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 Dakota Johnson-whose latest project "Materialists" releases in theaters today.
Dakota Johnson's Filmography Ranked:
20.Beastly (F)
19.The Lost Daughter (D)
18.Suspiria (D+)
17.Madame Web (C-)
16.Fifty Shades Freed (C-)
15.Fifty Shades Darker (C-)
14.Fifty Shades of Grey (C-)
13.How to Be Single (C+)
12.The Nowhere Inn (B-)
11.The Peanut Butter Falcon (B-)
10.Am I OK? (B-)
9.Our Friend (B-)
8.The Five-Year Engagement (B-)
7.Black Mass (B)
6.The High Note (B)
5.Need for Speed (B)
4.Daddio (B+)
3.Bad Times at the El Royale (B+)
2.The Social Network (A)
1.21 Jump Street (A)
Top Dog: 21 Jump Street (2012)
Before their stock went through the roof with The LEGO Movie and Spider-Verse movies, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were busy making their live action feature directorial debut with a comedic adaptation of 21 Jump Street. As they have with the majority of their other projects, they knocked it out of the park. The combination of its sharp, meta humor and incredible ensemble cast led by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as a perfectly matched bumbling buddy cop duo tasked with going undercover as high school students to thwart a synthetic drug ring led by a popular student (Dave Franco) made 21 Jump Street an incredible surprise that-along with its sequel 22 Jump Street-ended up going down as one of the funniest movies of the 2010's.
Bottom Feeder: Beastly (2011)
The popularity of Twilight opened up the floodgates for YA novel adaptations that were hoping to ride the same teen-friendly melodramatic wave that got Bella, Edward, Jacob and the gang to the peak of pop culture relevance. Unsurprisingly, most of these films failed by any metric you wanted to use to judge their level of success. From a strictly quality standpoint, I can say without hesitation that Beastly was the worst one that I saw by a monumental margin. Daniel Barnz's adaptation of Alex Flinn's 2007 novel of the same name is a deeply uninspired riff on Beauty on the Beast set in modern day New York City that adds elements of crime and gothic romance to the classic fairy tale, but these "grittier" flourishes are so ridiculous and clumsily deployed that it just makes this horrendous melodrama that's centered around one of the most unconvincing romances (Alex Pettyfer as the "Beast", Vanessa Hudgens as the Belle stand-in) ever committed to screen even cringier to watch. At least Neil Patrick Harris-who plays a blind tutor employed by Pettyfer's wealthy news anchor father (Peter Krause) to teach his now-disfigured son in the shadows-seemed to be having fun!
Most Underrated: Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
Until his ABC procedural crime drama series High Potential made it to air and quickly became a pretty big hit for the legacy broadcast network last fall, Drew Goodard was basically MIA from Hollywood after the commercial failure of Bad Times at El Royale. What's particularly unfortunate about this situation that kept him on the creative sidelines for close to 5 full years is that the movie that landed him in director's jail is quite good. The non-linear, late 60's-set hyperlink noir thriller that sees the lives of six strangers (Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Johnson, Lewis Pullman, Cailee Spaeny, Jon Hamm) intersect at a seedy rundown hotel located on the California and Nevada line is a really compelling flick full of explosive twists and incredible performances that make the quieter character moments just as thrilling as the violent or crazy ones (in addition to the aforementioned performers who all play characters who are guests or employees at the hotel, Chris Hemsworth turns in one hell of a performance in a bit part as a vicious cult leader who eventually shows up to the hotel to try and take Spaney's character back to his commune). Now that the profile of damn near the entire cast has raised considerably in recent years, maybe this will be able to find the audience that it couldn't in the fall of 2018.
Most Overrated: The Lost Daughter (2021)
Maggie Gyllenhaal's ode to mothers that have an overwhelming contempt for their children throws all of the goodwill of its refreshingly blunt observations about motherhood out the window with its brutal pacing and poor script that only offers up a surface level exploration of why its main character (Olivia Colman) became so withdrawn from her children that she abandoned being their mother entirely.
First Film I Would Direct People to After They Say She Can't Act: Daddio (2024)
Johnson has been battling the widespread perception that she can't act since she became known to most of the world with her breakout role as Anastasia Steele in the Fifty Shades trilogy from 2015-17. This is the same bullshit narrative that has plagued Robert Pattinson and Kirsten Stewart post-Twilight and will continue to follow every other actor that first finds tremendous success as part of a trashy, soapy franchise for as long as movies remain a part of the world. Continuing the parallels between Pattinson and Stewart in particular, Johnson's best work has come away from the eyes of most general audiences in the indie film space and her few forays into more mainstream studio fare post-Fifty Shades were either so little seen that they might as well have been indie projects (Bad Times at the El Royale, The High Note) or further reenforced the perception that she can't act as the film went onto become a huge meme that she had the misfortune of being the face of (Madame Web). Whether Materialists can help shatter this popular belief about Johnson's acting ability remains to be seen, but for now, I invite anyone that feels that Johnson is unqualified to be in her profession to fire up Netflix and watch Daddio ASAP and see if they still feel this way after it's over.
This minimalist drama from writer/director Christy Hall depicts a conversation between a young woman (Johnson) and the driver of the cab (Sean Penn) she gets into after landing at JFK airport playing out in real time as they navigate a major traffic jam in Manhattan in route to her apartment. Penn's credentials don't need to be sold to anyone. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest actors of his generation (the pair of Oscars he has on his mantle back that up) and the moving, nuanced performance he gives here is one of the purest displays of his immense gifts that we've seen recently. Johnson is able to hold her own with him the entire time. A movie that is entirely based around a frank, wide-spanning conversation between two strangers who make an unlikely connection wouldn't work if the actors involved weren't completely natural in their roles and Johnson does a remarkable job of navigating the situation her character is dropped into by displaying a strong standoffishness that slowly transforms into a grounded, unflinching honesty. If she couldn't act, she couldn't make her character's journey feel so seamless and real, especially alongside an actor of Penn's caliber. This edition of "Chris defends Dakota Johnson's acting ability" has reached its conclusion. Stay tuned for the next episode that will probably surface in the near future!
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