Kathryn Bigelow: RANKED
- Oct 28
- 9 min read
Kathryn Bigelow is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time. Period. I think her work is stunning. She’s an artist, a technician, a visual stylist, and a total badass who has worked in the kinetic, muscular, testosterone-heavy world of action and thriller cinema for most of her career, a genre long dominated by male directors, and she didn’t just step into it, she detonated it.
This is not the kind of career you’d normally associate with a female filmmaker, which is of course both unfortunate and unfair. But Bigelow burst through that wall early on and made a name for herself by directing some of the most visceral, smart, beautifully shot, and brilliantly edited thrillers and action films ever made.
Kathryn Ann Bigelow was born on November 27, 1951, in San Carlos, California, an only child raised by a librarian mother and a paint factory manager father. She studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute before heading to New York for the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, where she was mentored by none other than Susan Sontag and Brice Marden.
That’s wild to me. Before she even picked up a movie camera, she was literally hanging out in the art world loft scene of 1970s New York: Vito Acconci, Philip Glass, conceptual artists, theory, performance, the whole thing. She had the brain of a critic and the eye of a painter before she ever became a filmmaker.
Then she goes to Columbia, studies film theory and criticism under the likes of Edward Said, Andrew Sarris, and Peter Wollen (that’s serious pedigree) and from that mix of fine art, conceptual theory, and pure love of cinema, Kathryn Bigelow the filmmaker was born.
She co-directed her first feature, The Loveless (1981), with Monty Montgomery. The Loveless is a moody, beautifully shot biker film that also just happened to introduce the world to Willem Dafoe. That’s right: Kathryn Bigelow gave Willem Dafoe his first starring role. So, yeah, we can thank her for that.
Then she starts building this incredible filmography that fuses her art-school intellect with pure genre thrill. She knows how to craft suspense, how to shoot motion, how to make images move. Her camera isn’t just recording action... it’s participating in it.
She’s all about kinetic filmmaking, visceral texture, and emotional velocity. And she works with incredible cinematographers and editors, always emphasizing rhythm, movement, and visual clarity.
She’s inspired by great male directors, sure (you can see traces of Sam Peckinpah, Walter Hill, William Friedkin, Sergio Leone), but she matches them in every way and often outdoes them. She’s just as sharp, just as tough, just as fearless, and a hell of a lot smarter than most.
And yes, let’s say it: she’s a much more interesting, much better filmmaker than her ex-husband, the wildly overrated James Cameron. Sorry, but it’s true. She took a couple of his stories and made them infinitely more complex and visually poetic than he ever could.
Her early solo films: Near Dark (1987), Blue Steel (1990), Point Break (1991), are textbook examples of why she’s a master of cinematic tension.
Near Dark is, in my opinion, the greatest vampire movie ever made. It’s a horror-western hybrid that’s gorgeous, violent, romantic, and tragic. Not once does anyone even use the word “vampire” in the film. That’s how good she is at reimagining genre.
Blue Steel, with Jamie Lee Curtis, is a terrifying and beautifully constructed thriller (one of the best of the ’90s) and Point Break, well, it goes without saying, is one of the greatest action movies of all time. That movie is pure adrenaline, pure Bigelow. The surfing, the skydiving, the bank robberies, all of those sequences are flawless. No one shoots action like she does. No one.
Then there’s Strange Days (1995), a dark, violent, cyberpunk vision of the future that remains criminally underrated. It’s prophetic, brutal, and sexy as hell, and it features incredible performances from Ralph Fiennes (the best of his career, honestly), Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis. It was ahead of its time in every way. People didn’t know what to do with it then, but now it feels visionary.
The only film of hers that doesn’t completely work for me is The Weight of Water (2000). It’s not bad, far from it, but it’s wildly uneven. The dual timelines don’t fully gel; the modern story with Sean Penn and Elizabeth Hurley doesn’t work as well as the historical storyline with Sarah Polley, which is actually quite effective.
Still, even her weakest film is more interesting and beautifully made than most of what Hollywood churns out in a given year.
