Every Joaquin Phoenix Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best

Just another insufferable Woody Allen movie that with the hindsight only five years is deeply disturbing. What's worse is that Phoenix is truly terrible as another pathetic on-screen Allen avatar. — MM

Back when he was going as Leaf Phoenix, a 12-year-old Joaquin appeared alongside the kid from A Christmas Story (Peter Billingsley) in this Goonies rip-off that time forgot. The film is weirdly intense with Cold War era tensions and an earnest young Phoenix acting as a militant pre-teen. It’s actually kind of a bizarrely fun watch in 2020, but you can see how this chubby little guy would grow into the humorless actor we all know and love. — MM

You say the planet is getting hotter—It’s All About Love says it’s getting colder. While the earth is on the brink of economic collapse due to a mysterious global cooldown, Joaquin Phoenix is going through a divorce from his wife, a world-famous figure skater portrayed by Claire Danes. Phoenix soon learns that Danes’ family has cloned her in order to continue living off her income after she’s no longer able to skate--however, they’ll need to dispose of the real Danes first. That might sound far-fetched, but it’s hardly the most egregious thing about a movie in which characters with broken hearts are susceptible to death by iced-over heart. Climate change, y’all. It’s All About Love is a garbage movie with a preposterous plot, but Phoenix and Danes make a fun pair. —Adrienne Westenfeld

Playing Jesus is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, he’s one of the most recognizable names on the planet, and on the other, there’s not been a solid depiction of Jesus since Mel Gibson made that kind of anti-Semitic version back in the early 2000s. Rats. But Phoenix gives it his all, taking his turn as Christ in the flop film, Mary Magdalene. Rooney Mara does a serviceable job as Mary Magdalene, following the story of Mary’s devotion to Jesus. Meanwhile, Phoenix is mostly just tasked with being the Messiah in a surprisingly underwhelming way. Points for casting someone with such a strong bone structure for Jesus. Points deducted for making it so milquetoast. —Justin Kirkland

Nicolas Cage is a private investigator employed by wealthy clients to determine if a snuff film is the real deal in Joel Schumacher’s 8MM, and for his journey into L.A.’s porny underworld, he enlists the assistance of adult video store employee Max California (Phoenix). The name of Phoenix’s supporting character is just about his most interesting feature, which isn’t the actor’s fault; with a cheery demeanor that indicates he’s wound up in his seedy situation not exactly by choice—and with spiky hair and tattoos that make him at least visually fit his milieu—he proves the type of sleazeball whose deviance has its limits (namely, movies depicting genuine murder). Phoenix’s scenes with Cage are the high points of this descent into depravity (penned by Seven’s Andrew Kevin Walker), as the former exudes a wiseass slacker cool that would be even more pleasurable if Schumacher’s thriller wasn’t such a drearily grim affair. — Nick Schager

Whoa boy! You better watch out when Jo Jo is in hair-slicked-up, heartthrob mode. Inventing the Abbotts is a 1950s-set romantic drama, where Phoenix plays the intrepid Doug like a shy James Dean, crushin’ on a young, I-do-what-I-want!-type lead, Liv Tyler. If you really want to piss Phoenix off in an interview, this is probably a top-10 movie of his to bring up. It’s the kind of warring-families movie where the characters are reminded which side of the tracks they live on. Cue the kissing, fake punches, screaming alone in cars, etc. etc. etc. —Brady Langmann

Who can forget Joaquin Phoenix’s infamous 2008 David Letterman interview where he walked out in a full beard and sunglasses? He refused to answer questions. Letterman was visibly frustrated as Phoenix claimed to be launching a rap career. This was, of course, a stunt for his 2012 mockumentary I’m Still Here. The film itself is ineffectual, and though you have give credit to Phoenix for sticking to the bit, this is a classic example of the actor taking things too far. Is all of this worth it for a statement about the nature of celebrity? And, in 2020, it’s impossible for anyone to talk about this movie without connecting it to the disturbing allegations against director Casey Affleck during its filming. — MM

