Every Philip Seymour Hoffman Movie, Ranked From Worst To Best

Hoffman's earliest work is both hard to find and very inessential. "Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole" (1991) is Hoffman's big screen debut and it later tried to capitalize on Hoffman's success by putting his name first on the poster. He's actually in very little of "Bogey," but what short screen time he does have makes far more of an impression than anything else in it, with its scant plot about criminals and professional golfers.

"Bogey" director Amos Poe would later produce one of Hoffman's most obscure movies, the 1993 comedy "Joey Breaker." Unlike "Bogey," even Hoffman's involvement hasn't been enough to make "Joey Breaker" widely available. It's not available on any streaming service, and it hasn't even been released on DVD. "Joey Breaker's" lack of availability is a sign of how little it has going for it, with its dated story of a talent agent learning to be slightly less racist and homophobic. Not even Hoffman makes much of an impression in it.

For the early part of his career, Hoffman was often the best part of movies that otherwise weren't worthy of his talents. The most glaring example of this is 1998s "Patch Adams," an awful movie that Hoffman singlehandedly makes good for one scene.

"Patch Adams" is mostly a showcase for some of the most unfunny and sappy material of Robin Williams' career, having him play a heavily fictionalized version of real-life doctor Patch Adams, who believed in making people laugh as much as healing them. Williams is on autopilot here, doing a worse version of his usual improv. Most characters in the movie find his antics hilarious, except for Hoffman as Patch Adams' unamused roommate. Hoffman's stone-faced reactions to Patch's jokes get bigger laughs than the jokes themselves. 

But once Hoffman has finally had enough, he gets a scene as good as anything in his filmography where he lays into Patch for trivializing his very serious efforts to become a doctor. Hoffman's case against Patch is so convincing that even the movie making the Hoffman character eventually appreciate Patch does nothing to make his words seem any less true.

A remake of the Sam Peckinpah movie of the same name, 1994s "The Getaway" replaces the original's Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw with the then-married Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. Neither Baldwin nor Basinger have the charisma to match the original actors, and neither can Roger Donaldson hope to match Peckinpah's bleak, violent style. The end result isn't a disaster but a generic action movie, one that can't hope to compete with the movie that came before. But it at least offers some energy for the brief period that Hoffman is on screen before his character is brutally killed. 

Hoffman played a lot of low-level criminals throughout his career, usually with some level of pathos, but his henchman in "The Getaway" is a rare instance of the actor just playing sleazy with no additional humanity. But even playing irredeemable in a bit part, Hoffman is still magnetic to watch, one of the few things in "Getaway" that could hold someone's attention.

"The Last Party" was a 1993 documentary where Robert Downey Jr. recounted the events of the 1992 Presidential election. For the follow-up about the 2000 election, known as both "Last Party 2000" and "The Party's Over," Downey was replaced by Hoffman. The second "Party" is a surface-level documentary with not much insight on the political process or the two-party system, only worth watching for serious Hoffman completists.

Hoffman starts "Party" by saying that he made it because he was ashamed of his own political ignorance and wanted to learn more. He spends the rest of the documentary with that level of earnest curiosity, interviewing celebrities and politicians alike with simple questions and not much back-and-forth. It's charming to see Hoffman be so polite to his interviewees, but it doesn't make for a great documentary, especially when he never really questions the information he's given. The experience was valuable for Hoffman but it's not valuable to anyone watching it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's first role in a studio film was in Martin Brest's "Scent of a Woman," where he played a rich college student hoping to buy his way out of punishment. The part is notable because it was the first time Hoffman's future collaborator Paul Thomas Anderson saw him in a movie, and Anderson would later recall that he "knew what love at first sight was" after seeing Hoffman for the first time.

Other than the appeal of seeing Hoffman play a contemptible snob, there's not much to enjoy in "Scent of a Woman." It's best remembered as the movie that finally won Al Pacino an Oscar but it's far from his best performance, living down to the complaints about his hammy delivery that have dogged him since the '80s. Watching Pacino go over-the-top playing a righteously angry blind man might have been enough to make "Scent" at least enjoyable, but the movie goes on for much too long, devoting two and a half hours to a story that cannot sustain that length.

In the aftermath of "Batman & Robin," Joel Schumacher retreated from big-budget spectacle and made some smaller, more character-focused movies. One of those movies was 1999s "Flawless," where Hoffman plays a trans woman who develops a friendship with Robert De Niro's bigoted cop. It's a premise that needs a sensitive touch to not come off as offensive or condescending, and unfortunately Schumacher does not bring the necessary sensitivity. 

