Artnewspress :
From The Ice Storm, The Gift and Pieces of April to Go, Batman Begins, and more, discover how IMDb users feel about Katie Holmes’ filmography to date.
After making her directorial debut in 2016 via All We Had, Katie Holmes returns to the director’s chair for Alone Together, a new romantic drama slated for release on July 22, 2022. Also written by and starring Holmes in the lead role, the story finds two lovelorn strangers who escape their terrible romances and find solace in each other’s company at a New York Airbnb.
Of course, many know Holmes from her five-year stint on the popular teen drama Dawson’s Creek as well as her movie appearances in some of the most acclaimed movies of the past two decades, including ones directed by Sam Raimi, Ang Lee, Doug Liman, Steven Soderbergh, Christopher Nolan, and more. As such, it’s high time to get a pulse on how IMDb views Katie Holmes’ filmography to date.
10 The Gift (2000) – 6.7
Sam Raimi’s underrated psychological crime movie The Gift kicks off when a teenage girl named Jessica King (Holmes) goes missing, prompting the police to seek help from Annie (Cate Blanchett), a woman with psychic abilities who claims to have a vision of Jessica’s drowning. As the key character who incites the entire plot, Holmes haunts the picture like an angelic apparition as clues are combed.
While many on IMDb rightly praise Blanchett’s spellbinding central turn as the tormented Annie, others are quick to note the evolutionary maturation of Raimi as a director who, after A Simple Plan, proves he’s far more adept than handling horror alone. As for Holmes, she also proved she could excel in much darker material than on Dawson’s Creek.
9 Pieces Of April (2003) – 7.0
Holmes lights up the screen as April Burns in the Thanksgiving dramedy Pieces of April, in which the titular rebellious character invites her estranged family over to her dilapidated New York apartment to meet her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke). What April lacks in grace and material items she more than makes for with plucky spunk.
Written and directed with vulnerable honesty by Peter Hedges, the film has been praised by IMDb users for its tender and touching kitchen sink realism, flawed by lovably recognizable characterizations of the lead character, and for mirroring family dysfunction in ways everyone can relate to without feeling bad about themselves. All things considered, Pieces of April might feature Holmes’ best movie performance.
8 Logan Lucky (2017) – 7.0
Directed with great vim and verve by Steven Soderbergh from a clever script written by his wife Jules Anser, Logan Lucky concerns an amateur NASCAR racetrack heist perpetrated by the unlucky Logan family of blue-collar workers. Holmes plays Bobbie Jo, Jimmy Logan’s (Channing Tatum) ex-wife who has custody of their daughter.
Many IMDb users applaud the film’s southern-fried take on the age-old caper film, using little-seen West Virginia as a refreshing setting that is intrinsically linked to the fully-dimensional characters. While plaudits for Holmes’ minor role are hard to come by on IMDb, the general consensus is that the film is a fun, fresh, and unpredictable wrinkle on the kind of slick, entertaining heist films Soderbergh excelled with in the Ocean’s Eleven franchise.
7 Phone Booth (2002) – 7.1
The late great film director Joel Schumacher’s acclaimed psychological thriller stars Colin Farrell as Stu Shepard, an ordinary publicist who enters a phone booth one day and is suddenly shot at by a sniper atop a roof building, forcing him to negotiate with the shooter on the telephone line. Holmes plays Pam, Stu’s emotionally vexed girlfriend who becomes embroiled in the standoff.
At a brisk 81 minutes, the film was extolled on IMDb for being a taut, tense, and breathless thriller that uses an inescapably claustrophobic single-setting better than most movies. Farrell’s performance has been also praised, as has Keifer Sutherland’s villainous voice-over, with the overarching sentiment on IMDb claiming the movie is an example of a simple yet effective premise executed perfectly by a director at the height of his filmmaking aplomb.
6 Wonder Boys (2000) – 7.2
Holmes gives one of her most memorably realistic roles in Wonder Boys, a story that revolves around disgraced English professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) as he deals with a divorce, a hardline editor, and various new students in Pennsylvania. Holmes plays Hannah, one of Grady’s talented writing students who falls for classmate James (Toby Maguire) and faces his rejection during a writing festival.
