Every Ben Affleck Movie, Ranked

27 min readBen Affleck is a legit American treasure. A square-jawed, cleft-chinned heartthrob who can really act (and write, and direct, and smoke dejectedly). The man has done it all in his career of more than thirty years, including winning Best Original Screenplay in his mid-twenties (for Good Will Hunting) and Best Picture, for his 2012 drama Argo.His latest film, Animals on Netflix, sees Matt Damon’s BFF play a Los Angeles mayoral candidate who races against the clock to rescue his kidnapped son. It’s a solid flick; more than worth adding to your Netflix queue when it drops on October 9. Sure, not everything Affleck has made has been gold—you remember Gigli?—but he is rarely the worst thing about them.From Hollywood wunderkind to being married to not one but two different Jennifers, Affleck has grown up before our eyes. To celebrate the release of Animals, the editors of Esquire have taken it upon themselves to rank every single movie made by and/or starring Dunkin’s biggest fan. Yes, even his Batman movies. Behold the official word on the Book of Affleck—and yes, he is still the bomb in Phantoms.56. Man About Town (2006)It sounds impossible, but at the height of his Hollywood fame, Ben Affleck had at least one direct-to-DVD movie: the 2006 clunker Man About Town. Affleck plays a successful Hollywood talent agent whose private journals become public, which threatens to unravel his whole world. Say what you will about Gigli, but like, Affleck actually tried in Gigli. In Man About Town, it feels like he’s sleepwalking through it.55. The Last Thing He Wanted (2020)The last thing you’ll want to do is watch this Netflix stinker. Despite the additional star power of Anne Hathaway and Willem Dafoe, this incomprehensible spy thriller stars Affleck as an ambassador who goes toe-to-toe with Hathaway, playing an overworked journalist. The plot is nonsense and infuriating, and not even A-list talent can save a grade-F thriller.54. The Flash (2023)Frankly, The Flash should be Ben Affleck’s worst movie. It’s one of the dumbest and ugliest superhero movies ever made, and a poor adaptation of the actually-great comic book storyline Flashpoint. But Affleck’s Batman, in a glorified cameo performance, is surprisingly somber and sober, and one of the movie’s few bright spots. Affleck’s final onscreen performance as Bruce Wayne grounds the arc of protagonist Barry Allen (played by Ezra Miller), and stands in dynamic contrast to the movie’s other caped crusader, a returning Michael Keaton.53. Clerks II (2006) and Clerks III (2022)Let me be upfront and say that Clerks II is a great film. (Less said about Clerks III the better.) But if we’re talking Ben Affleck, his cameos in both movies are little more than him doing a favor for pal Kevin Smith, though his appearance in Clerks II was a surprise given their personal estrangement at the time.52. Gigli (2003)Imagine being in a K hole while listening to “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” backwards. That’s Gigli. This film has a six percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which means they were doing something so wrong that it felt right. It also stars Al Pacino and Christopher Walken. We will not be elaborating on their roles.51. Surviving Christmas (2004)We wish we could say that a Christmas comedy starring Ben Affleck and James Gandolfini is good. Unfortunately, it’s a ho-ho-ho-hum affair. Affleck plays a lonely but successful advertising executive who hires the family living in his childhood home to pose as his own family through the holidays. What could be an interesting story about the importance of family and how some bonds transcend blood doesn’t quite translate on the screen. “Surviving” Christmas? Actually, just kill me now.50. Suicide Squad (2016)Ben Affleck has a habit of being pretty good in bad movies. In 2016, Affleck followed up his appearance in Batman v Superman to reprise his Caped Crusader in a surprise supporting role. It’s not quite a “cameo”—his Batman is in the movie quite a bit—but the man doesn’t have any arcs or any real function to speak of beyond reminding audiences that he’s Batman. Unfortunately, Suicide Squad isn’t worth sitting through if you’re in it for Affleck. Just watch a compilation on YouTube.49. "Lifestories: Families in Crisis" A Body to Die For: The Aaron Henry Story (1994) Fine, it wasn’t released theatrically. Fine, it’s not technically a movie. Fine, it’s like thirty minutes long. But this episode of HBO’s entry into the Afterschool Special space is Ben’s first proper starring role, and it is therefore worthy of appreciation. He stars as a high school football player under pressure to perform, who decides to beef up by using steroids, immediately Hulks out, and is on his bedroom floor pleading for God’s mercy–writhing, pounding, acting–quicker than you can say the project’s full title. It’s a big opportunity for our guy, and he eats. (He eats steroids.) It’s tight, its credit sequence is very Saturday Morning All-Star Hits, and it has four colons in its name.48. Glory