Jon Bernthal 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 Jon Bernthal-whose latest project "The Accountant 2" releases in theaters on Thursday. 

Jon Bernthal's Filmography Ranked:

22.Sharp Stick (C)

21.Origin (C)

20.Grudge Match (C)

19.The Amateur (C+)

18.The Peanut Butter Falcon (B-)

17.We Are Your Friends (B-)

16.Fury (B-) 

15.The Accountant (B-) 

14,The Unforgiveable (B-) 

13.Date Night (B)

12.Those Who Wish Me Dead (B)

11.Widows (B)

10.Snitch (B)

9.Shot Caller (B)

8.Small Engine Repair (B+)

7.Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (B+)

6.The Wolf of Wall Street (B+)

5.Ford v. Ferrari (B+)

4.King Richard (A-)

3.Sicario (A-)

2.Wind River (A)

1.Baby Driver (A)

Top Dog: Baby Driver (2017)

I actually just rewatched this for the first time in ages last week and it remains every bit as electrifying today as it was 8 summers ago when it became a sleeper box office hit. The adrenaline-fueled car chases/driving stunts are among the finest put on screen this century, Edgar Wright brings a strong sense of musicality to his direction that is every bit as infectious as it is technically dazzling and the soundtrack is an eclectic mixtape that fits its colorful, largely dangerous collection of characters perfectly.      

Bottom Feeder: Sharp Stick (2022)

Lena Dunham achieved another remarkable milestone in her rocky post-Girls filmography by somehow making a movie about a sheltered woman in her mid 20's (Kristine Forseth) who begins to explore her sexuality after getting involved in an affair with a married man (Bernthal) whose disabled child (Liam Michel Saux) she babysits for milquetoast. Sharp Stick manages to exist in this blank void where it's neither daring enough to be provocative nor confident or forward-thinking enough to be a feminist tale of a woman finding her identity through sexual liberation. Who knows how much blander it could've been without the great performances of Bernthal-who brilliantly instills his character with a mix of sensitivity and crippling insecurity and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Forseth's snarky free-spirited mother.     

Most Underrated: Small Engine Repair (2021)

This indie drama/black comedy about a jovial reunion between old friends (Bernthal, Shea Whigham, John Pollono-who also wrote and directed the film as well as the play it's based on) that goes haywire when a young man (Spencer House) arrives to the festivities isn't just Bernthal's most underrated movie, it's one of the most underrated movies of the 2020's thus far. The lead performances are incredible, the commentary on cycles of abuse, toxic masculinity, etc. is smartly conveyed and the shift in tone from chill hangout comedy to taut, gritty thriller is really well-done. It's currently available on Tubi, and I would encourage anyone that's in the market to watch something full of raw human emotions and nuanced characters whose actions aren't judged by the filmmakers to watch it ASAP.          

Most Overrated: The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)

Shitting on The Peanut Butter Falcon feels kind of mean as it's a lighthearted dramedy that warmed a lot of hearts when it became a sleeper indie hit back in August 2019, it just didn't charm or entertain me all that much despite the inherent pleasantness of its story about a man with Down Syndrome (Zak Gottsagen) who escapes from a Georgia assisted living facility and with the help of a recently fired fisherman (Shia LaBeouf) and his caretaker (Dakota Johnson) who's been tasked with bringing him back home-embarks on a journey to North Carolina with the hope of having his hero (Thomas Haden Church) train him to become a pro wrestler. We'll see if Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz's most recent film (the similarly well-reviewed Los Frikis, which received a limited theatrical run this past December/January) can resonate with me in the ways that The Peanut Butter Falcon failed to.             

2025 NFL Draft Week Content Schedule

Tomorow: Jon Bernthal Ranked

Wednesday: Top 50 Prospects Available+ Top 5 by Position 

Thursday: 2-Round Draft Day Mock

Friday: Top 50 Prospects Available on Day 2

Saturday: Top 50 Prospects Available on Day 3

Sunday: Updated Version of Top 50 Prospects Available and Top 5 by Position List with NFL Landing Spots 

Next Monday: Full Draft Recap with Winners and Losers, Grades and More 

Quick Movie Reviews: Warfare, Drop, The Amateur

Warfare: War films-particularly the modern ones that are set in Afghanistan or Iraq-occupy a tricky space in the world of entertainment simply because of how they go about portraying military conflicts. Odds are if we aren't talking about WWII or Vietnam, somebody has made a deeply dishonest, if not legitimately dangerous movie that romanticizes combat and downplayed or ignored the role various powerful governments around the world played in creating the violent conflict that's being portrayed on screen. The latest film from Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza-who served as the military advisor on Garland's last film Civil War-Warfare avoids falling into that camp. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find many films that portray military combat in a more honest, horrific manner than Warfare does. 

