Every Sam Mendes Movie Ranked From Worst To Best
How does 1917 stack up?
There's no doubting that Sam Mendes is one of the greatest filmmakers working today, a uniquely talented director who made a shockingly smooth transition from the world of theater to film, even winning a Best Director Oscar for his screen debut, American Beauty.
And since then, Mendes has been a reliable purveyor of achingly humanistic tales both historic and contemporary, while taking more ambitious steps into big-budget blockbuster filmmaking in recent years.
With Mendes' new war epic 1917 picking up enormous buzz on the way to the Oscars - where it's nominated in 10 categories including Best Picture and Best Director - it only bolsters the case that there are few active filmmakers on his level today.
There's an impressive consistency to the ambitious and diverse work that defines the eight films he's made during his 20 years in Hollywood, and though not all of them were quite great, the overwhelming majority have nevertheless maintained a shockingly high standard of quality.
And so, revisiting all of Mendes' narrative features to date, let's separate the wheat from the chaff and see where 1917 stands among the pile...