I’m obsessed with ranking things. Name a topic, and I’ll lay out a full ranking a few minutes later, complete with absurdly detailed justifications and explanations. I don’t know why I like doing this. Maybe it’s because ranking is the ultimate kind of categorization. Putting things in categories helps me make sense of the world. Ranking 25 things in an exact order? Even more so.

In early 2013, I ranked my top 25 video games of all time. The list featured a mix of childhood favorites and modern-day discoveries. Looking back, nostalgia played a big role—six of my top 10 were games I played before I was a teenager, and 22 of 25 before college (I was several years out of college when I made the list).

Today—for once—I’m finding it hard to make that same list. I don’t know how to sort out the nostalgia. I second guess whether a game I played two months ago outranks a game I played two decades ago. 

But this paralysis led me to an opportunity: Suppose I throw out all the old favorites and just focus on modern games? Suppose I start the clock from the day after I did that list in 2013, and simply rank everything I’ve played since then? Making that list would be much easier, and my reasoning would be more consistent.

A list like that would also have a few advantages for people besides me:

• It would be full of games that are still easily accessible today, not old classics that have to be pirated or purchased for $100+ on eBay.
• Disagreements would lead to more interesting discussions than, “I associate this game with elementary school birthday parties and sleepovers; you don’t.”
• When I was young, I mostly had one console at a time (SNES→PlayStation→GameCube). Today, I play games across almost all major platforms: Switch, iPhone, PS4, and PC. The list would be more diverse as a result.

Note: Several of the below games came out on multiple platforms. I only list the platform I played it on. Meanwhile, the year represents the game's original release date--not necessarily when I played it, and in a few cases, not necessarily the date it came out on the platform listed.

Without further ado, here goes:

22. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (2017) - Switch

For people who play games, this is X-COM, But With Mario. For the uninitiated, it’s a little like chess meets battleship. For me, it was a delightful surprise. At first look, it seems like a bad marketing stunt cooked up by Ubisoft and Nintendo. But lo and behold, there’s a smart little game here.
​

20. Super Mario Odyssey (2017) - Switch

The latest 3D Mario adventure has fallen bit by bit in my rankings since the day it came out. Sure, I was smiling almost every second I played it, and yes, it was fun to explore such large, sandboxy levels. But ultimately, Super Mario Odyssey was a surprisingly safe game for a series that usually isn’t afraid to take risks. The game lacks the crisp platforming of its predecessors, leans too heavily on nostalgia, and never really presents a challenge (with a couple very small exceptions). ​

1. Splatoon (2015) - Wii U

​You know how you always dreamed of an epic Nerf water gun fight as a child? How it was supposed to be like a Nickelodeon TV gameshow? But in reality, it would last 13 seconds?

Now imagine that the battle actually lived up to your expectations. Think of the Super Soaker stand off you always envisioned, but then make it colorful, fast-paced, and strategically deeper and more satisfying than you thought possible.

That’s Splatoon.

Splatoon gets it all right: brilliant style, fresh concept, gameplay that feels silky smooth. It takes just enough from the shooter genre to make it addicting (fast-twitch controls, team-based strategy, spacing and control), but removes all the nonsense (toxicity, gratuitous blood and violence, drab gray and brown color palettes).

Best of all, it’s just pure fun. It’s the rare game where I still can’t believe the developers made the concept work that well. Splatoon has no right to be this polished, this fresh, this smart. But it is.

​
*spoilers from this point forward*

Set some time in the future, Westworld is about a wild west-themed amusement park, filled with sleepy saloons, seedy motels, and old-timey shops. It’s designed by tech geeks and filled with artificially intelligent robots indistinguishable from humans. In the words of one Megan Anders Taylor, it’s Quentin Tarantino meets The Hunger Games meets Ex Machina.

There are dozens of tricks, but only wisps of a plot. The characters function like clues to a mystery or pieces of a puzzle. You’re less likely to ask “will she succeed?” than “what is she hiding?”

The magical style draws you in, but it quickly becomes unsettling. Westworld whisks you from stagecoaches to gun fights, from sexy liaisons to philosophical arguments about the nature of consciousness. Sometimes, a scene from a previous episode reappears, repeated exactly as it played out before. Other times, a seemingly key character disappears for episodes at a time.