Warfare deals with a 2006 mission in Ramadi, Iraq that Mendoza himself was involved in which a Navy Seal Team seizes a home from civilians to scout a suspected ISIS cell that's operating out of a market in the neighborhood that begins to go sideways when somebody throws a grenade into the home and wounds one of the team's snipers (Cosmo Jarvis). The rest of the film deals with the team's efforts to maintain their position while they wait for the medical evac team to arrive. 

What makes Warfare such an effective film is that it completely removes any of the glamourizing dramatic barriers that you typically see in the genre. There's no rah rah speeches, slo-mo shots of American flags waving or moments of rousing heroism designed to boost recruitment for the armed forces taking center stage. Instead, it just bluntly presents the horrors and senselessness of combat in real time. The wounded are heard writhing in pain while they're shell-shocked counterparts try to calm them down and keep them alive until they can access proper medical treatment. Civilians scream in confused horror while their home gets laid to waste by gunfire, IED's and tank rounds. Limbs and entrails are spread over a street where people just have to continue to live after the US military rolls out of there. It's a disturbing, nauseating and gut-wrenching watch, which in my view at least is how all films depicting war should be. Mendoza and Garland deserve all the credit in the world for making a film that forces the audience to really sit with the unspeakable horrors that warfare inflicts on the soldiers as well as the residents of the countries that have been invaded.                              

Grade: B+

Drop: Christopher Landon (Freaky, Happy Death Day franchise) breaks free from his meta slasher comedy comfort zone with this straightforward albeit knowingly ridiculous thriller about a widowed single mother (Meghann Fahy) whose first date with a charming photographer (Brandon Sklenar) at a fancy restaurant is disrupted by threatening airdrops from an anonymous individual who offers her a simple ultimatum: follow their instructions to kill her date or an assassin that's hiding in her home will kill her son (Jacob Robinson) and sister (Violett Beane). While it probably could've been more intense given the confined setting it almost exclusively takes place in and the identity of the airdropper is pretty easy to figure out by the time the second act rolls around, Drop mostly succeeds in providing the trashy thrills it aims to deliver. Fahy does a great job of being both blatantly distracted by what this mysterious person is constantly sending to her phone and cunning enough to buy herself time to figure out what the hell is really going on before she does something she can't undo, the single location setting paired with the claustrophobic panic Fahy's character is feeling allows Landon to deploy some cool, disorienting stylistic flourishes at important junctures of the film and the propulsive final act where the big picture behind this murder plot comes into focus is just the right amount of absurd. I can easily see this becoming a longtime favorite among people who get a kick out of all things self-aware and camp.          

Grade: B

The Amateur: A merely serviceable spy vigilante thriller that's tailor made for your dad to half watch on a Sunday afternoon after drinking 3 Busch Lights? Real cinema is back baby! What The Amateur lacks in crackling action and explosive stakes it makes up for with good old-fashioned consistent narrative momentum and competent acting. Plus, there's just something kind of hilarious about a movie where a revolving door of veteran actors (Laurence Fishburne, Holt McCallany, Danny Sapani, Jon Bernthal) tell the CIA data analyst protagonist Charlie Heller (Rami Malek in a cold, awkward role that plays to his strengths as a performer) that he's too much of a nerdy pussy to get revenge on the four terrorists (Michael Stuhlbarg, Marc Rissmann, Joseph Millson, Barbara Probst) that killed his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) in London following an arms deal gone awry at the hotel she was staying at during a business trip, only for them to be legitimately shocked when he dispatches one of them with some jerry-rigged explosive device he made in a filthy Romanian hotel room and evades capture with his intricate knowledge of the various digital surveillance systems his friends at the CIA are tracking him with. It would kind of rule if Disney went all-in on making 20th Century the modern answer to Touchstone Pictures and churned out a handful of stupid non-franchise movies for adults like this every year.           

Grade: C+ 

Michael B. Jordan 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 Michael B. Jordan-whose latest project "Sinners" releases in theaters on Thursday. 

