Want to know the best Sam Mendes movies? How about the worst Sam Mendes movies? Curious about Sam Mendes box office grosses or which Sam Mendes movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Sam Mendes movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Sam Mendes (1965-) is an English two time Oscar® winning director. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003). In film, he made his directorial debut with the drama American Beauty (1999), which earned him the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Director. He has since directed the crime film Road to Perdition (2002), the drama Revolutionary Road (2008), and the James Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015) and the war film 1917 (2019). His IMDb page shows over 25 directing and producing credits since 1993. This page will rank Sam Mendes movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos, uncredited roles and movies that were not released in North American were not included in the rankings.
Sam Mendes Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Sam Mendes Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Sam Mendes movies by his co-stars
- Sort Sam Mendes movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
- Sort Sam Mendes movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
- Sort Sam Mendes movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Sam Mendes movie received.
- Sort Sam Mendes movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Check out Sam Mendes’ career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
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After his Golden Globe and BAFTA wins we thought he was shoo-in for the Oscar, it was not to be. 1917 lost to Parasite. But some critics labeled 1917 a gimmicky experiment, making the whole thing look like it was shot in one continuous take. Hitchcock did it first 70 years ago with Rope.
Looking at the chart the only Sam Mendes film I haven’t seen is Away We Go.
Top favorites are Skyfall and Spectre, but I also enjoyed American Beauty, Road to Perdition and 1917.
Good stuff Bruce. Vote Up!
Hey Steve…as I told you last night, I had this page completed with Mendes winning his second Oscar….but Parasite messed that up, with it’s two surprise Oscar wins. I have seen all 8 of his movies. So I am one ahead of your tally. Goodness….was Rope 70 years ago? I like all the ones you like with the exception of Spectre. Good stuff as always.
Timely to do a page on Sam Mendes, Bruce…though given the results of the Oscars last night, maybe it should have been Boon Joon Ho 🙂 I have not seen Parasite yet, so I may change my mind but I certainly think 1917 was deserving of taking the best picture or best director award. I was captivated by it from start to finish. Looking at the other films on this list ( only 8 in 20 years, he sure takes his time), I would say Skyfall is my next favorite. I thought that was the best Bond since at least The Spy Who Loved Me. Then would come American Beauty, very impactful at the time, though not one I cared to rewatch. Spectre is the only other one I have seen from Mandes and the least impressive. Road to Perdition is on my list to see. No doubt Mandes is a talented director who seems to take enormous care in his work and I’m sure he has more interesting films to come.
Hey PhilHoF 17….this page was loaded up and ready to be shared to all my social media accounts…..the bad news was…I had added in his 2nd Best Director Oscar to the page…..I quickly….had to delete some information….and get the page correct. I did that with 5 pages on Sunday night…this was the only one that I did not get right. So I was able to publish update pages on Renee, Joaquin, Brad, Laura and the appropriate Oscar pages…just seconds after their names were called as winners. It helped UMR have it’s 5ht best day ever.
Road to Perdition is the one I would rush to see. It has Newman’s last great role. Hanks is amazing. The cinematography is amazing…winning an Oscar…..the final scene with Hanks and Newman is very memorable. I enjoyed Skyfall….but not as much as everybody else. I agree with Mendes has some more good movies in him…maybe he will pick up the pace…lol. Good stuff as always….and good to hear from you so soon after your last Kirk Douglas comment.
I have seen two of the 8 movies in the tables above: Road to Perdition and American Beauty. I personally found the former boring and the latter somewhat pretentious. American Beauty perhaps benefited critically from being made in the period when all the Joel-type bandwagon-climbers were drooling over Kevin: in the days before they started to throw stones at him.
I have never given either film a second viewing; 2017 is not for me; and neither has Bond been since years long ago. In short regretfully Sam has done nothing that I would regard as interesting, but then as the tables show he has, relatively speaking, done very little anyway.
That has not stopped him generating a net worth of $30 million and IMDB credits him with 55 awards overall and 65 noms. For the small screen he has directed the 1993 TV movie Cabaret; and he has produced 12 television productions/films based to a fair extent on the works of Shakespeare.
He has at post-production stage the fantasy horror drama Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, where he is executive producer of one of the 8 episodes; he performed that function for all 27 episodes of the original series that ran from 2014-2016.
Hey Bob. Thanks for the thoughts on Sam Mendes, especially since you are not a huge fan of his movies. I liked Road to Perdition a lot more than you, but I agree with your feelings on American Beauty. I liked 1917…but it is a technical wonder versus great storytelling movie. As always thanks for the information on his non movie work. Good stuff as always.