There’s a certain genius at work here: a storytelling style that mirrors the world it depicts. The robotic hosts live scripted lives, each day begun the same as the one before. Then, here and there, a subtle change disrupts the routine: a dropped bag, a brush with a stranger, an unfamiliar picture. Just like the show itself, it’s a pattern that’s comfortable, then disorienting, then sinister, like falling into a dream that transforms into a nightmare.

For all its clever narrative tricks, however, Westworld lacks a storytelling soul. It’s often shocking, but not particularly memorable. It may be a great science experiment, but it would never work as a story by the campfire.

Part of the problem is Westworld’s pacing, which is unsteady, inconsistent and unsatisfying. Some subplots—like the Man in Black searching for the “center of the maze”—plod along at glacial pace, aimless and full of dead air. Others—like Maeve’s escape scheme—develop so quickly they threaten to unbalance the show.

Here, I blame the medium. Westworld likely would have worked better in a radical new format, rather than a standard, 10-episode series. As it stands, the tidy, structured nature of hour-long installments forces the show into a box where it doesn't belong.

What if HBO had introduced a “choose your own adventure” interactive story, complete with real choices presented to the viewer? Or perhaps a virtual reality simulation, in partnership with a company like Oculus? Hell, even a video game would probably have done better. In 10 years, I suspect we’ll look at Westworld’s first season as ahead of its time, pinned down by the conventions of classic TV.

Fortunately, the performances mostly make up for the uneven pacing and uncooperative medium. Evan Rachel Wood plays Dolores, a Southern belle meant to charm Westworld visitors with her farm-girl innocence. Wood’s vacant stare during interrogations is a perfect mix of robotic and creepy, and it makes for a series of chilling interviews. But Wood slowly injects the role with more doubt, more human-like frailty—a journey toward consciousness as beautiful as it is haunting.

Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) also stand out. Smart, exact and calculating, the two men mostly just talk, but their verbal sparring is so good it often outshines the special effects and gun fights.

I wound up a tad underwhelmed by The Man in Black (Ed Harris) and Teddy (James Marsden), each of whom devolve from scene stealers to caricatures. Here, we have the Game of Thrones problem, with so many good characters and not enough time for everyone. Harris is still excellent in terms of pure style—even Tyrion Lannister doesn’t have this guy’s swagger—but I thought the script let Harris down later in the season.

Similarly, the script drives Thandie Newton (Maive) into a corner, forcing her to act her way through an always bumpy, sometimes silly subplot. To her credit, she battles the script to a draw.

Even if the script is inconsistent, the visual and audio details are all incredible, a testament to the top talent on the show. Game of Thrones’ Ramin Djawadi crafts yet another classic score, simple in melody but quietly sophisticated in tone. The further the series moves along, the more indispensable the soundtrack becomes. Meanwhile, Ane Crabtree (previously, Masters of Sex) does most of the costume work, another critical component of the show. Re-watch the opening scenes in episode 2 for a tour of the various outfits—it’s meticulous work, down to the last detail.

There’s something truly transformational buried inside Westworld. It’s got more ambition than Stranger Things and more new ideas than Game of Thrones. But like the the theme park itself, there’s also something wrong with Westworld, a show that sits uncomfortably in its medium of choice. Perhaps by season 2, the series will achieve the iconic status of HBO’s most beloved shows. For now, however, it’s just a series of magic tricks.​

*Spoilers from this point forward*​

To his credit, director Denis Villeneuve makes his intentions clear from the start. We see some sort of breaking news event—and a throng of students crowding around TVs—but Professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) barely notices. The camera’s focus softens, the buzz from the crowd fading to the background, as Banks continues her deliberate, sleepwalk-like trudge to class. Is Banks depressed? Absent-minded? A cup of coffee behind schedule? 

Regardless, Villeneuve has signaled where the camera will live. For the next two hours, we’ll be observing the world two feet behind Banks’ shoulder, not 10,000 feet up in the air. The effect is immediate, arresting and confident: the mark of a skilled filmmaker.