While some IMDb users felt Holmes was sorely underutilized in the film despite excelling in her scenes, others are quick to hail the film’s literary subject matter littered with witty repartee, fully-rounded characters, and top-notch performances across the board. Indeed, the film earned an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published.
5 Go (1999) – 7.2
Few films managed to capture the hyperkinetic zeitgeist of the late ’90s rave culture like Doug Liman’s Go, a movie that shattered Holmes’ innocent Dawson’s Creek image and proved her acting range. One of the best movies from the year 1999, the story chronicles the consequences of a drug score from three various points of view that exposes the seedy underbelly of Sin City at night.
The common refrain among IMDb supporters of Go is that it’s an epically wild thrill ride that is fun, fresh, hip, energetic, and all-encompassing of the manic pedal-to-the-medal vibes seen recently in the highly-acclaimed Everything Everywhere All At Once. Also hailed for casting Holmes against type as an ecstasy user named Claire, Go proved Holmes had far more edginess to her than fans ever knew.
4 Woman In Gold (2015) – 7.3
Woman in Gold is a biographical drama in which Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), an elderly Jewish refugee, battles contentiously with the Austrian government to have a portrait of her aunt (entitled “The Woman in Gold”) to be returned to her property in Los Angeles. Holmes stars as Pam Schoenberg, the wife of Randy (Ryan Reynolds), a lawyer dead-set on keeping the painting in Austria.
Although most IMDb users are quick to extoll Mirren’s towering tour-de-force turn as Altmann, the further insightful commentary suggests that director Simon Curtis did an admirable job of marrying accurate historical facts with an entertaining tempo, stunning setting, and sumptuous music that, at its best, will induce joyous laughter and painful tears in equal measure.
3 The Ice Storm (1997) – 7.4
Katie Holmes made her screen debut in master moviemaker Ang Lee’s unforgettable domestic drama The Ice Storm, giving a precocious performance as Libbets Casey. The achingly intimate portrait of a dysfunctional wealthy New England family coming apart during Thanksgiving in 1973 makes profound statements about the human condition that still resonate in 2022.
With no shortage of plaudits on IMDb, the consensus about the film is that it somehow manages to reflect an achingly suburban melancholy among a dysfunctional family with deeply identifiable characters brought to life by one of the best young casts around at the time. Ang Lee’s heartfelt direction is also singled out for being tenderly salient without being judgmental.
2 Thank You For Smoking (2005) – 7.5
Jason Reitman’s scathing satirical comedy Thank You For Smoking frames tobacco spokesperson Nick Naylor as a good guy defending free speech to become a role model for his adolescent son Joey (Cameron Bright). Holmes plays Washington reporter Heather Holloway, who manages to get Nick fired by writing a wicked expose on his shady practices.
Several IMDb users are quick to highlight the acoustically witty satire the movie boasts, the real plaudits for the film come for taking an even-handed approach to the nicotine debate by showing all sides of the argument and allowing the audience to decide for themself what is morally right and ethically wrong.
1 Batman Begins (2005) – 8.2
By far, IMDb considers Batman Begins the finest movie of Katie Holmes’ career to date. The origin story of Bruce Wayne’s (Christian Bale) rise to become the eventual Dark Knight and Gotham City’s trusted caped crusader redefined how superheroes could be made, with Christopher Nolan leading the charge with his brilliant visionary filmmaking style. For her part, Holmes excelled as Rachel Dawes, Bruce’s childhood friend, and romantic partner who serves as his moral conscience. Alas, she was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal in the sequel.
Currently rated #126 on IMDb’s Top 250 Movies of All Time, Batman Begins was universally praised on IMDb and elsewhere for remaining a superhero story for more mature audiences while still appealing to the faithful comic-book fanbase, treating the material with gravity rather than camp and kitsch, and for delivering a truly compelling origin story that gets to the heart of what makes Batman tick. Hopefully, Holmes will return to the DCEU sooner than later.