Daze (1995)What could have been Ben Affleck’s signature college comedy completely flunks out. Glory Daze follows Affleck as one of several college students on the verge of graduation who try to keep the party going until they can’t anymore. Despite a banger of a soundtrack that captures ‘90s alt rock at its peak—we’re talking NOFX, Bad Religion, Bouncing Souls, and more—Glory Daze is a pale imitator of much better, and much funnier, comedies about higher education.47. The Third Wheel (2002)In this mean-spirited romantic comedy, Affleck takes the back seat in a movie where Luke Wilson asks out his office crush, played by Denise Richards—and to his surprise, she says yes. What they don’t know is that the entire office is betting on how the date goes. A subpar movie with a subpar Ben Affleck performance gets any points at all because of a fun, surprise Matt Damon cameo.46. Runner Runner (2013)If there was ever a movie that had flat feet, it’s Runner Runner. In this forgotten and derivative crime thriller, Justin Timberlake plays a college student who gambles away his tuition money on an online poker site. Naturally, he travels to Costa Rica to confront the billionaire owner (Affleck), who hires the kid and ropes him into his dangerous enterprise. Besides how convincing a thirty-something Timberlake is as a college student, Runner Runner is a generic crime thriller that feels like a losing bet.45. This Is Me...Now: A Love Story (2024)Less of a proper movie and more of an elaborate art project, Jennifer Lopez's This Is Me...Now: A Love Story is as baffling as it is bewildering. Essentially a string of glossy music videos for her album This Is Me...Now (which was released on the same day), a plot loosely weaves a narrative that tells an abstract interpretation of Lopez's own tumultuous love life. At the time of its creation, Lopez was in her second marriage to Ben Affleck, and This Is Me...Now was supposed to be a hagiography of her own 20-year journey to rediscover what she felt was her greatest romantic partnership. Affleck participates by playing several different characters, being some throughline about how Affleck is what Lopez was looking for all this time. Or something. In a most awkward turn of events, the couple split again just two months later and were divorced again by August 2024. So much for "forever," I guess.44. Daddy and Them (2001)Ben Affleck gets lost in an all-star cast that crowds a movie that never got a theatrical release and wound up premiering on Showtime instead. This black comedy follows a dysfunctional Arkansas family who pitch in to help one of their own after Uncle Hazel (Jim Varney) is charged with murder. Despite a cast that includes Billy Bob Thornton, Laura Dern, Jamie Lee Curtis, and—believe it or not—Andy Griffith, Daddy and Them is best left to the bargain bin.43. Changing Lanes (2002) This solid twist-of-fate thriller was a change-up for both Notting Hill director Roger Michell and for Affleck, who at this point in his career had rarely played characters who resided in the shades-of-gray moral middle ground. The reason it works as well as it does is because Affleck’s costar, Samuel L. Jackson, seems to challenge him to raise his game. A string of coincidences involving a car accident on the way to the courthouse pushes the limits of credulity, but it works well enough to pit the two actors against one another in an escalating cat-and-mouse game of revenge. Affleck cranks his smarm to eleven, but also shows us a glimmer of humanity beneath his shark’s exterior. Changing Lanes sort of came and went when it was first released, but it’s worth a revisit to see Affleck and Jackson square off.42. Forces of Nature (1999) For a while there at the tail end of the ‘90s, it looked like our man Ben was going to be Hollywood’s next romantic leading man. The animal crackers scene with Liv Tyler in Armageddon was the match that lit that particular fire. But the real test case came with this limp screwball comedy in which Affleck was paired with Sandra Bullock as a pair of meet-cutes who meet on his way to get married to Maura Tierney. Affleck + Bullock (in kooky mode, no less) must have sounded like a surefire hit in the pitch meeting. But, on celluloid, it didn’t quite work. The two meet-cutes start to fall for one another during rain gales and hail storms as he tries to get to the church on time. Unfortunately, their chemistry is even worse than the script. This one is waterlogged through and through.41. Bounce (2000) Coming off his indie triumph The Opposite of Sex, Don Roos wrote and directed this romantic…tragedy? Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow are at the end of their real-life relationship in this one, playing a cocky advertising executive and the widow he falls in love with. Oh, but Affleck has a secret: he swapped airplane tickets with Paltrow’s husband, putting him on the flight that crashed and killed him. It’s actually less fun than it sounds, and among the lesser of Affleck’s many, many cocky on-screen alcoholics.40. Chasing Amy (1997) 25 years later, and Chasing Amy still bamboozles the queer community. Is it an ahead-of-its-time and provocative portrait of bisexuality? Or a tone-deaf film that both invalidates and overtly sexualizes the lesbian experience? It’s both and neither. Mostly, it’s a film about a geeky dude named Holden, played by a young goateed Ben Affleck, who lets his insecurities ruin a relationship with a pretty rad comic book writer, played by ‘90s alternative it girl, Joey Lauren Adams. For all of its problematic optics, Chasing Amy will always be right about one thing: proposing a threesome will not help you win back your ex—sorry Holden.39. Live by Night (2016)One of Affleck’s own weaker directorial efforts, Live By Night adapts Dennis Lehane’s 2012 novel about an ambitious Depression-era bootlegger who rises through the ranks to become a gangster. Despite its stylish surface, Live By Night is an uninspired crime movie that falls short of what Affleck himself has delivered before.38. Paycheck (2003) Has a movie title ever been more on the nose? In this soulless sci-fi potboiler, Affleck takes the money and runs as fast as his feet will take him. Paycheck is a terrible movie. It’s almost impossible to believe that it was directed by John Woo and based on a Philip K. Dick short story. Still, even if Paycheck was a masterpiece (which, again, it most certainly is not) it would have arrived with the stink of Gigli attached to it since it was Affleck’s first film after that notorious trainwreck. Big Ben does what he can as a hotshot reverse engineer who’s hired to do some corporate dirty work and then get his memory of the dirty deed’s details erased for a hefty fee, but the biggest sin of Paycheck is just how aggressively bland the whole thing is. After watching it, you’ll probably want your memory erased, too.37. Pearl Harbor (2001) In which Michael Bay throws a couple hundred million dollars at the screen in an attempt to tell his version of America’s day that will live in infamy. This is an epic that encapsulates everything that was wrong with Hollywood in 2001. The Japanese bombing of Hawaii is treated as little more than an exotic backdrop for a love-triangle soap opera involving Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, and Big Ben. Solemn history and Bay’s sizzle-reel approach to filmmaking turn out to be predictably strange bedfellows, while Affleck’s Tennessee flyboy just gets lost amid all of the big-budget shock and awe folly of it all. Pearl Harbor is proof that the road to cinematic hell is paved with good intentions.36. Phantoms (1998)The year after Good Will Hunting dropped, Burgeoning Ben appeared in three feature films. One was Armageddon, another was a bit part in Shakespeare in Love, and the last was Phantoms, an adaptation of a Dean Koontz novel about a small ski resort town terrorized by a murder-ghost. The movie was rightly savaged by critics—Roger Ebert gave a one-star rating—and comatose performances by Peter O’Toole and Liev Schreiber don’t do much to prop up a script riddled with plot holes. That said, I’m not here to bury Phantoms, but instead to praise a baby-faced Ben who, as the sheriff of Snowfield, Colorado hams his way through the one-hour-thirty-six-minute run time alternating between mock seriousness and sporting an enormous shit-eating grin, elevating it into a film that’s not quite lowbrow brilliant but also something you wouldn’t mind being played at your local bar with the sound turned down. As it turns out, Jay and Silent Bob were indeed right: Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms, yo.35. To the Wonder (2013) Terrence Malick is one of American cinema’s great artists, so Affleck’s desire to collaborate with him on To the Wonder–the director’s 2012 follow-up to his critically hailed The Tree of Life–seemed like a surefire bet. What the actor probably didn’t realize, however, is that the acclaimed auteur would ask his headliner to perform without dialogue for almost the entirety of the 112-minute feature, save for voiceover that helps drive this tale about the up-and-down romance shared by an American traveler and a divorced Ukrainian single mother (Olga Kurylenko), which is complicated by the former’s relationship with an old friend (Rachel McAdams). No amount of lovely aesthetics can change the fact that this lyrical endeavor is dramatically inert, and that goes double for Affleck’s turn, which is mainly comprised of amorous and forlorn posing that takes minimal advantage of the star’s charm.34. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) The Jay and Silent Bobiverse (known parochially as the View Askewniverse) is vast and deep, and while Strike Back is a classic, it’s no Clerks or Dogma. (You should also watch those, along with Chasing Amy before attempting this one.) This movie also loses points on this particular list because Ben Affleck’s inclusion is less a role to have any fun with than it is a comment on his ubiquity. He plays Holden, the creator of the Jay and Silent Bob characters, as well as a version of himself, Ben Affleck, star of this list. It’s a lot to take in, but if you’re a fan of movies about movies, it’s the perfect flick.33. 