It’s no surprise seeing this sort of visual choice from Villeneuve, the man who directed 2015’s Sicario, a gorgeous, cinematically breathtaking film. There, as in Arrival, the director anchors most shots in the eyes of his female protagonist, a formula that brings a human closeness to each and every discovery.

What’s more, Sicario’s Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and Arrival’s Banks share a similar cocktail of personality traits: raw smarts, self-doubt, a thirst for understanding why. Forget the kick-ass Xena warrior princess or lifeless “manic pixie dream girl.” Villeneuve’s women are better than these tropes, fully formed, intriguing in character and complicated in motive.

If only the same could be said of Arrival’s other lead. Jeremy Renner plays Ian Donnelly, a theoretical physicist tasked with understanding the aliens’ technology. In a paint-by-numbers intro, he rattles off a list of physics questions for the extra terrestrials. “How did they get here? What is their spacecraft made from? Are they capable of faster-than-light travel?” Banks’ response: “How about we just try to talk to them first?”* Zing! It turns out Donnelly isn’t here to challenge our assumptions about the natural world or help us consider alternative perspectives. He’s a plot device, a sounding board, the dialogue equivalent of a “yin” to Banks’ “yang.”

I’ll admit I braced myself for an hour of linguist-v-physicist arguments, complete with banging on desks and waving of hands. “But we need to know how they move, dammit, not just what they’re saying!!” In fact, we get little more of anything. Renner’s Donnelly fades rapidly, devolving from friendly adversary to dutiful sidekick, from mild-mannered encourager to Ken Doll love interest. It’s bizarro Hollywood: a three-dimensional woman next to a flat, forgettable man. I guess it’s better than the all-too-common reverse.

In my mind, this imbalance comes as a consequence of the film’s intimacy. We’re so focused on Banks—her memories, her fears, her bewilderment—we simply don’t have time to draw out Donnelly as a fully realized foil. To be clear, I don’t think Renner makes the movie any worse. He just doesn’t make it better.

Instead, what makes Arrival stand out is its respect for language, its belief in the beauty of day-to-day communication. The alien language in Arrival is both elegant and underwhelming, at once richly complex and no big deal. Watching Banks struggle to understand her extra terrestrial visitors—an endeavor filled with frustration, missed connections, and courageous acts of vulnerability—has a mesmerizing quality that transcends special effects and space battles. Who hasn’t grieved over a miscommunication? Who’s never struggled with the right words for an apology? Is there anyone who hasn’t wondered what exactly an ex, old friend or family member was really trying to say? Banks’ journey is intensely, uncompromisingly human, intergalactic in scope, but as personal as a quiet conversation with your spouse.

In the film, this communication metaphor extends to the wider world, as the globe’s various nations must learn to work together, to trust in collaboration over aggression, diplomacy over war. I thought this particular message was generally good, but perhaps a bit too easy. Part of me wanted more nuance: maybe a rogue attack from a pocket of less peaceful aliens, or a single human nation ultimately refusing to resort to peace. But political messages in film can lose power when they’re too watered down, when too many caveats and exceptions tip toe into the screenplay. Here, I don’t know what the right solution is. I just know I found the personal themes much more powerful than the political ones.

That said, I’m more confident in one last criticism. In a late twist, we discover that Banks’ various “memories” of motherhood are in fact visions from the future. Upon learning the alien language, she comes to understand the world outside of time. She can see her whole life at once, before she has lived it. In the space of minutes, we learn about several of Banks’ decisions. She will begin a romantic relationship with Donnelly. They will have a child together. All the while, she will know the child will eventually die of a rare disease. Finally, Donnelly will leave Banks out of frustration, furious that she knew the child would die before they conceived her.

The surprise does work, and the ensuing questions are admittedly powerful. Is the temporary joy of a child worth it, even if you know she will die an early death? Would you change your life if you knew exactly how it would unfold? How do we, as humans, respond to tragedy, and what separates an optimist from a pessimist, a dreamy disposition from a pragmatic worldview?

Even if these are excellent, thought-provoking questions, they struck me as part-intriguing, part-distracting. How, exactly, does all of this new information connect with the film that came before it? Where are the threads that tie the questions of motherhood and loss to those of communication and diplomacy?

