Joseph Gordon-Levitt's new movie 7500 is now available on Amazon, and the hijacking thriller finds the actor playing a pilot facing an impossible situation when terrorists threaten to kill passengers if he doesn't open the door to the cockpit, where all the action takes place. Gordon-Levitt delivers a typically strong performance, but we'll have to wait and see whether it stands the test of time.
Yes, that old thing is why you won't see 7500 on the list of the best Joseph Gordon-Levitt movies below. It was a close call, but it's simply too soon to rank 7500 above some of the titles on this list. There was considerable debate for the last three slots, and the final cut was Looper, which finished at #10 on my list of the best Bruce Willis movies. Gordon-Levitt is good in Looper, but ultimately, I found his facial prosthetics a bit too distracting. He reportedly spent three hours in the makeup chair each day, but as impressive as that work was, it wasn't enough to take my mind off his "fake face."
We watched Gordon-Levitt grow up in front of our very eyes on shows like 3rd Rock from the Sun and Roseanne, as well as the movie Angels in the Outfield. By age 11, he'd worked with Robert Redford, playing a younger version of Craig Sheffer's character in A River Runs Through It. Other early roles saw him play Demi Moore's son in the 1996 thriller The Juror, and one of Michael Myers' early victims in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later.
In 2001, Gordon-Levitt bid farewell to 3rd Rock from the Sun and began embracing edgy roles in indies like Manic and Havoc, while the one-two punch of Mysterious Skin and Brick cemented him as a rising star. Steady work followed that paired him with talented filmmakers such as Scott Frank (The Lookout), Kimberly Peirce (Stop-Loss) and Spike Lee (Miracle at St. Anna), though none of those movies made much of a dent at the box office.
Gordon-Levitt took the next leap in his career with 2009's 500 Days of Summer, which preceded a pair of Christopher Nolan films between Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. After working with Nolan twice and Steven Spielberg on Lincoln, Gordon-Levitt felt prepared to direct, and he knocked it out of the park with his debut film Don Jon, a surprisingly mature comedy that tackled porn addiction head-on.
Since working with legendary directors Robert Zemeckis and Oliver Stone on The Walk and Snowden, both of which saw him playing real-life figures, Gordon-Levitt has retreated from the spotlight. He has been focused on his family as well as his creative portal HitRECord, but last year brought a bit of a resurgence with Amazon's 7500, the Netflix movie Project Power, coming in August, and a key role in Aaron Sorkin's awards hopeful The Trial of the Chicago 7, along with the upcoming Apple series called Mr. Corman.
Without further ado, take a look at our list of the top 10 Gordon-Levitt movies below, and make sure to leave a comment with your own rankings. Once you've done that, be sure and click here for our review of 7500.
10. Inception
OK, so this one barely, and I mean barely, edged out Looper, but at the end of the day, it would've been tough to ignore Gordon-Levitt's two collaborations with Christopher Nolan altogether. Inception boasts a strong ensemble, and though Gordon-Levitt makes a fine number two alongside main attraction Leonardo DiCaprio, I can't tell you much about Arthur besides the fact that he's an extractor. See, DiCaprio's Dom Cobb uses experimental military technology to perform corporate espionage by infiltrating their targets' subconscious, and it's Arthur's job to research and manage the missions.
Dressed to the nines, Gordon-Levitt stars in the film's signature zero-gravity fight scene set in a hotel hallway, and the actor made it a point to do most of his own stunts. Between DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Gordon-Levitt, there's a whole lot of "cool" going on in this movie, but the reason Inception isn't higher on this list is that the true star is its mind-blowing visuals -- something that very few movie stars can compete with.
9. 10 Things I Hate About You
One of Gordon-Levitt's earliest hits, he yields the spotlight to Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You, but he's no less adorable as new kid on the block Cameron James, who falls hard for Larisa Oleynik's comely Bianca. The catch? In order for Cameron to date Bianca, he has to find someone to date her antisocial older sister Kat (Stiles). Enter Patrick Verona (Ledger), a well-coiffed Australian who can carry a tune and break fingers as easily as he can break hearts. He's just too good to be true, right?