Michael B. Jordan Filmography's Ranked:

14.A Journal for Jordan (C-)

13.Fantastic Four (C)

12.Without Remorse (B-)

11.Red Tails (B-)

10.Hardball (B)

9.That Awkward Moment (B)

8.Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (B+)

7.Chronicle (B+)

6.Creed II (A)

5.Creed III (A)

4.Just Mercy (A)

3.Creed (A)

2.Black Panther (A)

1.Fruitvale Station (A)

Top Dog: Fruitvale Station (2013)

The movie that birthed the creative partnership between Jordan and Ryan Coogler remains their finest work. Fruitvale Station succinctly and powerfully shows that Oscar Grant was just a young man trying to get his life back on track after a brief prison stint for selling weed who was deprived of that opportunity after he was murdered by transit police in a heinous act of police brutality that was caught entirely on camera by fellow BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) riders at the titular subway station in Oakland. The fact that Coogler and Jordan were only 25 and 24 respectively at the time of production only adds to how remarkable of an accomplishment this film is.    

Bottom Feeder: A Journal for Jordan (2021)

You'll be hard pressed to find too many people that don't feel that Denzel Washington is one of the greatest actors to ever grace a screen or stage. Considering how special his talent is as a performer; it's kind of astonishing how none of it has translated to his behind-the-camera work-which is plain and typically far too reliant on ineffective melodrama. Washington's fourth directorial effort A Journal for Jordan manages to be the most damning showcase of his shortcomings as a filmmaker thus far. While the magnetic lead pairing of Jordan and Chante Adams have strong enough chemistry to sell the romantic portions of the narrative, the film's ruminations on grief, loss and raising a child alone as a widow are far too contrived to provide the tearjerking gut punch that this fact-based story is aiming to provide.          

Most Underrated: Just Mercy (2019)

Just Mercy got dealt a rough hand as it had to contend with being a part of the most loaded awards slate in recent memory and having its home release come in the early days of the COVID lockdown where nobody was interested in watching anything that featured heavy subject matter. While we're living through a time right now that's scary and uncertain in its own right, I can't recommend seeking out Just Mercy enough. It's a vintage rousing legal drama that features exceptional performances from Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Rob Morgan that also happens to be an honest, unflinching exploration of the enduring stranglehold that systemic racism has maintained on the American justice system post-Jim Crow.            

Most Overrated: None

Jordan's relatively small filmography for an actor whose been steadily working for over a decade now paired with the varying degree of high opinions I have on his acclaimed films was enough to earn him a reprieve here.    

Most Compelling Evidence for Hollywood to Give Josh Trank Another Shot: Chronicle (2012)

Whatever bad shit happened with Fantastic Four has completely stalled Josh Trank's career. The only film he's put out since then was 2020's alternately fascinating and baffling biopic Capone that tackled the unglamorous final years of the notorious Chicago gangster, and he just began production on an indie horror film led by child stars and current VOD/streaming mainstays Robbie Amell and Victoria Justice. To this day, I still believe that Chronicle serves as evidence that Trank is talented and deserves another shot in the big leagues. Aided by a trio of great lead performances from Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell and Jordan and one of the best uses of the found footage format since The Blair Witch Project, Chronicle successfully turns the superhero genre on its head by exploring what would happen if getting superpowers corrupted a person to the point of no return. The most impressive part of Chronicle is that Trank was able to pull it off in an 83-minute film that boasted a production budget of $15 mil, which is the sign of a filmmaker who is resourceful to enough to deal with budgetary constraints without compromising the scope of their vision.       

2025 NFL Mock Draft (4/14)

1.Tennessee Titans: Cam Ward, quarterback (Miami)

2.Cleveland Browns: Travis Hunter, cornerback/wide receiver (Colorado)

3.New York Giants: Ashton Jeanty, running back (Boise State) 

4.New England Patriots: Abdul Carter, edge rusher (Penn State)

5.Jacksonville Jaguars: Mason Graham, defensive tackle (Michigan)

6.Las Vegas Raiders: Tetairoa McMillan, wide receiver (Arizona)

7.New York Jets: Armand Membou, tackle (Missouri)

8.Carolina Panthers: Jalon Walker, edge rusher/inside linebacker (Georgia)

9.New Orleans Saints: Sheduer Sanders, quarterback (Colorado) 

10.Chicago Bears: Tyler Warren, tight end (Penn State) 

11.San Francisco 49ers: Will Campbell, tackle/guard (LSU) 