I’m not asking for Arrival to be neat and tidy, with no rough edges or lingering complications. But I do prefer films with a certain narrative and thematic coherence, something I believe Arrival lacks in its final moments. It’s another casualty of the film’s fierce intimacy, an example of a movie so focused on its central character’s journey that it sacrifices the bigger picture, the overriding message.

I’ll remember Arrival for its courageous choices: to skip the outer space explosions and focus on the intimacy of conversation, to reimagine aliens as a race seeking connection, not initiating combat. I’ll forget about Jeremy Renner, and I’ll remain puzzled by the avalanche of extra questions brought on by the movie’s final reveal. Was it perfect? Not even close. But then again, conversation, connection and understanding rarely ever are.

*Paraphrased. Not a word-for-word transcription. I'll update when I get access to the final script.

Netflix’s hit summer series — playful and creepy in perfect proportions — is a brilliant study in television chemistry, an alchemy of masterful screenwriting and magnetic casting. So what if it doesn’t blaze a new trail? When all the pieces are this good, this smart, this thoughtful, who cares?

Set in 1980 Indiana, the series follows the disappearance of Will Byers, a geeky kid in a sleepy town. His closest buddies are precocious elementary schoolers, fluent in board game speak but still afraid of girls. His neighbors include a scruffy cop too capable for a small town and a teenage cutie too pretty for the local high school.

The search for Will begins quickly, but the questions come even faster. How could Will disappear without a trace? Why do the lights flicker when he seems close by? What’s that creepy shadow in the woods? Every question feels important without being unfair. We’re given a steady stream of clues, a snatch of helpful dialogue, even some hard answers, just as new questions take their place. This is a world you’ll want to spend time puzzling out, a mystery with loose ends just as satisfying as final revelations.

Better yet, the show respects your time. At just eight episodes, the series never strings you along, never forces you to examine a wrong path for more than a passing scene. Gone are tired staples of standard mystery fare: the countless interrogations, the dead-end suspects, the idle chatter among desks at the police precinct. With Stranger Things, imagination beats procedure, supernatural trumps routine.

In fact, the writing is so neat and efficient that it occasionally gets a bit hokey. We get an episode where everyone is skeptical about something. Then a chapter where close relationships are tested. Then another where every hero makes the wrong choice for the right reason. Watching four separate characters encounter similar problems is a TV staple, something audiences have come to expect. But once or twice in Stranger Things, the episode themes can get a bit too obvious.

Still, if that’s the worst critique I can throw at the upstart Duffer Brothers (the show’s writers and creators), that’s to their credit. And I’d take “a little too tidy” over “comically unfocused” any day (see Cards, House of).

Perhaps the only thing that upstages the show’s writing is its many fantastic performances. Will’s best friend Mike (Finn Wolfhard) is always earnest, often nervous. His dopey, wide-eyed gaze hides a deeply courageous interior. He’ll die for his buddies, but he’ll also be home by bedtime. Wolfhard nails this balance.

Sidekicks Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) add a touch of comic relief as they argue over plans for rescuing Will. To them, saving their friend is about as important as winning a round of Dungeons & Dragons, which is to say it is truly a matter of life and death. A week after finishing the show, I miss the snippy, hilarious Dustin-Lucas debates most.

Among the children, the telekinetic Eleven (played with marvelous restraint by Millie Bobby Brown) might be the standout, a little girl blessed with mental powers but cursed by the government’s need to exploit them. Despite only speaking about 12 total words throughout the series, she still accomplishes more emotional range than the average TV protagonist.

The teens and adults are mostly stellar as well, from Police Chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour, too old for this shit) to teenaged Nancy (Natalia Dyer, smarter than she lets on) to high school hunk Steve (Joe Keery, the second coming of John Travolta). If I had to complain about someone, I’d pick either Joyce (Winona Ryder, Will’s mom) or Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine, the show’s villain). Both characters are bit too one-dimensional, with Ryder’s Joyce always stressed to the max and Modine’s Brenner always straight-faced and generically evil. If anything, it’s the Game of Thrones problem: with so many good plots and characters, you can’t get an A+ from everyone.

Stranger Things isn’t lavishly expensive. It doesn’t skewer the criminal justice system or expose the absurdity of modern politics. The show’s cast includes a nice mix of ages and genders, but it doesn’t explore sexism or comment on the importance of diversity.

