Ranking September 2018's Movies From Worst To Best

2. American Animals

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89% (7.7/10)

Box Office: Even with the backing of MoviePass, Bart Layton's acclaimed crime drama has cracked just $3.3 million worldwide. Its $33,698 per-screen U.S. average is pretty great, but clearly it needed and deserved a wider distribution overall. VOD sales are probably much more encouraging, though.

Verdict: Writer-director Layton follows up his acclaimed 2012 documentary The Imposter with this boldly ambitious fusion of narrative feature and doc, telling the fascinatingly odd tale of the 2004 Transylvania University art heist.

Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson are terrific as the central quartet of students plotting the heist, while Ann Dowd steals the show - as she always does - as the role of the librarian guarding the precious art book in question.

As a multi-faceted, often surprisingly dark examination of a fateful night for all involved, it evokes the tone of a David Fincher movie while taking a bold step into meta-narrative territory. Don't miss it.