200 Cigarettes (1999) MTV Productions tried to make a modern-day American Graffiti, and . . . well, they nailed the casting. The movie gets early-career Kate Hudson, Casey Affleck, Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo, and Dave Chappelle, newly-young-adult Christina Ricci and Gaby Hoffman, post-SNL Jay Mohr, pre-LTW Nicole Ari Parker, and a slumming Courtney Love. Ben plays a bartender named “Bartender,” whose whole job is to be hot and elusive. He succeeds. It’s a double throwback: a very 1999 movie set on New Year’s Eve 1981, and just for that, it’s worth watching. (Good luck; it’s streaming nowhere.)32. He's Just Not That Into You (2009)Ah, He's Just Not That Into You. Nine people! Four(ish) love stories! One movie you’ve probably forgotten. Our man Benny plays a dude with commitment issues, who realizes that he very much needs to get over his commitment issues if he wants to marry Jennifer Anist—er, Beth. Affleck plays this dude, named Neil, to perfectly adequate A-list-romcom-lead standards. (I.e. somewhere between Timberlake and McConaughey.) “I need you to stop being nice to me unless you’re going to marry me after,” Beth says. Aww, how cute. Sweet nothings like that are the foundation of any love story.31. Going All the Way (1997)There aren’t many movies about the Korean War, or at least those who served. Ben Affleck stars in one of the few, in 1997’s Going All the Way. Affleck co-stars with Jeremy Davies, with the two playing war veterans who meet on a train back home to Indianapolis. Affleck’s character falls in love with an independent-minded arts student (Rachel Weisz), to the ire of his closed-minded mother. Going All the Way doesn’t really go as far as it maybe could or should, but it’s a serviceably entertaining drama about self-discovery and bravery on a different battlefield: the one back home.30. Daredevil (2003)Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, many attempts were made to turn any one of Marvel’s comic books into the next big thing. In 2003, there was the box-office hit (but critical dud) in Daredevil. Affleck stars as blind lawyer Matt Murdock who moonlights as the masked devil of Hell’s Kitchen, Daredevil. This wouldn’t be the first time Ben Affleck played a comic book superhero for a disappointing movie, but Daredevil gets cool points for its overwhelming early 2000s nu metal vibes—and for giving us “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence.29. Jersey Girl (2004)Rather unfairly, the public’s fatigue at “Bennifer” doomed Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl. That’s a shame, because the movie is actually quite sweet and not at all the career-ending flop it’s often thought to be. Affleck stars as a successful music publicist whose wife (Jennifer Lopez in a minor role) dies in labor. After his career ends, he becomes a devoted single father, though he slowly regains the confidence to get his old job back. When Jersey Girl opened, people had had enough of Affleck and Lopez’s status as tabloid fixture, which made the movie’s box office prospects grim and even soured Affleck’s friendship with longtime pal Kevin Smith. But if it’s been a while, give Jersey Girl another shot. You might be surprised by what you find.28. Triple Frontier (2019) Arguably the most notable aspect of J.C. Chandor’s 2019 action-thriller is that it’s the production that begat the beach-photo revelation about Affleck’s glorious rising-phoenix back tattoo. Nonetheless, there’s a bit more to this Netflix venture than just its star’s infamous ink. Pairing Affleck with Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal, Charlie Hunnam, and Garrett Hedlund, Chandor’s tale concerns a group of ex-military buddies who reunite to rob a narcotics kingpin, and while most of its characters have been conceived in strictly one dimension, Affleck receives the lion’s share of meaty material with which to work. As a divorced father convinced that this job will help him stay close to his kid, the actor turns out to be the surprising center of Chandor’s gritty morality play. There isn’t a lot of meat on this conventional genre effort’s bones, but Affleck invests his protagonist with a sweaty desperation and dogged greed that curdles in unexpected fashion. Consequently, he proves to be the most engaging facet of this macho saga.27. State of Play (2009) A political thriller that’s also a journalistic whodunit is the ultimate Hollywood twofer, but not since All The King’s Men has a movie successfully pulled one off. State of Play comes close thanks to Affleck’s portrayal as Stephen Collins —a rising star politician with one too many secrets to keep. Acting alongside Russell Crowe (in peak scruffy form as an aging newspaper reporter), Affleck doesn’t miss a beat, even as all the lies begin to undo his character’s career. There might be one too many sensational plot twists in State of Play, but thanks to Affleck’s understated performance, the film still goes down easy.26. Hollywoodland (2006) After his long season in hell as a tabloid casualty, it was getting difficult to take any new Affleck movie seriously. He had become a punchline. The only way back, it seemed, was to walk the stations of the cross, take his lumps, and somehow remind everyone that he was a pretty decent actor. Well, that chance for redemption finally came with this juicy mystery about the life and death of George Reeves, the B-movie actor who played Superman on television in the ‘50s. A shroud of doubt has always swirled around Reeves’s death—did he commit suicide or was he murdered? And Affleck juices that old Tinseltown whodunit with just the right amount of anxiety, self-loathing, and faded glamor. Hollywoodland couldn’t have come at a better moment in Affleck’s EKG-like career arc. It was exactly the reminder everyone (and probably most of all, himself) needed to prove once and for all that he was an actor first and a National Enquirer punching bag second.25. The Sum of All Fears (2002) In The Sum of All Fears, Ben plays CIA analyst-nerd Jack Ryan who is dispatched by Morgan Freeman—portraying either the director of the CIA or maybe the president of the United States—to help stop a nuclear weapons deal between some very bad dudes and the newly elected president of Russia who is not Vladimir Putin but is also kinda Vladimir Putin. Things go totally loco when the bad dudes steal a nuclear bomb and—we're not kidding—use it to completely destroy Baltimore. Ben uses his analyst-nerd skills to save the day and prevent World War III.24. The Accountant (2016) and The Accountant 2 (2025)A mere seven months after debuting as Hollywood’s newest and nastiest Batman, Affleck again switched into dual-identity crime-fighting mode with The Accountant, director Gavin O’Connor’s thriller about an expert forensic accountant named Chris who spends his days exposing criminal financial malfeasance, and his nights executing the worst of the worst as a hired assassin. Basically, he’s the Dark Knight if the superhero was a geek whose greatest weapon was his autistic mind. This plays as ridiculously as it sounds, in part because Affleck takes his role very seriously, imbuing Chris with ruthless intellectual and physical precision. Trained in martial arts, an admirer of classic art, and bestowed with a Robin Hood-ish desire to take from the rich and give back to the poor, he’s an amalgam of numerous characters audiences have seen before. Though Affleck’s stoic turn contributes to the material’s cartoonishness, there’s also considerable pleasure to be had from his no-nonsense routine as a butt-kicking number-cruncher.23. Reindeer Games (2000) Few directors have boasted a more strikingly muscular visual style than John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, The Train, Seconds, Ronin), and that remained true with his cinematic swan song, 2000’s Reindeer Games, which also features a compellingly gung-ho performance from Affleck as an ex-con who assumes his dead cell mate’s identity in order to get with his girl (Charlize Theron), only to wind up embroiled in a dangerous casino heist. This is brazen B-movie territory, handled with all the insane plot twists and over-the-top scenery-chewing that one might expect. The pulp is thick, and Affleck seems perfectly comfortable wallowing in it, radiating a cocky tough-guy charisma that’s consistently winning even when the story threatens to drive off a cliff (both figuratively and, ultimately, literally). No one will ever give the actor an award for indulging in such down-and-dirty genre fare, but there are few early Affleck efforts that remain as amusingly entertaining as this one.22. The Company Men (2010)In the shadow of the 2008 recession came The Company Men. Ben Affleck stars as a wealthy executive who loses his job due to corporate downsizing. He reluctantly takes a job with his brother-in-law’s construction company; his story is intertwined with that of other men who’ve lost their cushy air-conditioned careers and now find themselves breaking their backs for the first time. Though The Company Men isn’t the fiery anti-capitalist film it maybe should be, it’s a stately and understated drama about the actual worth of a good day’s work.21. Animals (2026)Animals would be one of Ben Affleck’s best movies—if Akira Kurosawa didn’t beat him to the punch half a century ago. In what is an unofficial High and Low remake, Affleck directs and stars as a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped and held for ransom. Though cinephiles will spot striking parallels to Kurosawa, Animals is mired in the modern political climate and offers up its own dynamite twists and turns.20. Shakespeare in Love (1998) Maybe this one would be higher up if there had been more Ben. Gwyneth Paltrow has claimed that Harvey Weinstein wanted Affleck to play William Shakespeare in this one, to which she insisted they get a proper Brit. Instead, he gets an extended cameo as Ned Alleyn, the greatest actor of his generation, and the accent does not exactly work, but the swagger absolutely does. This film won Best Picture, but more importantly it introduced him to Paltrow, whom he dated for three years, thereby kicking off the Tabloid Era of Ben Affleck.19. School Ties (1992) Affleck’s proper movie debut, alongside a veritable Abercrombie & Fitch catalog of fellow newcomers: Chris O’Donnell, Brendan Fraser, Cole Hauser, Randall Batinkoff, and future collaborator Matt Damon. It plays like a Very Special Episode of Dead Poets Society, focusing on anti-semitism among the young American elite. Affleck doesn’t have much to do here beyond being handsome and vaguely menacing, but he’s good at that. Fun fact: the screenplay was written by Dick Wolf, who was then in the early seasons of a struggling NBC police procedural called Law & Order.18. Extract (2009)Ben Affleck again steps out of the central spotlight for Mike Judge’s workplace comedy Extract. Jason Bateman takes charge as the boss of a flavor extract company who faces some turbulence in his personal life. Affleck lets his hair down (literally) as Dean, the chillaxed pot-smoking best friend whose ideas to help his pal aren’t, shall we say, any good. Extract is quite understated compared to Judge’s other movies, and Affleck isn’t a terribly important character. But it’s a solid DVD-era comedy that milks the hell out of Affleck’s shaggy haircut.17. Mallrats (1995) Ben Affleck has played a lot of sleazy guys over the course of his career, but none of them hold a candle to the O.G. of sleaze—Mallrats’ villain Shannon Hamilton. What a d-bag. Affleck aces the role of Hamilton, outfitting the manager of the famed Eden Prairie Mall's Fashionable Male clothing store in an infuriating sense of entitlement that makes the character’s inevitable downfall all the more rewarding. Mallrats marks Affleck’s first collaboration with Kevin Smith, who himself was just getting started on building out the View Askewniverse when Mallrats was released (and went straight to video) in 1995. Since then, both gentlemen have gone on to make bigger and more important films, but Mallrats still reigns as the most fun.16. Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) Affleck’s turn as a jaded, middle-aged Batman is oddly spot-on in a life-imitating art kind of way—it’s Sadfleck as Bruce Wayne. Zack Snyder’s Justice League gives Batfleck extra broodiness, overshadowing the zingers of the Joss Whedon version of the film. Appropriately, Affleck retired from the role for very Sadfleck reasons, calling it a “nadir” experience and saying “I didn’t like being there.” But he did return to shoot one last scene with Jared Leto’s Joker. It didn’t take much for Affleck to don the cowl again. Snyder called him and said “Listen, bro…I think it’d be cool to see” and Affleck was like, “Yeah bud. For you, I’ll do it.”15. Deep Water (2022)Ben's Deep Water role is a tricky one to rank. Why? Because it falls squarely into that guilty pleasure gray area, where the line between ridiculousness and greatness gets mighty blurry. Based on a kinky Patricia Highsmith story, Adrian Lyne's throwback to his '80s erotic thriller heyday (9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction) stars Affleck as a super-rich, morally shady brainiac with two obvious weaknesses: his fondness for collecting snails (metaphor alert...or just plain eccentricity for eccentricity's sake?) and his strange devotion to his red-hot, openly philandering wife (Ana de Armas). Lyne toggles between steamy sex scenes and jealous rage like a horny virtuoso while we are left to guess if Big Ben, beneath his seemingly placid demeanor, is man enough to possess a vengeful, murderous dark side (take a wild guess). By any standard metric, Deep Water is trash. But it's the kind of trash that knows exactly what it's doing and succeeds on its own ludicrously tawdry terms.14. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) Many men have donned the cape and cowl as Gotham’s nocturnal vigilante, and while Affleck’s maiden outing as the crime-fighter wasn’t particularly well-received by critics or audiences, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s underwhelming showing ultimately had little to do with his performance. Playing an older, grimmer Batman–so angry he actually brands his victims!–Affleck exudes a measure of gravity and fury that’s in tune with the dour atmosphere of Zack Snyder’s would-be DC Comics epic. Pitted against Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel, this Batman is as physically stout as he is obsessively determined, driven by resentment over the Kryptonian interloper’s godlike power, and rage at his apparent indifference to humanity’s plight. There isn’t a lot of humor to this portrayal of the iconic crusader; instead, Affleck infuses the character with a bone-deep weariness over lost lives and seemingly unwinnable wars. He’s the glue that holds Snyder’s sprawling, uneven film together—a borderline-heroic task itself.13. Boiler Room (2000) A not-bad cautionary tale released on the heels of the bursting of the dot-com bubble, novice writer-director Ben Younger’s morality play stars Giovanni Ribisi as a