Instead, the show simply celebrates geeky friends and acts of bravery, all against the backdrop of a delightfully spooky plot. For a fun, summer series, that’s all you really need.

​Take the plot, which is dead simple: Down on their luck, three teens attempt to rob a blind guy. 

Fede Alvarez (writer and director) may not win an Oscar for screenwriting, but it’s a nice change of pace from the more common, more complicated tropes of modern-day horror. (See: precocious, disturbed children; killers who travel through TV sets; sadistic puzzle makers who “want to play a game”).

The cast is similarly small and orderly: The Heroine, The Villain, The Nice Guy, The Bad Boy. That’s it. Forget the dozen other stock horror characters. Don’t Breathe does without The Nerd, ignores the Ditzy Girl, eschews the Cute Couple.

This focus allows Don’t Breathe to add a sprinkle of nuance to its characters, rather than doubling down on comic exaggeration. Leading woman Rocky (Jane Levy) is sharp, but a little selfish. She avoids dumb decisions, but just as often misses the best ones due to a pesky, lingering self-interest. Compare her to an always-brilliant or always-ignorant horror hero, and you’ll never go back.

What’s more, Don’t Breathe doesn’t force Rocky to be sexy, like so many heroines of spooky film past. We don’t need a shower scene, ripped t-shirt or high heels chase. If Levy’s Rocky is attractive (she is), it’s number seven or eight on Don’t Breathe’s character priorities.

Stephen Lang is the other standout. Playing a character known only as “The Blind Man,” Lang is solid verbally, but masterful physically. When The Blind Man stands still, quivering with rage but intent on hearing his intruders, you’ll feel the air suck right out of the room. It’s a haunting performance.

Yes, Dylan Minnette’s Alex — the endlessly loyal, eager sidekick — is almost too pure-of-heart to be believed. He’s Samwise Gamgee without the Hobbit baby fat. And Money (Daniel Zovatto) is just plain obnoxious, all the way down to the name. But the two characters play off each other so amusingly that you won’t mind this bit of standard horror casting.

Alvarez’s efficient use of plot and character only underscore his best medium of all: space. Set mostly in a cramped Victorian, Don’t Breathe uses every square foot of The Blind Man’s home to warn viewers of coming trouble, to tease danger, to create and release tension.

Upon first entering the residence, we watch a slow, purposeful pan, the camera stopping on a tool bench here, a shard of glass there, a revolver taped to the bottom of the man’s bed. Every single shot pays off some 20 to 30 minutes later, and not always the way you might expect. This is Chekhov’s Gun done to perfection. Is all the foreshadowing too obvious, too on-the-nose? In another film, it might have been, but in the ruthlessly fastidious Don’t Breathe, it feels just right.

The movie’s neat and tidy tension slackens a bit in the final third. Things get a bit chatty, a tad too explanatory. We’re told to sit down and listen to character motivations, to pay attention while we find out What’s Really Going On. Unfortunately, all the dialogue robs the film of its best assets: silence, suspense and dread.

And then briefly, we get a gross-out scene, a moment of unrestrained villainy to remind us Just How Evil our antagonist is. It didn’t work for me. I don’t mind weird so long as it makes the villain more interesting (see Silence of the Lambs). But in Don’t Breathe, The Blind Man’s worst antics will turn you against him for good. I’d been having more fun wondering if I should root for him or against him — another trick the movie performs, at least for the first hour.

Still, the movie spends most of its time on the edge of the knife, achieving a near-impossible equilibrium. Even if Don’t Breathe falls from its perch, I’ll remember the film most for how exquisitely it maintained that balance. 

​The greatest TV gangster drama of all time isn’t really about gangsters. The same can be said for other top-tier series. Breaking Bad isn’t actually about crystal meth … it’s about ambition, lost opportunity and the corruptibility of the human soul. Lost doesn’t ultimately care about polar bears and the DHARMA Initiative, but rather, about moving on from heartbreak, about finding one’s place in the world, about letting go.

Naturally, then, The Night Of — HBO’s latest, limited series about a young man accused of murder — isn’t really a murder mystery. Instead, it’s a critique of America’s criminal justice system, complete with a prison parable (inmate Freddy vs. the system) and a medical metaphor (lawyer John Stone’s eczema as a symbol of the system’s flaws).