Who really knows how Joaquin Phoenix got wrapped up in the slight mess that was Brother Bear. Sometimes you got to get that Disney money. Kenai (Phoenix), a young Native American boy who does not like bears, is given a totem: a necklace with an animal representing what he must emulate to “be a man.” Kenai’s is, unsurprisingly, a bear. Resentful and angry, things only get worse when a bear is responsible for his brother’s death. Yikes! To top it all off, Kenai then becomes a bear, learning what the other side of the situation looks like. While it’s a fine story, it also requires Joaquin Phoenix—prestige actor and all around artsy guy—to voice a cartoon bear for 85 minutes. That is the greatest gift of all. —Justin Kirkland

Here’s a fucking bummer of a movie in which Joaquin Phoenix plays a father obsessed with his son's unsolved death by a hit and run driver. His performance is fine, but the film itself is tough to watch not just because it’s so goddamn bleak but because the writing is constantly stumbling over itself. Phoenix does the best he can with what he has, but in the end, it’s not enough. — MM

With Joaquin Phoenix going all-prestige everything the past few years, it’s hard to imagine him in a film like Ladder 49. Phoenix plays the young, new hotshot in a group of rough-and-rowdy ensemble of firemen, including John Travolta (believable!). Ladder 49 probably delighted a bunch of moviegoers, being the kind of all-American flick where you watch some bros drink whiskey, fight fires, and save a few people. That said, Ladder 49 isn’t going in Phoenix’s future awards-show career retrospective montage. Belt it out with me, else I lose you forever: "I’m not leavin’ till you leave!" —BL

U-Turn isn’t even close to Oliver Stone’s best work. In fact, it’s overall a pretty unpleasant film. But, you have to give credit, once again, to Phoenix for really going all in with his character choices. From his weird vocal inflection to shaving his character’s initials into the back of his head, there are hints of the performer that Phoenix will someday become even a few years before his defining early 2000s roles. Plus, his look has Johnny Cash written all over it (hell even his most defining scene in this movie has "Ring of Fire" playing in the background). — MM

The most memorable thing about 1998’s Clay Pigeons is Vince Vaughn’s turn as a serial killer. In this wacky thriller, Phoenix stars as Clay Bidwell, a small-town nobody mistaken for a serial killer through a comedy of errors. Jeaneane Garofalo appears as Agent Dale, an FBI agent intent on booking Clay for a string of murders. Wrongly imprisoned, Clay busts out of jail to go in search of Lester Long, the real serial killer played by Vaughn. Director David Dobkin has since gone onto greater things, like producing 2015’s The Man From UNCLE, but Clay Pigeons lives in infamy as a bonkers, slightly incoherent cult classic. —AW

In Ridley Scott's Napoleon, Joaquin Phoenix is terrifying in one scene and a shell of a man in the next. It makes sense: Napoleon Bonaparte one of our most popular conquerors in history, but he's also a man known for being on the short end of a few height jokes. Hell, in Napoleon, Scott adds that maybe the French emperor even oinked when he got horny. Phoenix makes a few choices with this mixed bag of historical (and fictional) factoids, resulting in a pretty uneven performance. It's impossible to tell when you should be in awe of the man or when you should laugh at him. Inevitably, you're left doing a little bit of both.—Josh Rosenberg

The Village is terrible, which is also why The Village is so good. M. Night Shyamalan's twisty psychological period thriller wouldn’t exist without Joaquin Phoenix’s character Lucius Hunt, partly because the film follows a colonial woman named Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) who has to venture through the woods to a nearby town, hoping to get medicine for an ailing Lucius. Why? Because he’s been stabbed by an unstable colonial man in town. Very casual. Phoenix plays a bed-ridden, whimsy 19th century lover like a pro, but the big twist at the end takes his performance from charming to fully creepy. Yeah, the film is coming up on 20 years old, but if you haven’t seen it, we’re not ruining the twist ending. —JK

