Danny Boyle 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 Danny Boyle-whose latest project "28 Years Later" releases in theaters Thursday. 

Danny Boyle's Filmography Ranked:

9.Sunshine (D+)

8.Shallow Grave (C)

7.Slumdog Millionaire (C+)

6.Trance (B)

5.T2: Trainspotting (B)

4.127 Hours (B+)

3.Steve Jobs (B+)

2.Trainspotting (A)

1.28 Days Later (A+)

Top Dog: 28 Days Later (2002)

Saying that 28 Days Later opened my eyes to the morbid pleasures of the horror genre would be disingenuous since I didn't develop a real appreciation for the genre until roughly a decade ago, but it certainly left a huge impression on me nonetheless and remains my favorite horror movie. Between the "zombies" that are basically rabies-infected humans with heightened speed, agility, etc., Boyle's atmospheric direction and the really grainy way in which it was shot (RIP charming low-resolution early 2000's digital video cameras), there's a really urgent, visceral and hopeless terror on display in nearly every frame here that is unlike anything else I've ever seen from the genre. If Boyle and Alex Garland's return to the franchise they birthed can deliver even half of the unrelenting terror that occupies 28 Days Later, 28 Years Later will go down as a major win.          

Bottom Feeder: Sunshine (2007)

Sunshine has plenty of fans out there that like to make their voices particularly heard whenever the opportunity to lament Chris Evans' choice of projects over the past 15 years arises (which is far more often than you would think!). I am not among them. Unlike Boyle and Garland's work on 28 Days Later, Sunshine fails to generate much tension or excitement and instead just kind of plods along with convoluted sci-fi mindfuck nonsense until it reaches an absolutely laughable conclusion. 

Most Underrated: Steve Jobs (2015)

Steve Jobs is Aaron Sorkin at his most unapologetically indulgent and an entire movie built around stereotypical Sorkinism's (snappy dialogue, long monologues, smug characters) will naturally beat some people down to the point where they're deeply annoyed or completely checked out by the end. As a fan of most of his work, I found Steve Jobs to be a great vessel for Sorkin's writing. The three-act play (each scene-taking place in 1984, 1988 and 1998 respectively-unfolds in real time in a single location on a single day) structure of the narrative is a creative way to examine who Jobs was, the performances (Michael Fassbender as Jobs, Kate Winslet as Apple marketing executive/Jobs' top confidant Joanna Hoffman, Seth Rogen as Apple co-founder/top programmer Steve Wozniak, Jeff Daniels as original Apple CEO John Sculley, Michael Stuhlbarg as Apple/Mac engineer Andy Hertzfeld, Katherine Waterston as Jobs' ex-girlfriend/mother of his daughter Lisa Chrisann Brennan) are outstanding across the board and Boyle's direction is steady enough to make it feel cinematic enough where the onslaught of long conversations/arguments that Sorkin writes don't feel like they're part of a stage performance.        

Most Overrated: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Outside of The Artist, there has not been a more forgettable Best Picture winner in the past 20 years than Slumdog Millionaire. The only things I remember about this movie are the plot having something to do with a poor kid cheating on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, the "Jai Ho" song that won the Oscar for Best Original Song, the backlash it was met with for its depiction of poor people in India and it being the first time I saw Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto in anything. Other than that, this movie kind of just exists in the ether for me and I'm not really all that interested in seeing if a rewatch intensifies my feelings towards it one way or the other.