Confident in its ultimate mission, The Night Of skips right past the detective drama facade straight to its deeper message. Why bother with the trappings of a standard police procedural — like believable suspects, fair clues and smart interrogations — when you’ve got the deeper, more profound part nailed?

Unfortunately, this decision almost ruins the show.

The Night Of’s biggest mistake is that it forgets the facade still matters.  The series is convinced it’s better than Law & Order, and it’s this arrogance that prevents the series from achieving true greatness.

Contrast this attitude with Breaking Bad's. Even if Vince Gilligan’s masterpiece wasn’t ultimately about cooking meth, you’d be excused for thinking otherwise. Between the series’ clear reverence for chemistry and its gorgeous laboratory montages — always set to the perfect song — the AMC classic cared deeply about its form, its mechanics, its surface-level subject matter.

Conversely, The Night Of is largely disinterested in its own puzzle. Instead of asking "Who killed Andrea Cornish?” The Night Of asks, “Who cares?” Instead of questioning why the crime was committed, how it happened, or when it took place, The Night Of wonders why a man with a cat allergy would so desperately want to take care of a cat. It’s all very poetic and high-minded. It’s also frustrating and disappointing.

I wouldn’t care so much about this particular shortcoming if the show weren’t exceptional everywhere else. Start with the cinematography. From the opening credit sequence — where the rigid gridlines of the road mirror the sterility of prison bars — to the slow, close, uncomfortable pace with which the camera tracks Naz in and out of prison, the visual design is stunning. I’d rank it alongside Mad Men and Breaking Bad for its sheer beauty and meticulousness.

Sansa: B+
Sophie Turner

Good or Evil: Good (just pretend she didn't feed her ex-husband to starving dogs)
Survival Prospects: High (I have a naive belief that the remaining Starks will all survive)
Pet Peeve: Sharing critical information

Season 6 was big for Sansa. She fought off Ramsay's henchmen, helped plot the siege on Winterfell and saved Jon's army in the Battle of the Bastards. All the while, Sophie Turner brought heartbreaking emotional heft to the role — she was scarred from her past assaulters, but determined to reclaim her agency.

So why no A? Her inexplicable decision not to tell Jon about Littlefinger. We've seen the cavalry ride in to save at least three battles now (Blackwater, Willings vs. The Wall, Dothraki vs. Slavers). It's not surprising anymore. It's not satisfyingly dramatic. It's overdone. I should blame the writers, but I have to scapegoat someone in the show. Sorry, Sansa.

Daenerys: B
Emilia Clarke

Good or Evil: Good, but with Anakin Skywalker-esque tendencies (impetuous, angry)
Survival Prospects: High
Pet Peeve: Diplomacy

A better-than-average season for Dany, but haven't we been all these places before? Captured by the Dothraki? Inspiring troops from atop a dragon? I liked it better the first three times.

Arya: B-
Maisie Williams

Good or Evil: I'd say Good but she literally just served a dude a pie with his sons baked in it
Survival Prospects: High
Pet Peeve: Blunt, wooden objects

I was slightly higher on Arya than most critics (and even actor Maisie Williams herself). The village play was perfectly tuned comedy relief. Arya's final, sons-baked-in-pie reveal was satisfyingly spooky. Unfortuantely, all the "faceless men" stuff has long worn thin.

Drogon: B-
Modern Technology

Good or Evil: Dragon
Survival Prospects: Low (calling it now: Dany wins the war but loses Drogon in the climatic battle)
Pet Peeve: Deviations from routine

It's time to teach this dog some new tricks. We know he can breathe fire, and we know Dany can ride along, given enough show budget and bad CG. How about a few more dragon battles? Hell, I'd take dragon-based Small Council meeting just to see Drogon do something different.

Ask 100 people to name their top five movies, and you'll get 100 different answers. That’s the beauty of cinema: it's an art form that impacts each viewer uniquely. One list will be filled with classic Hitchcock horror; the next with modern, independent dramas and Cannes Film Festival darlings.

