Ranking Jennifer Connelly's Movies

I had some success with my Ranking Vin Diesel's Movies article so I thought I would do another. Can you guess who I chose? If you said anyone other than Jennifer Connelly then you must be new to my writings, hello, nice to meet you. If you did say Jennifer Connelly then to you I must say, thank you captain obvious.

Anyway, I had a very difficult time ranking Jennifer Connelly's movies. For one, they all rock! Number two I had a hard time deciding if I should rank her best performances first or just the movie I liked first. In the end I decided to go with the movie I like the most at number one, but the rest of the top movies are Jennifer Connelly's best performances.

14. Higher Learning
You know the old saying "anything is possible"? Well this movie proves that statement is true. Anything is possible, including me actually hating a Jennifer Connelly movie. The director of Higher Learning, John Singleton, had previously made the fantastic Boyz in the Hood. This movie was supposed to be an enlightening film about racial tension, rape and responsibility but every character in the movie is so dumb and poorly written that the leader of the Nazis looks like the smartest guy of the bunch.

13. Waking the Dead
I have kind of a love/hate relationship with this Jennifer Connelly movie. The performances in this movie by Jennifer Connelly and Billy Crudup are great but I just can't stand the characters. I especially can't stand that they are a couple that is constantly bickering. It's obvious from the very first moment they meet that the two characters will never work then we have to watch for an hour and a half as they try and force it to work, but it never does.

12. Dark Water
I know all the horror movie aficionados probably hate this movie because most modern horror movies don't stack up to the classics but I thought this movie was good. What I like most about it is that Jennifer Connelly doesn't play the scared, stupid, teenager who runs around yelling her head off in the least amount of clothes possible. Instead Jennifer Connelly plays a mother who is more concerned with her son's safety than anything else. John C. Reilly is always a great supporting character also.

11. Hulk
Yeah, yeah, I know, the Hulk sucked, blah blah blah. I thought Hulk was fine. I liked the CGI, I don't understand what people's problem was. Yes, the movie was slow and Ang Lee's attempt to make it look like a comic book was not good but let's be honest, Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliot, Josh Lucas and Nick Nolte is a pretty darn good cast.

10. Mulholland Falls
Mulholland Falls definitely gets a few negative points for being the movie with the least screen time for Jennifer Connelly. The character Jennifer Connelly plays dies at the beginning and at first I was bummed, but the movie was good enough to keep my interest. It didn't hurt that this movie was loaded with familiar faces. It had Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith, Chazz Palminteri, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Jennifer Connelly, Treat Williams, Daniel Baldwin and John Malkovich. There were even small appearances by Kyle Chandler, Melinda Clarke, Aaron Neville, Rob Lowe and Michael Peterson.

9. Inventing the Abbots
Inventing the Abbots was another movie where Jennifer Connelly made an exit early on although her stay was much longer than in Mulholland Falls. Fortunately once Jennifer Connelly was gone Joaquin Phoenix and Billy Crudup took the ball and ran with it, not to mention good performances by Will Patton and Liv Tyler also.

8. The Rocketeer
The Rocketeer is one of those Jennifer Connelly movies that no matter how it might not stack up to her other performances it was just a fun movie. The Rocketeer was actually the first movie based on a comic book that I liked.

7. Career Opportunities
Career Opportunities was a movie that was a lot of fun and very campy, it has a very Ferris Bueller's Day Off vibe to it. One of the best and most accurate quotes I've ever heard about this movie is, "It's so asinine it's funny!"

6. A Beautiful Mind
Overall I think A Beautiful Mind is overrated. But Jennifer Connelly is amazing in this movie although it's partly because she gets to play an amazing person. I know this movie is about John Nash and how he overcame his problems but I think Alicia Nash is even more incredible for sticking with him.

5. Blood Diamond
Blood Diamond was not Jennifer Connelly's best performance. Not that it was bad, Jennifer Connelly is never bad. It's just that Jennifer Connelly pretty much played the part of just a regular reporter. It was actually a surprisingly very normal role for Jennifer Connelly who usually plays hard roles. The movie is fantastic though. I don't remember off the top of my head who won the best supporting actor at the Oscars but they must've been darn good to pry the trophy from Djimon Hounsou's performance in Blood Diamond.

4. Dark City
Dark City is a great movie just for its uniqueness. A city that never has sunlight, strange levitating creatures that only come out at midnight, telekinetic powers, a city that has no exit, Jennifer Connelly being Jennifer Connelly and Kiefer Sutherland in the most un-Jack Bauer-like performance he has ever had all make this a great movie.

3. House of Sand and Fog
This is the first of my two, "Jennifer Connelly was robbed!" movies. Jennifer Connelly without a doubt deserved at least an Oscar nomination for her performance in House of Sand and Fog. Ben Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo were both nominated and Jennifer Connelly held her own with both of them. I have to say this is the second most depressing movie I've ever seen, extremely good movie though.

2. Requiem for a Dream
"Jennifer Connelly was robbed!" part 2. Not only should Jennifer Connelly have been nominated for the Oscar for best supporting actress but this one she should have won too. No movie I have ever seen has ever smacked me across the face like this movie did. I've never done drugs before and just by watching this movie I can tell you no way, no how will I ever use a single drug. This movie is the only movie even more depressing than House of Sand and Fog.

1. Labyrinth
As I said, ultimately I went with my favorite Jennifer Connelly movie over her best performances. In Labyrinth Jennifer Connelly is very young and inexperienced but this movie is just too fun. At the time it came out it was a scary movie but now it's very, very tame. Tame enough that I would suggest renting it for your kids if you have any. It's basically like a modern day version of Alice in Wonderland with all kinds of crazy characters and mazes and riddles. Oh and David Bowie dancing and singing with goblins!