Except for one film, which this article will get to soon enough, the filmography of Tom McCarthy might be one of the most consistent of this century. From Spotlight to Stillwater, almost every movie he’s made is worth seeing, and most of them are worth seeing more than once: not because they’re necessarily dense or layered, but because it’s worth delving into the craft of his writing. His dialogue is rarely flashy. He doesn’t hand out juicy monologues left and right like Aaron Sorkin. He does, though, possess an uncanny ear for the rhythm and cadence of natural dialogue. His characters always sound like real people, having real conversations; they always have interesting things to say, but the words never call attention to themselves. That kind of discipline is an enviable quality for a screenwriter, especially one who also directs, and it’s part of what makes McCarthy such a great filmmaker. From his one misfire to his greatest achievement, here’s every Tom McCarthy film, ranked.
RELATED: Tom McCarthy on the Way ‘Stillwater’ Changed in the Editing Room
7. The Cobbler (2014)
What makes The Cobbler such a baffling misfire is that it didn’t have to be garbage. It could have been a perfectly lovely piece of magical realism, a Jewish fairy tale set in a New York neighborhood that still has a bit of Old World folklore in the air. Even the presence of Adam Sandler isn’t necessarily fatal, as he’s proven himself to be an excellent dramatic actor in movies like Uncut Gems and The Meyerowitz Stories. But Tom McCarthy’s story of a cobbler who can transform himself by wearing other people’s shoes makes the worst possible decision at every turn. Broad, hacky comedy? Syrupy sentimentality? Pernicious racial stereotypes? A scene where Sandler’s Max Simkin transforms into his estranged dad to go on a date with his dying mother? All that, and a third act twist that’s only the second most infuriating thing about this movie — besides the fact that the great Tom McCarthy was responsible for it.
6. Stillwater (2021)
Thankfully, there’s an enormous leap in quality between McCarthy’s worst and second-worst movies. Stillwater is by no means a bad film: it’s the kind of character study McCarthy does so well, but with a more uneasy, ambiguous tone than usual. Loosely based on the Amanda Knox case, Stillwater centers on an oil rig worker from Oklahoma (Matt Damon in blue-collar drag) who travels to France to free his daughter (Abigail Breslin), who he believes was falsely imprisoned for murder while studying abroad. McCarthy flirts with Trump-era subtext by putting Damon’s red-state dad in a foreign country, stubbornly refusing to learn the language; thankfully, he doesn’t belabor the point, instead focusing on the dynamics between Damon’s Bill, Breslin’s Allison, and a translator named Virginie (Camille Cottin). If there’s one major complaint, it’s that Stillwater doesn’t do justice to the real-life case it’s based on: while it’s mostly free of ripped-from-the-headlines sensationalism, the implication that Allison might not be totally innocent does a disservice to the completely acquitted Knox.
5. Win Win (2011)
McCarthy made his career out of understated character studies, but even by his standards Win Win is low-key. It’s set in Rhode Island, perhaps the least picturesque state in New England; its cast is populated by reliable, non-flashy actors like Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan, and Bobby Cannavale; the sport at its core is not football or baseball, but the unglamorous, singlet-clad world of high school wrestling. Win Win lacks the whimsy or the high stakes of McCarthy’s previous two films, and while it’s rarely boring it does sometimes feel as though it’s cooking at a bare simmer. All the same, this story about a lawyer/wrestling coach and the troubled grandson of a man he’s exploiting for a paycheck is thoughtful, funny, and deeply human; it understands its characters’ imperfections but never judges them too harshly. An exchange between Mike (Giamatti) and young Kyle (Alex Shaffer) illustrates Win Win’s forgiving, humanist heart: you shouldn’t smoke, but if you do, do it outside.
4. Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made (2020)
The first film McCarthy directed after the Oscar-winning triumph at #1 on this list was… a kids' movie? A kids' movie about a Segway-riding amateur detective and his imaginary polar bear friend? It’s not as much of a departure as one might think. McCarthy had already dabbled in child-friendly media - he helped formulate the story for Up, and co-wrote 2016’s Christopher Robin and the source material for Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made plays to McCarthy’s strengths. An imaginative, abrasive young boy who mistrusts authority and does battle with invading Russians, Timmy is a pint-sized version of past McCarthy curmudgeons. Played by Winslow Fegley, he behaves in an unusual, occasionally off-putting way because he’s filled with so much emotion and uncertainty that he has to direct it somewhere. Mistakes Were Made is funny, strange, and insightful. Refreshingly, it doesn’t end with the typical coming-of-age goodbye to childish things. Instead, Timmy’s off on another adventure, his trusty polar bear by his side.
3. The Visitor (2007)
The Visitor could have been a white savior narrative, a magical minority narrative, or a mealy-mouthed message movie. Instead, it’s a quiet, grounded, deeply sad picture of New York in the wake of 9/11. It achieves this by simply treating every character as a human being, and not as a symbol. Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins, a treasure) isn’t supposed to stand for all white people, or even all wealthy white New Yorkers: he’s just Walter Vale, a lonely, brittle widower who finds an immigrant couple living in his unused Manhattan apartment. A friendship develops between Walter and Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), not because the plot demands it but because it makes perfect sense for these two people to seek friendship with each other. The plot progresses from there, but it never feels like a tidy movie narrative: characters drop out without closure, and something terrible happens without warning. The Visitor touches on political themes, but it doesn’t puff its chest with its own capital-I Importance. It just tells a great story.
2. The Station Agent (2003)
In terms of sea-change movies whose journey began at the Sundance Film Festival - Clerks, Little Miss Sunshine, Get Out - The Station Agent is rarely mentioned. While it was only a modest box office hit, its blend of gentle quirk and emotional earnestness helped codify what is known as a “Sundance movie”. Even if it didn’t directly inspire movies like Garden State or, indeed, Little Miss Sunshine, it did directly inspire another movie: Up, which was modeled after The Station Agent even before Pixar brought McCarthy on board.
The narrative is a familiar one, at least in broad strokes. Fin (Peter Dinklage), a withdrawn man with dwarfism who has an abiding passion for trains, inherits an out-of-use train station in suburban New Jersey and makes his home there. It should come as no surprise that a small group of friends helps him lower his defenses and let love into his heart, but The Station Agent never feels sappy or manipulative. Part of it is McCarthy’s dialogue, which is easy, natural, and never calls attention to itself. Another part of it is the cast, all of whom put in great work: Dinklage, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Williams, and especially Patricia Clarkson, who is exquisite as an artist struggling with depression.
1. Spotlight (2015)
In some ways, Spotlight was something of a departure for Tom McCarthy. After a career consisting of small-scale, understated dramas, here was a movie about nothing less than the exposure of widespread sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. It was also his first movie based on true events, as well as his first movie where he wrote the screenplay with someone else (in this case, Josh Singer.) A movie about investigative journalists uncovering systemic abuse sounds like prime Oscar bait, but the stakes were still high for McCarthy: coming off The Cobbler’s catastrophic failure, he needed everything to go right.
That’s exactly what happened. Spotlight not only won McCarthy an Oscar, it was also his biggest success at the box office. All that considered, it’s his best movie all around. It’s clear that there’s another cook in the kitchen as, for instance, there are more big, showy monologues, but everything great about McCarthy’s style is here. There’s his dialogue, which is as realistic and sharply observed as always. There’s his ability to gather a fantastic cast, bringing on Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, and Mark Ruffalo. There’s his underrated ability to evoke a sense of place, with the fluorescent-lit offices of the Boston Globe adding to the tense, airless atmosphere. And as always, there’s his humanist worldview: instead of lionizing them, he portrays the flawed, exhausted members of the Spotlight team as nothing more and nothing less than humans at all times. Isn’t that enough?