Combine all those individual opinions into a single list, however, and you’ll likely wind up with a ranking much like the one below. Regardless of whom you ask, the same 50 films tend to emerge time and time again.

At PrettyFamous, an entertainment site from Graphiq, we set out to determine a consensus ranking of best movies. Specifically, we gathered, combined and normalized ratings from four key film authorities across the web*:

1. Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer Score and Audience Score
2. IMDb’s user rating
3. Metacritic’s Metascore
4. Gracenote’s Proprietary Rating for movies, based on critical scores

*We also included a slight adjustment for inflation-adjusted box office gross.

Using these figures, we calculated a single score out of 100 for every film in our database, normalized such that the top film received a perfect 100/100.

Notes: Films without a Metacritic Metascore were not penalized. While inflation-adjusted box office gross is not displayed below, classic films like "Gone With the Wind" and "Star Wars" benefitted — movies that not only dominated film culture but earned billions in 2016 dollars.

I originally published this piece on PrettyFamous. Follow this link to read the rest of the story.

If you want to know about Hollywood peaks, just ask Bruce Willis. After annihilating terrorists as Officer John McClane in “Die Hard,” Willis exploded into outer space with Michael Bay’s 1998 smash hit, “Armageddon.”

A year later, he became a therapist, pivoting to a softer, more nuanced role in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense.” Not only could Willis light up a room of goons — he could captivate the world from the side of a hospital bed. No matter what the subject, Willis had become a box office guarantee.

Or had he?

Since 1999, Willis has hit a box office slump. Here and there, his films have crossed the $100 million mark, but largely on the strength of reboots and get-the-band-back-together gimmicks (see “Live Free or Die Hard” and “The Expendables”). His biggest box office success since Haley Joel Osment saw dead people? “Over the Hedge,” a 2006 DreamWorks animation feature, where Willis did voice work for RJ the Raccoon.

Bruce Willis isn’t alone. PrettyFamous, a celebrity and entertainment data site that’s part of the Graphiq network, set out to find the actors with the biggest career declines, using box office proceeds as a proxy for success.

I originally published this piece on PrettyFamous. Follow this link to read the rest of the story.

​​It’s doubly bizarre given the film’s structure and subject matter, each of which should be fascinating. The three act framework — which showcases three 40-minute moments from Jobs' career — is admirably creative. And Jobs himself is only the most fascinating business executive of the last half century.

In the end, I blame the film chemistry: a mismatch of talents, none of which work well together. Sorkin does best with fierce, determined characters. His scripts always spark debate, but his characters are unwavering: pure of purpose and convinced of their worldview (at least until the end). But Fassbender brings a layer of gray that doesn’t sync with Sorkin’s script. Is Jobs singleminded or conflicted? Self-satisfied or self-doubting? Fassbender’s Jobs is a notch too subtle for Sorkin. Or perhaps Sorkin’s Jobs is an ounce too rigid for Fassbender. 

Meanwhile, Boyle fights Sorkin’s script for 122 long minutes. You can tell Boyle wants to draw out each scene, to leave space for quiet emotion and powerful silences. It’s a style he mastered with 128 Days Later and 127 Hours, each of which builds tension through noiseless spaces of dread.

Sorkin, however, has never met a five-second window he couldn’t fill with dialogue, and it’s a fact on full display in Steve Jobs. To his credit, Boyle tries everything to make it work, using clever camerawork to convey moments of claustrophobia (close shots), intensity (low, quick pans) and neglect (still, wide angles). In the end, however, the cinematography feels more like a bug fix than a feature.

If there’s anyone who almost blends all the styles appropriately, it’s Winslet, whose Joanna Hoffman (Apple’s marketing exec) juggles a no-bullshit exterior with an uncompromising humanity just one layer below. Sorkin gets resolve, Boyle gets complexity and Fassbender gets a reliable foil that helps tidy up his muddier performance. Call it a glimpse of what might have been.

What could have saved the film? David Fincher (Fight Club, Gone Girl) comes to mind — the surgical director who worked with Sorkin on The Social Network, and who demanded $10 million to do Steve Jobs before Sony turned him down.

Today, John Sculley says he wishes he had hired Jobs back after forcing him out of Apple in 1985. When it comes to Steve Jobs, one has to wonder whether Sony can relate.