12.Dallas Cowboys: Matthew Golden, wide receiver (Texas) 

13.Miami Dolphins: Kelvin Banks Jr., tackle/guard (Texas) 

14.Indianapolis Colts: Emeka Egbuka, wide receiver (Ohio State) 

15.Atlanta Falcons: Shemar Stewart, edge rusher (Texas A&M) 

16.Arizona Cardinals: Mike Green, edge rusher (Marshall)  

17.Cincinnati Bengals: Will Johnson, cornerback (Michigan)

18.Seattle Seahawks: Grey Zabel, tackle/guard/center (North Dakota State)

19.Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Malaki Starks, safety (Georgia) 

20.Denver Broncos: Omarion Hampton, running back (North Carolina) 

21.Pittsburgh Steelers: Jahdae Barron, cornerback (Texas)

22.Los Angeles Chargers: Colston Loveland, tight end (Michigan) 

23.Green Bay Packers: Maxwell Hairston, cornerback (Kentucky)

24.Minnesota Vikings: Tyler Booker, guard (Alabama)

25.Houston Texans: Josh Simmons, tackle (Ohio State) 

26.Los Angeles Rams: Jihaad Campbell, inside linebacker (Alabama)

27.Baltimore Ravens: Kenneth Grant, defensive tackle (Michigan)

28.Detroit Lions: Mykel Williams, edge rusher (Georgia) 

29.Washington Commanders: Nick Emmanwori, safety (South Carolina) 

30.Buffalo Bills: Trey Amos, cornerback (Ole Miss) 

31.Kansas City Chiefs: Donovan Ezeieruaku, edge rusher (Boston College) 

32.Philadelphia Eagles: James Pearce Jr., edge rusher (Tennessee) 

Rami Malek 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 Rami Malek-whose latest project "The Amateur" is now playing in theaters.  

Rami Malek's Filmography Ranked:

12.Battleship (D)

11.Larry Crowne (C)

10.Oldboy (C)

9.The Master (C)

8.Night at the Museum (B-)

7.Bohemian Rhapsody (B-)

6.Amsterdam (B-)

5.The Little Things (B)

4.Oppenheimer (B)

3.Need for Speed (B)

2.No Time to Die (B+)

1.Short Term 12 (A)

Top Dog: Short Term 12 (2013)

Destin Daniel Cretton, Brie Larson, Kaitlyn Dever and LaKeith Stanfield all announced themselves as major talents with this powerful tiny indie drama about the young leader (Larson) of a facility that provides short term housing for teenagers working their way through the foster care system whose immediate strong bond with a new resident (Dever) reopens old wounds from her past. Cretton does an incredible job of crafting a raw human story that doesn't pull any punches, and Larson gives an astounding performance as a woman who believed she had moved past the trauma of her abusive childhood until she meets someone whose experiences mirrored her own at that age. As unlikely as it is given where their careers are at right now, I'd love to see Cretton and Larson-who've gone on to become frequent collaborators-eventually work their way back to making movies like Short Term 12.      

Bottom Feeder: Battleship (2012)

Peter Berg has made some fun movies (Friday Night Lights! The Rundown! Spenser Confidential!) in his career. Battleship is not among them. Battle: Los Angeles-which came out a year prior-may've been a deeply corny, idiotic military vs aliens movie, but at least it had stretches where it was fun to watch. This shit is just a complete joyless slog for about 98% of its running time (there's a sequence in the climax where a group of old Navy vets spring into action to defeat alien aircraft with a decommissioned WWII-era ship since the aliens can't track or interfere with the old ship's analog radar and weapons system that is a hoot) as it takes itself way too seriously for a sci-fi action blockbuster that's based on a fucking board game. While I understand that everybody in Hollywood at the time wanted their own answer to Transformers, I'm absolutely dumbfounded that there were executives at Universal that thought this strangely stoic take on Battleship was going to be a huge hit.               

Most Underrated: Need for Speed (2014)

Is Need for Speed a riff on the early Fast and Furious movies? No doubt. Does that prevent it from absolutely kicking ass? Fuck no. There's a real 2000's nu metal-and-Mountain Dew vibe present in the race sequences (which are full of sick practical car stunts!) and scenery-chewing performances from Luke Evans as a disgraced former Indy Car driver turned illegal street racing phenom who doesn't play by the rules, Kid Cudi as the eccentric helicopter-flying best friend of Aaron Paul's Dom Toretto-lite protagonist and Michael Keaton as the reclusive emcee of the Daytona 500 of illegal street races that is just beautiful to behold. It's easily one of the most slept-on pieces of trashy blockbuster filmmaking from the 2010's and I wish they had gotten the chance to make six more of them. 