"Flawless" is a collection of stereotypes and odd-couple clichés, tied together by a clumsy plot about runaway criminals targeting De Niro and building to the obvious conclusion of De Niro learning that queer people aren't so bad after all. "Flawless" would be even worse without the strong efforts of De Niro and especially Hoffman, who takes a potentially disastrous part and gives it humanity and specificity beyond what's on the page. He can't quite make "Flawless" any less misguided, but he does add some moments of sweetness to what's otherwise just a formulaic comedy.

Another middling movie briefly given life by Hoffman is the 1994 romantic drama "When a Man Loves a Woman." It's a well-intentioned movie, taking a serious look at alcoholism through both an alcoholic played by Meg Ryan and her husband played by Andy Garcia, and Ryan especially is very good in the part. But the movie is hampered by a slow pace and sentimentality that's at odds with its more complicated view of addiction and enabling. 

"When a Man Loves a Woman" wants to be a hard look at a marriage brought to the brink by alcoholism, but it keeps falling back on the tone, glowing look, and clichés of an ordinary studio romance. Even Philip Seymour Hoffman's character is another example of the film's use of tropes: a recovering alcoholic who exists only to romance Ryan and make Garcia jealous. But despite the character's tired role in the plot, Hoffman still gives him surprising personality, with confidence and empathy to Ryan's struggles rather than just being an obstacle.

"Charlie Wilson's War" boasts an impressive cast and crew, with Hoffman, Tom Hanks, and Julia Roberts starring, Aaron Sorkin writing, and Oscar-winner Mike Nichols directing. But all that talent couldn't make the true story of Charlie Wilson, a Congressman who financed the anti-Soviet efforts in 1980s Afghanistan, play better than mildly interesting on-screen. "Charlie Wilson" is amusing and breezy but should be much more, especially considering the rich political context surrounding the story. Nichols never made another movie between "Wilson" and his death in 2014 — and "Wilson" is a lightweight finish to a great career.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is a highlight of the movie, playing the ornery CIA operative who teams up with Charlie Wilson on his mission. Hoffman received the movie's only Oscar nomination, and he gets the most memorable scene in it, where he chews out an unresponsive CIA director played by John Slattery and then destroys his office. In this scene, Hoffman stands out from the rest of the movie for his passionate anger, a rare bit of raw emotion in a film that's relaxed to a fault.

The promise of Philip Seymour Hoffman working opposite Christopher Walken suggests a lot of big acting, but the two men's only collaboration — the 2012 drama "A Late Quartet" — offers much subtler performances than that. Walken especially tones down his usual tics and mannerisms to play a renowned cellist diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, reacting to his illness by retreating inside himself and away from his friends and colleagues. Hoffman follows Walken's lead by underplaying as the second violinist in Walken's string quartet, politely waiting for his turn to get the first violinist chair and learning that he may never get the opportunity.

"A Late Quartet" can occasionally be melodramatic, particularly a plot where the quartet's first violinist has an affair with Hoffman's daughter, but its performances are strong enough and its classical-music world setting is interesting enough that its flaws are easy to forgive. It's especially worthwhile to see Hoffman at his most restrained, conveying deep hurt while seeming to do very little on the surface.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is only in one scene of the 1992 dark comedy "My New Gun," but the impression he makes off that scene lasts far beyond his literal screen time. He plays a fast-food restaurant employee who suddenly, while on the job, launches into a monologue about thunderstorms and a period in high school when he used to vomit blood. Hoffman's character is never seen again, and only mentioned when it's said later that he was shot off-screen, but in very little time, he creates a bizarre, memorable character.

While much of Hoffman's early work sees him trying his best within movies that don't work otherwise, "My New Gun" stands apart from those movies by being pretty good on its own merits. It's a quirky comedy starring Diane Lane as a housewife gifted a gun by her husband, a gun that's then stolen by their neighbor Skippy (James Le Gros). Much like Hoffman's performance, it's funny in unexpected ways, getting laughs from careful camera positions and dry line readings rather than outright jokes. It's not for everybody, but fans of deadpan comedy should find a lot to enjoy.

At the time of his death, Hoffman was working on the final two installments of the "Hunger Games" franchise, where he played Plutarch Heavensbee, a leader of the rebellion against the franchise's evil President Snow. He finished "Mockingjay Part 1" but died before completing the second part, which was released almost two years after his death.