Then she came back swinging with K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), which is the biggest-budget film of her career, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson. A tense, claustrophobic submarine thriller that can stand proudly alongside The Hunt for Red October, Crimson Tide, or even Das Boot. Totally underrated, beautifully crafted, loaded with suspense.
After that, she took a break (six years off) and then came roaring back with The Hurt Locker (2009). And everything changed. That movie blew the doors off. She became the first woman ever to win the Academy Award for Best Director, which is both incredible and ridiculous that it took that long.
The Hurt Locker deserved every bit of praise it got, it’s raw, intense, brilliantly edited, and stripped of ego. It’s about obsession, addiction, and the horrifying allure of danger. It’s one of the greatest war films ever made.
Then she followed that with Zero Dark Thirty (2012), which was another powerhouse. An intense procedural thriller about the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, featuring a career-defining performance from Jessica Chastain. It’s razor-sharp filmmaking, politically charged, and utterly relentless.
Then in 2017, she made Detroit, one of the most powerful, harrowing films of the 2010s, a furious, gripping, deeply emotional depiction of police brutality and the 1967 Detroit uprising. The performances (especially John Boyega, Anthony Mackie, and a terrifying Will Poulter) are astonishing. It’s a tough film, but it’s necessary.
And now, eight years later, she’s back with A House of Dynamite (2025), her new Netflix thriller about White House officials scrambling to respond to an incoming missile strike aimed at Chicago. I mean, come on... if that doesn’t sound like the most suspenseful movie of the year, I don’t know what does.
It’s the perfect continuation of her career-long obsession with tension, fear, and human behavior under pressure.
I had the unbelievable honor of meeting Kathryn Bigelow once, back in 1990. She came into WGN Radio with Jamie Lee Curtis to promote Blue Steel, one of my favorite thrillers of that era.
That’s two of my all-time favorite people in one studio: Jamie Lee Curtis, my forever crush, and Kathryn Bigelow, one of my all-time favorite directors. It was heaven.
I asked her what she was working on next, and she said, “Oh, this little surfer bank robbery movie.” That little movie, of course, turned out to be Point Break. Legendary.
Bigelow’s personal life and background are as fascinating as her filmography. She’s modeled, acted, made music videos, taught at CalArts, studied under Susan Sontag, collaborated with conceptual artists, and directed episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, Wild Palms, and Karen Sisco.
She’s a true renaissance woman (painter, theorist, teacher, model, filmmaker) and everything she’s touched, she’s elevated. She’s a visual artist who happens to make thrillers that blow your face off.
Her craftsmanship is immaculate. Her eye is painterly. Her control of suspense is Hitchcockian. And her ability to build long, sustained sequences of tension and movement is unmatched.
She’s made masterpieces, she’s made underappreciated gems, and even her lesser work shows her fingerprints all over it. She is, without question, one of the most important filmmakers of the modern era, maybe the most important when it comes to redefining what “action” means in cinema.
So here we are. Eleven feature films (no TV work, no shorts, just the movies) all directed by the incredible Kathryn Bigelow. I love all of them.
The only one I have real issues with is The Weight of Water, so you’ll see that one at the bottom. But everything else? Gold. Some of them masterpieces. All of them essential.
Without further ado, here they are: the eleven feature films of Kathryn Bigelow, ranked in order of my personal preference.
KATHRYN BIGELOW'S FILMS (in order of my preference):
The best vampire movie ever made, and it never once uses the word vampire. That’s how confident this film is. It’s a blood-soaked neo-western, a love story, a road movie, and a tragedy rolled into one, and it’s shot like pure, smoky Americana nightmare fuel.
Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein (all Aliens vets) create this dirty, violent family of immortals, and the result is equal parts terrifying and gorgeous. A perfect blend of horror, action, and poetry.
One of the greatest action movies of all time. Full stop. Surfers, skydiving, bank robberies, and philosophy. Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze are like mythic figures, and Bigelow directs the hell out of every single frame.
