/00's. Further elevating this great material is a handful of pitch-perfect comedic performances from Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, John Cena, Geraldine Viswanathan and Hannibal Burress that deserve the same amount of love as the all the great ones from Game Night have continued to receive over the years.       

Most Overrated: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

What a comparatively clunky outlier in the brilliant career of Martin McDonagh. The film's heavy-handed melodrama, weird tonal shifts and ambiguous clunker of an ending are the total antithesis of the wall-to-wall excellence found in In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin. The only thing that saves Three Billboards from completely collapsing are the trio of great performances from Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell and Samara Weaving-who steals every single she's in as the much younger girlfriend of McDormand's character's ex-husband played by John Hawkes.