Both parts of "Mockingjay" are ultimately hampered by the decision to split one book into two movies, leaving "Part 1" as a two-hour prelude to the action and "Part 2" as all the action. This leaves both movies with different strengths and weaknesses, but "Part 1" may be slightly better just for how it gives Hoffman more to do. In the middle of an otherwise grim franchise, he even gets to be funny, playing comic frustration at Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss, over her inability to convincingly play the hero of the revolution for propaganda spots. 

Hoffman gets much less screen time in "Part 2," in part due to him not finishing his scenes but also because the movie sidelines many of its supporting characters in favor of more action. That means it's often more exciting than its predecessor while also lacking the pleasures of seeing the franchise's best actors interact with each other.

With the knowledge of what a dramatic powerhouse Philip Seymour Hoffman became after "Twister" in 1996, it now seems bizarre that he was a comic-relief side character in a special effects-driven blockbuster. Even compared to Hoffman's other comedy performances, there isn't much to his performance in "Twister," where he plays a goofy slob excited by tornados. He's amusing but not much more, the rare instance where any character actor could replace him and do the same thing equally well.

"Twister" itself is not a top-tier blockbuster of its era. It was sold at the time on the realism of its tornado effects, but its CGI has aged worse than fellow digital effects landmarks "Jurassic Park" and "Terminator 2." Those movies also offered much stronger characters than "Twister," with leads Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt making significantly less of an impression than the tornados they're running from. But despite its flaws, "Twister" is still a good time, with director Jan De Bont creating fun setpieces and bringing some of the relentless energy he mastered when making "Speed" two years before. 

In 2010, Hoffman made his directorial debut with "Jack Goes Boating," adapted from the play of the same name which Hoffman starred in an off-Broadway production of. Hoffman was planning on directing another film at the time of his death and on the merits of "Jack Goes Boating," he could have very likely developed a strong side career as a director.

Hoffman doesn't offer any technical flash or moments of bravura acting in "Boating," he instead tells a simple story in a simple way and lets the actors, including himself in the lead role, do much of the heavy lifting. The result is a sturdy romantic drama between Hoffman and Amy Ryan, playing two ordinary, charming people falling in love while their friends' (John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega) own relationship falls apart. There's not much more to "Jack Goes Boating," but there doesn't need to be when the performances are this strong and the writing is this naturalistic.

Hoffman's first role after his Oscar win was the villain part in "Mission: Impossible III," which allowed him to play a more frightening role than he ever had on-screen. The "Mission: Impossible" movies are generally associated with Tom Cruise more than any individual villain, but "III" is an exception, where it becomes a real possibility that Cruise might not be able to defeat someone as evil as Hoffman. The movie's first scene is its best scene, where Cruise seems uncharacteristically fragile next to Hoffman screaming orders at him.

Hoffman is much more prominent in the first half of "III" than he is in the second half, and the movie starts to falter once he's not in it as much. The conspiracy surrounding Hoffman's villain isn't nearly as interesting as Hoffman himself, and the movie's cutesy treatment of its central subject, an unknown weapon called the "Rabbit's Foot," is grating. Plus it has some of the weakest spectacle of the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, with all three subsequent movies having much better setpieces. But it's still generally fun, and the franchise has never been as terrifying as Philip Seymour Hoffman's big scenes in this.

John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt" is based on Shanley's play of the same name and it makes no effort to disguise its stage origins, it is simply 100 minutes of people talking to each other. Luckily, the people talking were some of the best actors working in 2008, and "Doubt" succeeds on the back of their performances, with all four of its leads getting Oscar nominations. Philip Seymour Hoffman fares especially well, playing the charismatic priest who Meryl Streep's stern, judgmental nun believes could be abusing an altar boy. 

Hoffman plays the priest with a genial nature that could just as easily be genuine as it could be a front for something much darker. A fiery sermon he gives on the subject of "gossip" hints at an anger he otherwise doesn't allow himself to show. But even Streep, Hoffman, and Amy Adams end up secondary to Viola Davis's heartbreaking performance as the mother of the altar boy — she's only in one scene but the strength of her anguish in that scene completely changes the rest of the movie.