It feels like everyone is up to something in this movie, but Cameron's aim is true. He's just a hopeless romantic after Bianca's heart. The two of them may be the B-story of the movie, but Gordon-Levitt projects an earnest likability that hints at things to come, and keeps us rooting for him to get the girl. At the end of the day, I've got zero things to hate about this promising performance.
8. Snowden
This Edward Snowden biopic from director Oliver Stone may not have won any awards, but Gordon-Levitt is quite good as the NSA whistleblower who sought asylum in Russia. The film follows Snowden from his days in the Army to his time at the CIA, and later the NSA, where he learned that the feds had millions of Americans under electronic surveillance and were planting malware in the computers of foreign governments.
Gordon-Levitt shows off his range here, as he's being asked to play several different things at once. How do you convey a guilty conscience to an audience? Like a Rubik's Cube, it's tricky to play a soldier, a genius, and a normal guy with relationship drama, but Gordon-Levitt lowers his voice and rises to the challenge. Stone has always worked wonders with actors, and he does it again here, as Gordon-Levitt's mature performance will likely surprise a lot of people.
7. The Walk
Was there a need for The Walk? No. The Philippe Petit documentary Man on Wire is one of the most perfect movies ever made. But you have to appreciate the craft that went into this feature starring Gordon-Levitt as the fearless wire walker who sat between the two towers of the World Trade Center way back in 1974. The actor initially struck me as an unlikely choice for Petit, but Gordon-Levitt's performance is crafted with love, and you can see his dedication to the role up on the screen.
Yes, Gordon-Levitt is saddled with a questionable French accent here, but when it's time for this movie to deliver the goods, the actor is laser-focused. Not only would Petit himself demand nothing less, but so would director Robert Zemeckis, who really gets the most out of the film's 3D IMAX format, which had my palms sweating the entire time. Still, this movie only works if we care what happens to the man up on that wire, which is why Gordon-Levitt deserves major credit for keeping me invested in a story I'd already seen. It may have been a no-win proposition, especially for a movie set atop the World Trade Center after 9/11, but at least Gordon-Levitt made it his own and left it all up on there -- on both the screen and the wire.
6. Hesher
Hesher is the forgotten Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie, and I love it. He plays a long-haired, shirtless, tatted-up metalhead who takes a young boy under his wing while alternately charming and repulsing a local grocery store clerk played by Natalie Portman. This is the first and only feature film from veteran music video director Spencer Susser, and I don't really understand why, as there's a real voice behind it.
Gordon-Levitt's Hesher is a true enigma. He's harmless yet dangerous, and he's mysterious even though you'd think you knew everything about him just by looking at him. This is an odd character for Gordon-Levitt, to be sure, but it's fun watching him let his freak flag fly, starting fires and fights as he helps a family in crisis. Hesher is a whole mood, but if you're in that mood, it's a damn good time, and evidence that Gordon-Levitt doesn't just play the straight man all the time.
5. Mysterious Skin
Gregg Araki has spent the last five years working in television, but I remember when he was a hot-shit indie director thanks to the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, which included The Doom Generation. It wasn't until Mysterious Skin, however, that Araki proved he was more than just a purveyor of shocking twenty-something thrills. Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet play two young teens who were molested as children by their Little League coach, and how it affects their lives in different ways as they enter adulthood.
Gordon-Levitt's character, Neil, becomes a reckless male prostitute, and it's the actor's first performance that made me think he's destined for an Oscar nomination one day. I think this is Gordon-Levitt's My Own Private Idaho, such is its raw power. Mysterious Skin is a remarkable coming-of-age tale of sexual abuse survivors and the long-term effects of trauma, and powered by Gordon-Levitt, it may very well be one of the most underrated films of the century.
