Alison Brie 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 Alison Brie-whose latest project "Together" is in theaters now.

Alison Brie's Filmography Ranked:

20.The Little Hours (D)

19.Joshy (C)

18.Freelance (C)

17.Get a Job (C)

16.Horse Girl (C)

15.How to Be Single (C)

14.Get Hard (C+)

13.Spin Me Round (B-)

12.The Five-Year Engagement (B-)

11.Happiest Season (B-)

10.Somebody I Used to Know (B)

9.The Post (B)

8.The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (B)

7.Scream 4 (B)

6.The Rental (B+)

5.The Kings of Summer (B+)

4.Sleeping with Other People (B+)

3.The LEGO Movie (B+)

2.Promising Young Woman (A-)

1.The Disaster Artist (A-)

Top Dog: The Disaster Artist (2017)

Greg Sestero's The Disaster Artist is one of the few books that I've actually read recreationally since I graduated high school 15 years ago. What struck me the most about this excellent work of non-fiction was how Sestero was able to thread the needle between detailing the dysfunction that plagued the production of The Room, how his own youthful naivety allowed him to remain in the orbit of the enigmatic Tommy Wiseau for so long and the unlikely enduring friendship that came from this singularly strange experience. The movie adaptation does a great job of bringing all of these elements of the novel to the screen along with a heightened sense of comedy and little bursts of sentimentality that capture the beauty of the scrappy underdog spirit that allowed the unicorn that is The Room to flourish against all odds.           

Bottom Feeder: The Little Hours (2017)

Out of respect for its late writer/director Jeff Baena, I'll just say that I found The Little Hours to be a brutally unfunny farce that makes poor use of its incredible ensemble led by Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Kate Micucci, John C. Reilly and Dave Franco. 

Most Underrated: Sleeping with Other People (2015)

One of the crown jewels of the underserved "two assholes fall in love" variant of the romcom genre, Sleeping with Other People uses the diabolically playful chemistry between the potential a-hole couple (Brie, Jason Sudekis) and a colorful collection of side characters played by ace character actors (Adam Scott  Amanda Peet, Jason Mantzoukas, Natasha Lyonne, Katherine Waterston, Andrea Savage) to establish its abrasive yet surprisingly sweet identity. After spending the last decade working in television and recently striking out big time with Star Wars series The Acolyte, it would be great if writer/director Leslye Headland found her way back to making sharp, hilarious stuff like this.    

Most Overrated: Happiest Season (2020)

Happiest Season isn't a bad movie at all. It's pretty funny, Kristen Stewart is very charming in the lead role of Abby-a woman who has to pretend she's her closeted girlfriend's (Mackenzie Davis) roommate when they go visit her conservative family (Victor Garber, Mary Steenburgen, Brie, Mary Holland) for Christmas and the movie has the warmth you'd want from a holiday movie. The only real problem with Happiest Season happens to be a major one: It's a romcom where the protagonist not only has stronger chemistry with another character (Aubrey Plaza's Riley), but the woman she's in a relationship with kind of treats her like shit for the majority of the movie. It's actually kind of a miracle that so much of Happiest Season works given how miscalculated the romantic elements are, so shoutout to Clea DuVall for managing to keep this train somewhat on the rails in spite of its major deficiencies.