Darren Aronofsky: RANKED

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In honor of the release of his brand-new film Caught Stealing, which I think is one of the most flat-out entertaining movies he has ever made and without question one of the best films of 2025, I thought it was time to rank all of Darren Aronofsky’s films in order of my personal preference.

Darren Aronofsky is one of my favorite filmmakers and, in my opinion, one of the most important directors of his generation. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 12, 1969, to Charlotte and Abraham Aronofsky, both teachers of Polish-Jewish descent.

He grew up in Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn, went to Edward R. Murrow High School, and later Harvard, where he majored in social anthropology and became fascinated with filmmaking. After Harvard, he went on to the AFI Conservatory, where he studied directing.

His early influences were huge and varied: Kurosawa, Polanski, Fellini, Terry Gilliam, Cronenberg, even Satoshi Kon. You can see bits and pieces of all of them throughout his work.

He made his senior thesis short Supermarket Sweep in college, which became a Student Academy Award finalist, and in 1997 he founded Protozoa Pictures.

Then in 1998, Aronofsky exploded onto the scene with Pi, a surreal, black-and-white psychological thriller about math, paranoia, obsession, and God, made for practically no money.

It won him Best Director at Sundance and immediately marked him as a guy to watch. Right out of the gate he was daring, experimental, and unafraid to challenge audiences.

Then came Requiem for a Dream in 2000, which in my opinion remains one of the most overwhelming films ever made. Yes, it’s about drugs, but Aronofsky always said it was about much more than that, about addiction in every form: heroin, food, television, fame.

It’s a movie so relentless and so stylistically bold, with hip-hop montages, Snorricam shots, split-screens, and more than 2,000 cuts in a 100-minute runtime, that it leaves you wrecked. The last 20 minutes are some of the most intense in film history. I’ve only seen it once. I think it’s brilliant. I’ll probably never watch it again. It’s that devastating.

But the performances (Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, and especially Ellen Burstyn) are all extraordinary. That’s what makes Aronofsky great: even when he’s being visually outrageous and experimental, the characters stay human. The acting stays grounded.

Then in 2006, The Fountain, a romantic fantasy sci-fi about love, death, time, and eternity. Hugely ambitious, divisive, filled with dream logic and strange imagery.

Then The Wrestler in 2008, which might be his greatest film. A raw, stripped-down character study about broken bodies, faded fame, and desperation, anchored by Mickey Rourke’s career-best performance (he should have won the Oscar).

Rourke is supported by incredible work from Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, and Aronofsky’s direction is subtle, restrained, and beautiful.

In 2010 came Black Swan, which Aronofsky himself called a companion piece to The Wrestler. Where that movie was about wrestling as low art, Black Swan was about ballet as high art, but both were about people destroying their bodies for performance.

Natalie Portman is astonishing in it, she won the Oscar for Best Actress, and Aronofsky turns it into a full-on horror film, surreal, terrifying, and Polanski-esque.

Noah followed in 2014, his most commercial film at that point, a Biblical epic with Russell Crowe, but still weird and filled with Aronofsky’s ecological and spiritual obsessions.

mother! in 2017 is maybe his most difficult, experimental, and flat-out insane movie. It's a wild biblical allegory, an environmental parable, a fever dream of chaos and anxiety.

Jennifer Lawrence (in the best performance of her career), Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Ed Harris all dive into this madness. I hyperventilated during parts of it. It is one of the most anxiety-inducing films I have ever seen. People hated it. People loved it. I think it’s a masterpiece.

Then The Whale in 2022, adapted from a stage play, giving Brendan Fraser the role of his career and an Oscar for Best Actor. Intimate, heartbreaking, surreal, and deeply uncomfortable.

Then finally Caught Stealing in 2025, a dark comedy crime film, and maybe the most fun he’s ever allowed himself to have.

That’s Aronofsky in a nutshell. His movies are intense. They are challenging. They are violent, disturbing, sexual, surreal. They are not easy to recommend, because people stagger out of them. But they are unforgettable.

You don’t watch an Aronofsky movie lightly. You experience it. He is a master stylist, a provocateur, a visionary, and a guy who pushes actors to career-defining performances.

And yes, even outside of feature films he’s still experimenting. Postcard from Earth, his immersive film for the Las Vegas Sphere, is reportedly one of the most overwhelming cinematic experiences ever created. I haven’t seen it yet, but it sounds pure Aronofsky: daring, overwhelming, challenging.

So, with Caught Stealing now in theaters, it’s time. Here are all of Darren Aronofsky’s films, ranked in order of my personal preference.

No commentary in the list itself (just the titles and the trailers) but know that I love all of them. I don’t dislike any Aronofsky movie.

Even when they’re confusing or brutal or tough to sit through, I think he’s one of the most gifted filmmakers alive.

Here we go: