Tom Hanks Movies, Ranked

America's dad, sorted by how hard he made you cry.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A box of chocolates on a bus-stop bench, a white feather drifting down beside a pair of worn running shoes.

    10. Forrest Gump

    Robert Zemeckis · 1994

    Six Oscars, $678 million, and a Best Picture win over Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption. Hanks took gross points instead of salary and made about $40 million. It is a box of chocolates, and you know exactly what you're going to get.

  2. A briefcase and stacked legal files on a courtroom table, an opera record spinning on a turntable beside them.

    09. Philadelphia

    Jonathan Demme · 1993

    One of the first mainstream Hollywood films to take on HIV/AIDS and homophobia head-on. Hanks lost 35 pounds, shot it in sequence and won his first Oscar; Springsteen won one too. Denzel Washington plays the homophobic lawyer who learns, which was the point.

  3. An orange lifeboat drifting on a calm blue sea, a navy destroyer on the horizon.

    08. Captain Phillips

    Paul Greengrass · 2013

    The final scene was improvised with Danielle Albert, a real Navy corpsman, doing exactly what she would do on duty, and Hanks comes apart in front of her. It is the best acting of his career and he was not nominated. Barkhad Abdi was. Fair enough.

  4. A vintage baseball dugout with a whiskey flask on the bench and a peach-colored wool skirt hanging on a hook.

    07. A League of Their Own

    Penny Marshall · 1992

    Hanks plays Jimmy Dugan, a washed-up drunk managing the Rockford Peaches, and delivers 'There's no crying in baseball!' which the AFI ranked 54th among all movie quotes. Added to the National Film Registry in 2012. Crying in the audience remains permitted.

  5. A pilot's cap, a stack of forged checks and a passport fanned out on an airport lounge table in 1960s light.

    06. Catch Me If You Can

    Steven Spielberg · 2002

    Hanks replaced James Gandolfini as the FBI man chasing DiCaprio's teen con artist, and Spielberg shot it in 52 days across 147 locations. Later research found Frank Abagnale's story was itself largely a con. Somehow that makes the movie better.

  6. A cramped space capsule interior with floating pens and a duct-taped square air filter, Earth visible through the window.

    05. Apollo 13

    Ron Howard · 1995

    Ron Howard got 612 zero-g dives on a NASA KC-135 for about four hours of real weightlessness. Nine Oscar nominations, two wins. The real line was 'Houston, we've had a problem.' The movie tightened it, which is the most Hollywood thing in an otherwise careful film.

  7. A weathered volleyball with a red handprint sitting on a raft of driftwood on a white sand beach.

    04. Cast Away

    Robert Zemeckis · 2000

    Production stopped for a year so Hanks could lose weight and grow the beard, and Zemeckis used the downtime to shoot What Lies Beneath with the same crew. Hanks got an Oscar nomination. His costar, a Wilson volleyball, got nothing. Robbed.

  8. A giant floor piano in a bright toy store, two pairs of loafers resting on the keys.

    03. Big

    Penny Marshall · 1988

    Robert De Niro was cast first and dropped out. Hanks got his first Oscar nomination, Marshall became the first woman to direct a film that grossed over $100 million, and he and Robert Loggia practiced the FAO Schwarz piano scene on cardboard keyboards at home.

  9. A child's bedroom floor scattered with toys under a ceiling painted with clouds, a small cowboy hat on a bedspread.

    02. Toy Story

    John Lasseter · 1995

    The first entirely computer-animated feature, nearly scrapped in 1993 when Disney saw a cut where Woody was a jerk. Pixar fixed him, Lasseter got a Special Achievement Oscar, and Hanks became the voice of every cowboy doll in America. Reach for the sky.

  10. Steel anti-tank obstacles rising out of grey surf on a misty beach at dawn, a single dented helmet in the sand.

    01. Saving Private Ryan

    Steven Spielberg · 1998

    The Omaha Beach sequence cost $12 million, used about 1,000 Irish Army reservists as extras, and was shot on a beach in County Wexford. Spielberg won Best Director; the film lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love. History has filed an appeal.

Honorable mentions

  • Four steamer trunks lashed together as a raft, floating on a moonlit ocean toward a smoking volcano.

    Joe Versus the Volcano

    John Patrick Shanley · 1990

    The Moonstruck writer's directing debut: a hypochondriac agrees to jump into a volcano for a soda company, and Meg Ryan plays three different women. Mixed reviews, then a cult. Ebert gave it three and a half stars and later wondered why not four.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A crashed luxury car's hubcap in a Bronx street at night, a pile of money burning in a trash can behind it.

    The Bonfire of the Vanities

    Brian De Palma · 1990

    Hanks as Tom Wolfe's Master of the Universe, opposite Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith. It cost $47 million, made $15.6 million domestically, and inspired a whole book, The Devil's Candy, about how it went wrong. The book got better reviews.

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