4. Brick
I may not worship Brick like most of my peers but there's no denying that Brick announced Gordon-Levitt as a force to be reckoned with -- no longer a boy, but a full-fledged man, able to take his beatings and get back up again. Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan, a hardboiled teenage detective investigating the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend. Gordon-Levitt simmers with both intensity and intelligence, and he does a good job selling the Dashiell Hammett-esque dialogue to young audiences.
Director Rian Johnson creates an intriguing world in Brick, and he hit the jackpot in landing Gordon-Levitt to serve as our guide who takes us through the various cliques and motives and theories. Bloodied and bruised, Brendan stops at nothing to get to the truth, and the truth is that respect must be paid to this atypical teen movie, which eschews genre cliches like the prom and the big game to explore the dark underbelly of high school in all its horror.
3. Don Jon
I caught Don Jon at its 2013 Sundance Film Festival premiere when it was known as Don Jon's Addiction, though I suppose the word "addiction" suggested a much darker film than this ultimately is. The film marked Gordon-Levitt's first as a director, and it allowed him to showcase a different side of himself. He's not playing the sensitive guy from (500) Days of Summer or 10 Things I Hate About You here. That's not to pass judgment on Jon's character, for he is, after all, devoted to his family and his church. But yeah, Jon is a New Jersey bartender bro who, despite having a very active sex life and a bombshell of a girlfriend in Scarlett Johansson, prefers to "lose himself" in the simple pleasures of pornography.
When Jon meets Esther (Julianne Moore), an older woman in his college class, she teaches him that only way to truly "lose himself" is to share himself with another person and allow himself to be vulnerable. Esther has her own baggage, which is to say, she's a human being who has lived, loved and lost, and Jon could stand to learn a few things from her. Not only does Gordon-Levitt show real skill behind the camera, but he tackles this role head-on and doesn't shy away from its complexities. The actor puts himself out there in a major way here, and I think that kind of risk should be rewarded.
2. 50/50
I gave serious consideration to giving this "cancer comedy" the top spot, as director Jonathan Levine and writer Will Reiser (whose own experience with cancer inspired the film) do an excellent job of balancing humor and heart. Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, a 27-year-old public radio journalist who is diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his spine that leaves his chances of survival at an event 50 percent. His buddy Kyle (Seth Rogen) is there for moral support, but Adam's illness is something his cold girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) didn't sign up for.
Lucky for him, he winds up working with a pretty therapist (Anna Kendrick) who helps him navigate his feelings during this trying time. At first, Adam is reluctant to open up, but eventually the two of them develop a rapport, and she helps him address his strained relationship with his mother. Gordon-Levitt brings dignity to the role of a young cancer patient and shows off a wonderful sense of humor that always treads on the right side of respectful. Cancer is no laughing matter, but sometimes it's important to remember to laugh, for that's what life is all about. If Gordon-Levitt helped someone feel more hopeful about their own diagnosis, then this movie was well worth shaving his head for.
1. 500 Days of Summer
There could only be one #1 movie, and really, how could it not be 500 Days of Summer? This is Gordon-Levitt's shining moment, the one where all the elements came together to create movie magic. He plays Tom Hansen, a greeting card writer snd hopeless romantic who meets Zooey Deschanel's Summer Finn at work one day. If the title didn't clue you in, there's an expiration date on this relationship, but as they say, it's better to have loved and lost to have never loved at all. And besides, when one door (Summer) closes, another one (Autumn) opens.
Gordon-Levitt allows us to feel Tom's pain as we wallow in his heartache with him, particularly during a split-screen scene that shows Tom's expectations and his actual reality. This romance may not have a so-called "happy ending," but happiness is in the eye of the beholder, and can mean different things to different people. Even though we know they're doomed, there's no denying the way Gordon-Levitt looks at Deschanel in this film. The two of them have excellent chemistry. Perhaps a sequel will one day explore where Tom and Summer ended up, and if they could ever find a way to work. At least they'll always have "Sweet Disposition," and so will we.