gullible, ambitious young turk who fleeces folks by pitching them junk stocks from a testosterone-drenched Long Island chop-shop brokerage full of macho banter and musky pheromones. Like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, Affleck gets the flashiest role as the alpha-recruiter who initiates new salesmen by questioning their manhood and barking Mametian arias of motivational snake oil. Needless to say, the role fits him as perfectly as a bespoke Armani suit. He steals everything that’s worth stealing in the movie.12. Dogma (1999)Ben Affleck lets his smarmy side fly in his role as the antiheroic angel Bartleby in Kevin Smith’s religious satire. Affleck and his close buddy Matt Damon co-star as angels banished to Earth who concoct a plan to get back into heaven. While Chasing Amy is a raw and real drama about personal relationships, Dogma is an out-there adventure that still unearths truths about organized religion and the power of belief. And Affleck is certainly divine.11. The Rip (2026)It's funny to think of Boston's greatest son playing a cop in sweltering Miami, but The Rip lets audiences see Affleck exchange heated words with none other than his best friend for life, Matt Damon. The Rip is a Netflix thriller about Miami police officers who stumble upon $20 million in cartel money and grapple with the ethical ramifications of taking their piece of the pie. While Matt Damon shoulders most of the film's dramatic heft, Affleck serves as his support and obstacle at once, as Affleck's Detective Sergeant Byrne tries to beat some sense into Damon's Lieutenant Dane. Fiction and reality blur as Affleck's abundant screen time with Damon is textured by their many years of friendship off-camera.10. The Way Back (2019) The Way Back drew the short stick. Ben Affleck’s startlingly personal basketball film, where he plays a high school coach struggling with alcoholism, debuted on March 1, 2020. It’s the last film many of us saw in theaters, you know, before everything. Obviously, a hell of a lot more people would’ve seen The Way Back if it premiered in 2019, or 2023, because it’s one of Affleck’s best films. He pulls off the pain of a burnout who keeps getting in his own way. More than that, The Way Back is a throwback to a lost era of sports movie—the Remember the Titans days of the ’90s and ’00s, where filmmakers weren’t afraid to be shamelessly inspirational. Maybe it’s the film we needed during the pandemic. Instead, we got it two weeks early.9. The Tender Bar (2021) All the elements that make Ben Affleck Ben Affleck—the sleepy-eyed charm, the self-conscious swagger, the chin—come together in this adaptation of J. R. Moehringer’s 2005 memoir, and serve his character perfectly. As Uncle Charlie, the book-reading, bartending, sometimes blunt father figure in J. R.’s life, Affleck gives a lived-in, relaxed performance and makes you thirsty for a whiskey on the rocks. You might not take his advice, but you can’t take your eyes off him. It’s a testament to his performance here that I don’t remember much else about the movie.8. The Last Duel (2021) There comes a point in an A-list actor’s career where their fame eclipses their talents, meaning that no matter how excellent their performances may be, it’s impossible to see anything but the guy from the tabloids. For me, Affleck crossed that threshold a long time ago, but in The Last Duel, he redeemed himself. Affleck is the best he’s been in years as Count Pierre d’Alençon, a bawdy, boorish medieval nobleman hellbent on destroying Matt Damon’s life (the Count gleefully dismisses Damon’s character as “fucking boring”). Sporting a bleach-blond bowl cut and a goatee to match, Affleck is unrecognizable, but it’s not just the getup allowing him to melt into the role; it’s the way he completely gives himself over to this venal, imperious asshole, and steals every scene along the way.7. AIR (2023)Affleck's turn as Nike co-founder Phil Knight is less of a portrayal of the Nike legend himself and more of a caricature of Affleck himself. He's running the show, telling some jokes, dishing out advice, and refusing to change his appearance to look like Knight in the slightest. But as everyone is running around and yelling into their phones like a chicken with its head cut off trying to land Michael Jordan's coveted shoe deal, Affleck is the much-needed comic relief. He's the head honcho of a multimillion-dollar company who quotes Buddha, doesn't wear shoes in the office of his shoe company, and decides things on long runs. Somehow, it's one of the best roles he's ever played.6. Armageddon (1998) I will not make this entire entry about the scene where Ben Affleck walks an animal cracker, seductively, up Liv Tyler’s torso while speaking in an Australian accent. I should, but I won’t. I will however include a link to the video because it is cinema at its peak. Armageddon is a perfect film, in a lot of ways. Not perfect in the sense that it was robbed of Oscars, but perfect in that when you’re hungover at 2:00 p.m. on a Saturday, finding Armageddon playing on TBS feels like you’ve