In Return to Paradise, Joaquin Phoenix plays Lewis, an American man imprisoned in Malaysia on drug charges—he and his friends tossed out some hash at the end of a vacation, and he ended up arrested alone since his friends flew back to New York first. Miraculously, Lewis’s friends do not find out about this until his sister, Beth, who is pretending for some reason to not be his sister, convinces them to travel back to Malaysia in order to share responsibility for the crime and prevent Lewis from getting the death penalty. She also has an affair with Vince Vaughn, who plays one of the friends, in order to successfully manipulate him into returning to Malaysia. In the end, the judge is angered by American media coverage of the situation, and (spoiler alert) Joaquin Phoenix ends up executed anyway. Vince Vaughn lands in Malaysian jail, too. Dramatic, dark, and culturally myopic. —Lauren Kranc

In this send-up of military culture, Joaquin Phoenix stars as Specialist Ray Elwood, a soldier based near the soon-to-fall Berlin Wall. Elwood is a rogue who’s up to no good, selling black market weapons and cooking heroin in the commissary kitchen. When a take-no-prisoners sergeant arrives to clean up the seedy base, Elwood prepares for a face-off to defend his way of life. The movie isn’t as smart as it thinks it is, but Phoenix turns in a characteristically charismatic performance. —AW

Back in 2000, Phoenix landed one of his first meaty roles in the Marquis de Sade biopic Quills. He starred as real-life figure Abbé du Coulmier, a Catholic priest who also served in French legislature during the French Revolution. Although he takes a backseat to Geoffrey Rush’s Golden Globe-nominated, manic turn as de Sade, Phoenix turns in a solid performance (even if the accent is a little off) as Coulmier, a progressive who reformed how France treated those locked in its insane asylums. —BL

Joaquin is barely in this Ron Howard classic, and he’s not even him yet; he’s credited by his birth name “Leaf.” But in a sense, he is already very much the Joaquin we have come to know: a little haunted, a little spooky, the kind of kid who quietly worries the hell out of his mother. Garry is the adolescent son of a single mom played by Dianne Wiest, a boy we’d keep a special eye on in this day and age. He’s got a secret, and it’s only his sister’s dim-witted boyfriend—played by the pre-action-hero version of Keanu Reeves—who can solve the mystery: the culprit is puberty. Phoenix captures the alienation and terror of a changing body, and also the relief as his character—if I follow the ending correctly—becomes a healthier person and better family member through masturbation and kicky berets. In short, the perfect Phoenix role. – Dave Holmes

Bookended between two signature batshit performances from Phoenix in The Joker and Beau Is Afraid, 2021's C'mon C'mon might stand as the lost gem of the actor's career. Telling the story of an uncle and nephew improbably growing together, C'mon C'mon is a reminder that Phoenix can deliver an achingly warm performance. Do yourself a favor and add this one to your queue. — BL

Reteaming Phoenix and Wahlberg, James Gray’s 2007 crime drama We Own the Night features the latter as a dogged cop – alongside Robert Duvall, as his dad – and Phoenix as the wayward but inherently good brother intent on living the carefree life while working as a Brighton Beach nightclub owner. Familial strains and obligations to self, loved ones (here, Eva Mendes’ sultry girlfriend Amada) and doing what’s right turn everything on their head, especially once Phoenix’s entrepreneur winds up unwittingly mired in a battle between the NYPD and a Russian mobster. A rain-soaked car chase is the film’s centerpiece, but it’s Phoenix’s conflicted performance that keeps this tangled tale from spiraling out of control. Torn between personal desires and a sense of duty to the institutions he’s fled, Phoenix’s Bobby is not only caught between two opposing forces, but at war with himself – a notion Phoenix brings to life with invigorating intensity. — NS