It took until 2002 for a director to give Philip Seymour Hoffman the lead role in a movie. That movie was "Love Liza," starring Hoffman as a widower struggling to move on with his life after his wife's suicide. "Love Liza" is a frequently depressing movie, especially as Hoffman's character takes to inhaling gas fumes to deal with his grief, but the strength of Hoffman's performance, and his fearlessness in playing grim emotional states, keeps this from being a slog.

"Love Liza" was marketed as a "comic tragedy," and while that may overstate the amount of humor in it, it does have a slight sense of humor to offset how depressing the story is. Hoffman takes to flying model airplanes as an escape from grief and his overenthusiasm about this hobby is both funny and sweet. But even amusing moments can quickly curdle into something gut-wrenching, like a scene where Hoffman alienates his only friend by refusing to stop talking. It can be a tough sit but its merits are strong enough to be worth the trouble.

1996s "Hard Eight" was the directorial debut of Paul Thomas Anderson and the beginning of Anderson's five-film collaboration with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman would get bigger roles in later Anderson films but his one scene in "Hard Eight" is still one of the actor's high water marks.

Hoffman enters "Hard Eight" at the halfway point, playing a loudmouth gambler antagonizing Philip Baker Hall's older and much more reserved gambler. Up to this point, "Hard Eight" had mostly been a quiet character drama, with Hall intervening in the lives of two lost souls stuck in Reno. But Hoffman's trash talk and furious energy breaks the quiet of what came before and even catches the cool and collected Hall off-guard. His scene is a transition point to the much darker second half of "Hard Eight," where the previously unflappable Hall starts to crumble in reaction to a botched kidnapping — but even on its own it's a magnificent scene, showing that Anderson knew how to play to Hoffman's strengths even the very first time they met.

Even with as beloved as Hoffman still is, one of his very best performances still remains largely unseen. That performance is in 2003s "Owning Mahowny," based on the true story of a Canadian bank employee who embezzled millions from his company to sustain his gambling addiction. It's a fascinating movie with a brilliant performance at its center, one of Hoffman's smallest and most enthralling.

Rather than lean into the character's criminal behavior, Hoffman plays him as reserved and bland from beginning to end, never seeming excited by his victories or bothered by his losses. The most he does when reacting to a win is push his glasses up his nose. Mahowny is an enigma whose underlying motivations are never figured out, and that makes him more interesting than if the movie, or Hoffman, tried to explain what made him this way. His blankness is all the explanation needed to show how Mahowny impressed and baffled casino bosses and employees — they believed he had a masterful poker face when he was just naturally that resistant to emotion.

Hoffman rarely got to play a romantic lead on film, which makes his sweet performance in David Mamet's wonderful comedy "State and Main" all the more special. He plays the screenwriter of the central movie-within-a-movie, which takes over a small New England town and annoys many of the residents, including a bookseller played by Rebecca Pidgeon who Hoffman falls for.

Hoffman and Pidgeon are just one part of an ensemble full of talented actors, including frequent Mamet collaborators William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Ricky Jay, and Clark Gregg. It's no surprise that those actors do well with Mamet's famously dense, witty dialogue, but despite being a newcomer to the Mamet style, Philip Seymour Hoffman shines just as well as any of his co-stars. Mamet's dialogue is sometimes criticized for sounding unnatural but Hoffman delivers it beautifully, selling the punchlines but never at the expense of playing a real, awkward human being. Plus, he and Pidgeon have real chemistry together, creating an offbeat but lovable couple that gives "State and Main" an emotional core as strong as its laughs.

Writer/director Tamara Jenkins has only made three films since 1998, but all three of them are terrific. The second of those three was 2007s "The Savages," where Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney star as siblings trying to deal with the mixed emotions of their estranged father being close to death. Jenkins' strength is finding comedy in situations that would only seem to be depressing, and while "The Savages" is often sad, it finds plenty of room for the bitter humor in dealing with family members you don't like spending time with.

Jenkins is also great with actors, with Linney and Hoffman doing some of their very best work under her lens. They develop a believable brother-sister relationship, often annoying and frustrating each other but sharing a close bond that can't be broken. That bond came because of their mutual dislike of their father, and Linney and Hoffman are particularly good at selling the frustration and second-guessing of trying to forgive someone they don't want to forgive. Even by the end, their characters don't fully understand what their father meant to them, but at least they've grown closer trying to figure it out together.