hit the lottery. Armageddon is the peak of disaster films. Starring Affleck, Tyler, Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Steve Buscemi, a team of ragtag drillers and experts must intercept an asteroid, blow it up, and save the world. It’s pretty straightforward, but when you fold in the melodrama and the perfect movie song from Aerosmith, what you have here is a type of film that they simply don’t make anymore: good, pulpy, end-times fun that is meant to entertain the pants off of you.5. Dazed and Confused (1993) Richard Linklater’s Foghat-fueled ode to being a Texas teen on the eve of the American Bicentennial is one of the greatest coming-of-age stories ever made. The casting is prescient lightning in a bottle, the characters are fully realized rather than two-dimensional cartoons, and the time and place are so vivid you can almost taste the stale beer and smell the skunk weed. As the film’s resident upperclassman bully O’Bannion, Affleck delights in beating on pipsqueak freshmen because…well, because he can. Affleck shows the audience the sparkle of sadistic glee in his character’s eyes, but if you squint hard enough, you might also be able to make out the sweaty insecurity of someone who’s trying to compensate for some unspoken psychological wound. Either way, he’s a total asshole—a type Affleck can play in his sleep. Like Matthew McConaughey’s scene-stealing Wooderson, Affleck is hardly the film’s main character, but he knows exactly what to do with every second of screen time he’s given.4. The Town (2010) Ben Affleck’s second-most Boston film. (Scroll to No. 1 to see his greatest homage to the Athens of America.) Except this one features gruffer accents, a high-stakes heist, and, in the case of Blake Lively, thicker eyeliner. As director, Affleck reached for a heady meditation on the culture of crime. It’s not totally unappreciated but that’s not exactly what makes this film good. Nah, here, it’s all about the stakes. Will Claire discover Doug’s past—or worse, his present? Can Doug outrun his life? How the hell are they gonna shoot their way out of Fenway?? It all makes for an outright blast—and an endlessly rewatchable film.3. Gone Girl (2014) That sick house surrounding Lake Ozark, belonging to the character Desi—which we only see for a few moments before well, you know—is the only thing that looks good in this dark thriller. Everyone else is a liar, a cheater, or totally psychopathic. But boy is Ben good at this lane of man! He plays a louche with such weight—such an intoxicating blend of defensiveness, regret, and whoopsie-daisy, that, while you never can quite decide if you’ll root for him, you cannot look away.2. Argo (2012) At first the details of this story sound too insane to be true. During the 1979 Iran hostage crisis a group of American diplomats managed to slip out of the U.S. Embassy and find cover at the Canadian Ambassador’s residence. They can’t stick around in Iran—if they’re captured it’ll mean blindfolds, beatings, and bullets. The CIA hatches a scheme: have the diplomats pose as a fake Canadian film crew for an even faker low-budget sci-fi movie, head to the airport, and catch the first flight out of town. To complete the ruse, the CIA sets up a mock production office, writes a feature-length script, and even enlists famed comic book artist Jack Kirby to illustrate the storyboards. Affleck pulls a double shift as director and as Tony Mendez, the career covert operative charged with leading the diplomats out of the country. Behind the camera Ben never lets his foot off the gas, ratcheting up the tension with a mix of harrowing action sequences and high-pressure set pieces that make it feel like the entire thing could unravel in the most catastrophic way possible. Affleck portrays Mendez with quiet focused intensity, all too aware of what could happen should his mission fail. While there are some scenes that were invented for the sake of dramatic effect—hello tarmac chase—the two-hour run time rips by so breathlessly it’s easy to see why Argo is the reason Ben has twice the number of Oscars than Matt.1. Good Will Hunting (1997)Affleck has had quite a career, but when you put together a list of his best films, how can Good Will Hunting not be at the top? Penned with Hollywood best friend Matt Damon, it scratches all the itches of an Affleck classic: Boston-set, scrappiness as an endearing quality, and a wise older figure who is able to guide a young man out of a difficult situation. (Thought: Armageddon should have been set in Boston.) With all the key components in place, all that’s left is to fill this brilliant screenplay with heart. For those who have somehow not seen the film, Good Will Hunting follows Will Hunting, a brilliant self-taught genius who is a janitor at Boston’s MIT. Naturally, after a good ol’ Boston brawl, Hunting can escape jail if he applies his savant-like mathematics skills and attends court-mandated therapy. Through both, he reveals his true potential. And in the process, Affleck, Damon, and Robin Williams give the performances of their careers.