Letting go of the role she played in The Last Jedi, Laura Dern is still a very talented woman that’s been entertaining audiences since she was young girl and has endured her time in show business by getting better and better with each appearance. At times it seems that she almost disappears from the media and won’t appear for another year or two, but the truth is that she’s been pretty steady in her career and hasn’t really gone anywhere since one look at her resume is enough to see that she’s been working quite diligently to make a name for herself and to keep it. It’s exciting enough to note that she, along with Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum, have been pegged to star in the next Jurassic World movie, which means that since it’s the last one we might get to see a very impressive team of experts decide what needs to be done about the dinosaur epidemic that’s taken over.
Here are her five best movies.
5. Citizen Ruth
Janet Maslin of The New York Times treats this movie much like a comedy which is about the only way it could ever be construed as being something that’s anything but highly disturbing since quite honestly Ruth is just one of the worst people alive. She’s hooked on drugs, cares nothing for her children or her own welfare, and is seemingly willing to do anything for money since that seems to be her driving desire in life. Somehow though she still seems to elicit sympathy in individuals that want to see if they can sway her to have an abortion or not have an abortion when she finds out that she’s pregnant.
4. Wild
Dern has a limited role in this movie but her character does serve as a big inspiration to the lead since Cheryl’s mother is a big reason why she has the inspiration and the determination to go through with a hike that might be the end of a lot of other people. Movies based on true stories do tend to embellish a bit here and there and make it hard to see just what really happened, but sometimes the movies end up being so inspirational that it doesn’t really matter. It’s easy enough with movies like this to go and find the real story that inspired them so as to get the facts and discover for yourself what really happened.
3. Mask
This is one of those movies that hits you right in the feels and doesn’t let up since Rocky’s condition is one that you don’t tend to see or even hear about all that often but is definitely one that would cause people to treat a person differently. Rocky seems to take it pretty well though as he learns how to make friends and even talks to a young woman. Of course when things fall apart though and his life takes a downturn he finds it harder and harder to cope when the people in his life have to move on and the world he knew is forced to change in many drastic ways. It’s a story that’s not entirely fair, but reminds you that the world isn’t fair no matter how we want it to be.
2. Jurassic Park
As I mentioned and as Mike Fleming Jr. of Deadline and many other publications have gone on to state Dern will hopefully be making her way back to the big screen for Jurassic World, but she did help a lot when it came to rounding out the cast on the first movie. How many people remember that this was the movie that started it all and that Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard had nothing to do with it initially? Those of us that are old enough can probably still here the T. Rex roaring throughout the theater thanks to the insanely impressive sound system and the acoustics that were perfect for this epic feature.
1. I Am Sam
She wasn’t much of a presence in this movie to start with but when Lucy was given to a foster family due to Sam being deemed as unfit to take care of her the young girl was fairly defiant after a while, especially when she and her father reconciled and she decided that she wanted to go home. If you didn’t snicker and laugh at the image of Lucy sneaking out of her foster parents’ home each night to quiz her father on certain things he needed to know, or didn’t feel a few tears spring up when Miranda brought Lucy home one final time and admitted to Sam that he was a good parent, then you might need to watch this movie again and open your heart a little more.
She’s a great actress, there’s no doubt of that, but no more Star Wars roles please.
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