The Five Best and Five Worst Sam Jackson Movies

#5

Best:  Deep Blue Sea
LL Cool J as a chef with a close parrot friend.  Saffron Burrows taking off her wetsuit to keep from being electrocuted, then suddenly eaten at the end of the movie with no mention.  And of course, Sam Jackson getting bitten in half right in the middle of his cliche inspirational speech to his crew.  And all to find a cure for Alzheimer's.  This movie is great at being unpredictable.

Worst:  Deep Blue Sea
There is some hilariously bad stuff in there, too, like when LL Cool J tries to hide in the oven, and the shark turns the heat up.  In reality, no shark would try to cook a cook, because everyone knows that sharks hate irony.

#4

Best:  Jackie Brown
Tarantino's worst movie still kicks ass, it just does it very slowly spread out over a very long time.  Jackson plays Ordell Robbie, a fast talking arms dealer.  Best line:  "AK-47. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes. "

Worst:  Twisted
This may be either the worst or just the most disappointing movie of all time.  Between it's director and it's cast (Ashley Judd, Jackson, David Strathairn, Andy Garcia), you might expect a decent thriller.  But everything positive is gone by the end of the opening credits.  This movie is so bad that when I rented it, I gave myself a rufie before I watched it.  The last thing I remember was this awesome line, "When you were assistant district attorney, you used to love nailing bad guys' asses to the wall like trophies."  It sounds like something I would have said back in my glory days, when I used to nail all my trophies to the wall like bad guys' asses.


#3

Best:  The Long Kiss Goodnight
Just a slick, fun, fast-paced action/mystery/comedy.  Great snappy dialogue from the writer of Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, much of which is laid down in classic Sam Jackson style.  Example:  After jumping out of a window with Jackson and shooting holes in the ice below to break their fall, Geena Davis forgets what's happened and asks Jackson.  His reply?  "I saved your ass.  It was great."

Worst:  Changing Lanes
Lazy, heavy handed stab at race relations paved the way for a later lazy, heavy handed Oscar-winning stab at race relations in "Crash".  This also happens to be one of Ben Affleck's best movies.


#2

Best:  A Time to Kill
"Yes, they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in hell!"  Enough said.

Worst:  Sphere
Sam Jackson plus Dustin Hoffman equals catastrophic waste of time?  Somehow, yes.  Hours of not-fun as Hoffman and Jackson try to figure out how to communicate with an alien that ends up actually being part of Sam Jackson.  Should have been spiced up with sharks, or Sharon Stone's brain exploding, or Liev Schrieber's face finally collapsing in on itself... anything at all that doesn't involve talking to a computer screen for eternity.

#1

Best:  Pulp Fiction
Obviously.  It might just be the best movie of all time, and it's Sam's signature role as a badass hitman with a change of heart.  Every scene he's in is a classic.  I'd dare you to not start reciting any one of them right now, but you're already doing it.  "I don't dig on swine."  No, Sam, you don't.  Not this time.

Worst:  The Man
Sam, I thought you just said you didn't dig on swine.  This is the movie equivalent of getting slapped to death by a eleven-year-old girl.  It takes forever, it's embarassing, it's a dull pain, and even though the concept might seem kind of funny at first, by the end everyone's crying.  I heard that this movie was greenlit when scientists discovered that Eugene Levy could co-carry a movie.  It was later learned that those scientists were actually Eugene Levy.