Thomas Haden Church 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 Thomas Haden Church-whose latest project "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery" releases in select theaters on Wednesday and begins streaming on Netflix on December 12th. 

Thomas Haden Church's Filmography Ranked:

14.John Carter (D)

13.Spanglish (C)

12.George of the Jungle (C)

11.Rolling Kansas (C)

10.Hellboy (C+)

9.Spider-Man 3 (C+)

8.The Peanut Butter Falcon (B-) 

7.Daddy's Home (B-)

6.We Bought a Zoo (B)

5.Spider-Man: No Way Home (B)

4.Idiocracy (B)

3.Sideways (B)

2.Easy A (B)

1.Tombstone (B+)

Top Dog: Tombstone (1993)

There was a sneaky great run of westerns in the 90's and outside of Clint Eastwood's triumphant farewell to the genre that helped turn him into an international star with Unforgiven, Tombstone just might be the best of the bunch. George P. Cosomatos, who was previously best known for his work with Sylvester Stallone on Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra, brings a degree of pure action movie slickness that helps it stand out from other entries in the genre and the cast filled with beloved character actors from Kurt Russell to Bill Paxton to Sam Elliott to Val Kilmer to Michael Biehn help turn a collection of real-life gunslingers into larger-than-life figures worthy of being immortalized on the big screen.       

Bottom Feeder: John Carter (2012)

One of the most infamous bombs of the 2010's is also one of my least favorite movies from that decade. Pixar vet Andrew Stanton completely faceplanted with his live-action debut, which turns a seminal sci-fi text that has inspired generations of sci-fi writers/filmmakers into a convoluted, meandering epic that fails to parlay its impressive visuals into anything that's even remotely compelling. Stanton's second ever live action feature In the Blink of an Eye is currently in post-production, so it'll be interesting to see if he's learned anything from the failure of John Carter.   

Most Underrated: We Bought a Zoo (2011)

While We Bought a Zoo may be a minor entry in the (mostly) solid filmography of Cameron Crowe, it remains a heartfelt human story that's really enjoyable to watch. Returning to the world of light, warm crowdpleasers might be the ticket Crowe needs to punch to get out of the unemployment purgatory he's been stuck in for the last decade following the release of the obscenely awful Aloha.   

Most Overrated: The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)

As inherently pleasant as this dramedy about a man with a Down Syndrome (Zack Gottsagen) who escapes from an assisted living facility in Georgia and heads out on the road with a down-on-his luck fisherman (Shia LaBouef) and his kindhearted caretaker (Dakota Johnson) to fulfill his dream of going to a wrestling school in North Carolina that's run by his idol (Haden Church), this story of found family and living out your dreams simply didn't move me in the way that it did a lot of other people. Perhaps I'll give it another shot one of these days and see if I just wasn't in the mood for it when I saw it in theaters.