Most Overrated: The Master (2012)

Every time I sit down to watch a Paul Thomas Anderson movie; I maintain a glimmer of hope that this will be the one that sells me on one of the most beloved auteurs of the past 30 years.  As of this writing, Licorice Pizza was the only instance where that happened. The Master-which is the work of Anderson's that I've seen most recently-is actually far and away the least impressed I've been with an Anderson joint yet. As terrific as Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman are here, I just wasn't at all compelled by the cult leader/cult member dynamic that drives this story of a troubled WWII veteran battling PTSD (Phoenix) who feels he may finally found salvation in the form of a traveling philosopher/religious leader (Hoffman) who claims to have the answers to all of life's ills. Nothing it says about how people fall into cults, cult leaders who prey on their members, etc. is at all thought-provoking, the pacing is even more sluggish than usual for PTA film and quite frankly, I never believed that Phoenix's character was buying what Seymour Hoffman's was selling.    

Movie Review: Hell of a Summer

Actors Billy Byrk and Finn Wolfhard spent part of their childhoods engaging in a time-honored ritual that dates back to the rise of home video in the early 80's: watching hardcore horror movies that they shouldn't have been watching at an early age. Unlike the overwhelming majority of people who gleefully corrupted themselves with the sights of masked killers, dead bodies and oozing viscera during their adolescence, they parlayed the love for the genre that blossomed during their formative years into making their very own R-rated slasher comedy with Hell of a Summer. While not without some debut feature bugs, the young Canadian duo-who were just 22 and 19 respectively at the time of production in July/August 2022-do a pretty good job of putting their own spin on a classic "masked killer terrorizes a summer camp" setup.

Categorizing Hell of a Summer as a slasher movie is actually a smidge disingenuous. Yes, there is a knife-wielding masked killer going around killing camp counselors on the weekend before the campers are set to arrive, but it's really more of a straight comedy that just happens to have a slasher element to it. From the main protagonist being a constantly chipper 24-year-old counselor (Fred Hechinger) who loves Camp Pinewood so much that he continues to delay going to law school in order to come back to a place that has brought him so much joy over the years despite the increasingly large age gap between him and the majority of the other counselors to many of the kills being tailored towards each individual who has the misfortune of being murdered at a summer camp, the film's small universe entirely revolves around finding the comedy in this scenario that we've seen play out on screen dozens of times before. This approach ends up working out pretty well as it infuses the film with a unique personality that effectively mines situational, character-driven humor from its story instead of falling back on the exhausting, increasingly lazy meta well like many other joke-driven slashers have since Scream. Taking the time to establish enough personality in each character-even if it's only a trait or two-to use as ammo for bits later in the movie is a surprisingly thoughtful piece of writing from Byrk and Wolfhard and unquestionably one of the biggest reasons that most of the jokes here land with their intended impact.     

When it comes to the moments where it IS a proper slasher movie, Hell of a Summer runs into a bit of a trouble. Astoundingly dim nighttime cinematography and strategic cutaways obscure many of the kills that appear on-screen and the eventual unmasking of the killer along with the reveal of their motivations is the only time the film becomes dispiritingly derivative. It's a bit baffling that the only part of Hell of a Summer that Byrk and Wolfhard really whiffed on is the actual killer part of the equation, especially given their evident affinity for the genre. I'd imagine that creating a killer and the murders they commit is the most fun part of assembling a slasher movie and yet these guys managed to put considerably less care into that area than the rest of the film. They're currently developing a reboot of the singularly wild B-horror comedy Idle Hands at Sony right now, so they could conceivably redeem themselves in a big way in this area if the film actually gets made.

For all its flaws in the slashing department, Hell of a Summer still manages to get the job done. Wolfhard and Byrk have an assurance and specificity of vision that should suit them well as they progress on their filmmaking journeys and the film is plenty funny and spirited enough to sustain its breezy 88-minute runtime. Go check it out if you're seeking lighthearted fun at the theater without the threat of being hit with popcorn, Sour Patch Kids and Sprite by rowdy teenagers at a showing of A Minecraft Movie.                                   

Grade: B