Cameron Crowe Movies Ranked
American filmmaker Cameron Crowe has made a career out of bringing off-beat stories to the big screen, often working against the conventions of promotable American studio cinema to offer films so bound to his quirky and effervescent stylistic signature that he has forged a unique and contemporary catalogue of films. Having only released 10 pictures across a near 30 year career, Crowe is perhaps best remembered for the period between his debut film Say Anything in 1989 and Vanilla Sky in 2001, an era in which he was the lead creative mind behind Singles, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. In this edition of Ranked, we have taken it upon ourselves to rank all of the filmmaker’s feature-length directorial outings from worst to best. As always, we encourage you to leave your thoughts in the comments below!
10. Aloha (2015)
Perhaps the only oversized misstep of Crowe’s career, Aloha was released in the midst of the surge in popularity for both Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone, and co-starred rising Hollywood talent Rachel McAdams, yet failed to deliver on the promise of its cast courtesy of a screenplay lacking the guts to step away from its own whimsy in order to earn the happiness of the characters or indeed its audiences. Some reviews labelled it unintelligible and others boring, but they all agreed that Aloha should be considered the worst release of Crowe’s career, and so do we.
9. Elizabethtown (2005)
Crowe’s final cut of Elizabethtown may have been better reviewed than the initial festival release version that was cut by over 18 minutes, but it remains one of the less beloved of the director’s ouevre nonetheless. It’s probably because of the poor performance from Orlando Bloom, at the time a major rising Hollywood star who was quickly being found out for his distinctive lack of depth as an actor, but a 4.7 average rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes remains somewhat of an injustice for a film that was filled with the same Croweisms that had solidified the screenwriter-director as a major player in the past. This film is hardly as bad as Aloha despite being so close to it in this list, but we imagine you’ll agree that it’s hardly as good as what’s to come.