Paul Thomas Anderson's breakthrough second feature, "Boogie Nights" announced the arrival of a major new director in American film. Anderson hasn't made a film quite like "Boogie Nights" since, its youthful exuberance and surprisingly sunny perspective on the pornography business setting it apart from the quieter, sadder movies he's made since 2002. Even as he's improved as a filmmaker, the excitable energy of "Boogie" is still a joy to watch, at least until it takes a turn for the grim.

In addition to launching Anderson's career, "Boogie Nights" also created one of Philip Seymour Hoffman's most memorable characters and performances. As insecure soundman Scotty J., Hoffman plays humiliation and sadness so vividly that it hurts to watch him, particularly as he breaks down and insults himself after trying to act on his crush on Mark Wahlberg's Dirk Diggler. The first half of "Boogie Nights" is fun and energetic until it gets to that scene, which signals the movie's turn into much darker territory in its second half.

Hoffman gets the defining scene of Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous," a monologue about being uncool that became the thesis statement for Crowe's entire career. That scene has become so iconic it's overshadowed the rest of Hoffman's performance, where he hilariously channels the contrarian spirit of famed music writer and Crowe's real-life mentor Lester Bangs. It's a loving portrayal of Bangs, and it comes in the middle of a very loving movie.

Crowe doesn't overlook the seedier aspects of being a rock star in the 70s, particularly showing the callous treatment of "groupies" by the musicians they idolized. But "Almost Famous" is driven by warm nostalgia rather than cynicism, and Crowe creates a world around these musicians that it's a pleasure to live in for the movie's length. Hoffman's irascible but good-natured performance fits right into that world, with Bangs driven by his earnest belief in music being able to change people's lives even as he rightly calls out the lies propagated by rock stars.

"Magnolia" is a movie defined by its excess, juggling multiple characters over three hours and concluding with a biblical storm. But "Magnolia" wouldn't work at all without Hoffman's performance, which is radically quiet and gentle in the middle of the movie's violent chaos. Hoffman plays Phil Parma, the nurse taking care of dying TV producer Earl Partridge, as a figure of unsullied decency and honesty. Every other character in "Magnolia" is flawed in one way or another, but Phil is just a good person who believes in doing what's right, and his steady moral compass is all the more powerful because no other character in the movie has it.

As much as the rest of "Magnolia" needs Hoffman's good-natured performance to succeed, so does Hoffman need the onslaught of the rest of "Magnolia" to do his best work. Hoffman works best in contrast to the many needy, flawed people who populate "Magnolia," who throw temper tantrums and concoct pathetic schemes while Hoffman simply sits and listens. Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance might not seem so special in a more sedate movie, but in this movie it's powerful because of the absence of anything else like it.

Hoffman's final collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, "The Master" contains the finest performance of Hoffman's career. As the central religious leader Lancaster Dodd, at least partly inspired by Scientology's L. Ron Hubbard, Hoffman gets to play to all his strengths, from blustery anger and impassioned speeches to goofy slapstick and dancing. He's so charismatic it's easy to be as enraptured by him as his followers are, and so pathetic in some moments that it becomes immediately obvious that he's a charlatan.

The heart of "The Master" is in Dodd's relationship with troubled soldier Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), which shifts from paternal guidance to exploitation to something like romantic love. By the time Dodd is serenading Quell during their final scene together, one starts to feel bad for both men even for how much they hurt each other over the course of the movie. If "The Master" starts as a movie about religion, it ends as a tragedy about men not being able to healthily express their emotions to each other, using cruelty and theatrics when honest words would do better.

"Punch-Drunk Love" is the best movie of both Hoffman and Paul Thomas Anderson's careers, even though it's much smaller in scale than many of the movies they've made. It's half the length of "Magnolia" and intently focused on one character, Adam Sandler's shy and angry Barry Egan. But Anderson flourishes under the restraints this small story provides, giving up his show-off camera moves and using his considerable technical skill to make the viewer understand the inside of one troubled man's head. It's a scary and nerve-racking movie to begin but by the end it's just romantic — love ultimately being stronger than crippling anxiety.

Philip Seymour Hoffman doesn't come into the action of "Punch-Drunk Love" until late, but when he arrives he takes over the movie completely. His scam artist Dean "Mattress Man" Trumbell is one of his most indelible characters, a loud, mean-spirited creep who believes he can threaten and harass anyone he wants to and get away with it. In a career full of great scenes, his angry phone call with Sandler is maybe his best scene ever, a riveting screaming match whose aggression becomes hilarious the longer it goes on.