It’s beautiful and insane, adrenaline-fueled but spiritual. Nobody shoots action this cleanly, this elegantly, this thrillingly. “Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true.” No hesitation here... this is an all-timer.
Dark, grimy, violent, and way ahead of its time. This movie predicted the future: virtual reality, digital voyeurism, the commodification of trauma.
Ralph Fiennes gives the best performance of his career, Angela Bassett is a powerhouse, and Juliette Lewis is hypnotic. It’s cyberpunk noir drenched in neon and sweat. People didn’t get it when it came out... but now? It feels prophetic. I watch it every New Year’s Eve. It’s dangerous, sexy, and absolutely brilliant.
The film that shattered the Academy’s glass ceiling and made history. Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director, and she did it by delivering one of the most nerve-shredding war movies ever made. Every scene is pure tension, with bombs, adrenaline, obsession.
Jeremy Renner has never been better. It’s not political, it’s personal, it's about addiction to danger and the impossibility of coming home. An absolute masterclass in suspense and restraint.
Raw, brutal, and devastating. Bigelow’s most emotionally charged movie, a deeply angry and empathetic film about systemic racism, police brutality, and the 1967 Detroit uprising. It feels like it’s happening in real time, it is claustrophobic, urgent, and gut-wrenching.
The performances are extraordinary, especially Will Poulter (terrifying), John Boyega (haunted), and Anthony Mackie (heartbreaking). It’s a tough watch, but it’s essential. Bigelow doesn’t flinch, and she forces us to confront.
A criminally underrated thriller and one of the best movies of the early ’90s. Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie cop being stalked by Ron Silver, who gives one of the great psycho performances of the decade. It’s stylish, scary, and shockingly intense.
I adore Jamie Lee, and Bigelow was incredible. This movie still holds up as a high-water mark of sleek, sexy suspense filmmaking.
Her newest and maybe most technically impressive work... the Queen of Suspense back in full control. A nuclear missile is launched toward Chicago, and a roomful of White House officials has minutes to respond.
It’s tense, claustrophobic, brilliantly shot, and terrifyingly plausible. Bigelow proves she’s still got it. She is still the master of pressure, panic, and humanity under fire. One of the most suspenseful films of the year, no question.
A cold, focused procedural about obsession, information, and the moral weight of vengeance. Jessica Chastain owns this film, she is steely, brilliant, exhausted. Bigelow builds it like an investigation, precise, relentless, and gripping.
The final raid sequence is one of the tensest things she’s ever directed. It’s controversial, sure, but it’s also brilliant, intelligent filmmaking that forces you to think about the cost of certainty.
Her debut, co-directed with Monty Montgomery, and it already shows that painter’s eye and sense of danger. A moody, atmospheric biker film that doubles as a portrait of small-town decay.
Willem Dafoe’s first major role, and he’s magnetic, all menace and mystery. It’s stylish, slow-burn, and undeniably cool. You can see the seeds of her later work, with violence, beauty, rebellion, and longing.
Big-budget, all-male, claustrophobic submarine thriller, and one of the most underrated movies of its kind. Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson, Cold War tension, and nuclear meltdown anxiety.
Bigelow takes a familiar genre and fills it with moral weight and unbearable suspense. It’s Das Boot meets Crimson Tide, but with her precision and intensity. It flopped theatrically, unfairly, but it’s a terrific, beautifully made film that deserves rediscovery.
Easily her weakest film, but still interesting and gorgeously shot. It’s two timelines (one modern, one historical) and while the 19th-century story with Sarah Polley works beautifully, the modern subplot with Sean Penn and Elizabeth Hurley just never gels.
But even when Bigelow misses, her ambition shows. You can still feel her command of tone, her eye for detail, and her willingness to take risks. Not a great movie, but unmistakably her.
There it is: Kathryn Bigelow’s 11 feature films ranked. From desert vampires to war zones, from skydiving surfers to political paranoia, she’s proven over and over that she’s one of the greatest living filmmakers.
Every frame she’s ever shot hums with energy, intelligence, and tension. She paints in motion, sculpts in sound, and turns pure adrenaline into art.
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