Movies - TV
Every Francis Ford Coppola Feature Ranked From Worst To Best
By AUDREY FOX
22. Jack
Most of Coppola’s films, even when flawed, have redeeming qualities, but this is not the case with “Jack.” Robin Williams stars as Jack, a young boy with a strange disease that makes him age quickly, making him look 40 when he’s actually 10. Tonally all over the place, “Jack” is off-putting from the start and well beneath the talents of both its director and star.
21. Finian’s Rainbow
Fred Astaire, who was a spry 70 at the time, plays an Irish father, who moves to the American South with his daughter after stealing a leprechaun’s pot of gold. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, and most importantly introduced Coppola and George Lucas, but followed a decade of similarly quirky, wholesome musicals and is all but forgotten now.
20. Dementia 13
Coppola’s first legitimate directorial effort outside of the softcore industry, “Dementia 13” is a horror-thriller heavily inspired by Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, with gruesome murders amidst gothic settings. After the initial cut, Roger Corman was unhappy and demanded Coppola add more violence, making the final cut a campy, derivative affair, but one that many fans still enjoy.
19. Gardens of Stone
“Gardens of Stone” is an anti-war film that follows a jaded sergeant who is faced with the heartbreaking burden of mentoring an idealistic young recruit about to be deployed. You can feel the poignancy of the film and while elements of “Gardens of Stone” work in isolation, the overall production is unfocused, making the whole somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
18. Twixt
In “Twixt,” Coppola seems uninterested in traditional storytelling and the film takes abstract and dreamlike narratives almost to the point of incomprehensibility. Following a down-and-out writer who is able to walk between reality and illusion, it introduces various fragmented storylines, but there isn’t enough substance to follow its meandering plot.