Naomi Watts is regarded as one of the most talented actors of her time. Watts has done it all, from compelling award-nominated dramas to indie comedies, daring genre fare, collaborations with renowned auteurs, and even a recurring role on Twin Peaks: The Return. She’s been nominated for two Academy Awards and has a long list of box office hits, and she’s still adding interesting new parts to her resume. There aren’t many of her peers who have accomplished as much as she has. Below are some of Naomi Watts best films.
1. Eastern Promises (2007)
Director- David Cronenberg
Tatiana, a Russian pregnant girl, comes in a London hospital bleeding, and the doctors only preserve her baby. Anna Khitrova, a Russian descendent midwife, discovers Tatiana’s journal in Russian in her luggage. She decides to locate her family to deliver the baby. She carries the diary home and asks her uncle Stepan to translate the document. Stepan refuses, but Anna discovers a card for a Russian restaurant run by Semyon within the diary. She goes to see him in the hopes of finding a path to contact Tatiana’s family. Semyon offers to translate the document as soon as she acknowledges the presence of the diary.
Stepan, on the other hand, interprets a portion of the diary. Anna learns that Semyon and his sick son Kirill raped Tatiana when she was fourteen years old. Also, forcing her to work as a prostitute in their own brothel. Semyon is also the violent ruler of the Russian mafia “Vory v Zakone”. He is putting Anna and her family’s safety in jeopardy. Meanwhile, Nikolai Luzhin, Semyon’s driver, becomes close to Kirill and Semyon, climbing the criminal organization’s ranks. But also assists Anna, her family, and the baby.
2. Mulholland Drive (2001)
Director- David Lynch
Betty, the wide-eyed actress, arrives in bustling, sun-kissed Hollywood, untarnished by the predatory film industry’s false promises. Betty comes into Aunt Ruth’s fancy apartment, brimming with hope and anxious to spread her wings and prove her value. Unbeknownst to her, fate has other plans in store for her, setting the stage for life-altering experiences with the unexpected. The indecipherable, and the unknown. A strange key to a mysterious keyhole, an even stranger indigo-blue cube, the young director, Adam, and one cryptic woman. The amnesiac brunette and devilishly seductive car-crash survivor, Rita. They now lie at the heart of an elaborate labyrinth of half-truths, faded memories, unrequited loves. Along with dangerous encounters with the city’s ugly face. However, time passes, and Rita’s enigmatic past demands answers. Both ladies, after all, are entitle to the truth.
3. 21 Grams (2003)
Director- Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Within a nonlinear plot, the film recounts three intertwining stories, with each core performer delivering terrible emotional moments. Cristina Peck is a heroin addict in remission who lives happily with her supportive husband Paul. When ex-convict Jack Jordan gets freed from jail, Cristina’s world is turned upside down. Jordan was responsible for the hit-and-run death of Cristina’s previous husband and children. Cristina is heartbroken and enraged, and Naomi Watts performance perfectly depicts the agony of having to relive wounds that you thought were healed.
4. The Impossible (2012)
Director- J.A. Bayona
Henry, Maria, and their three sons, all from the United Kingdom, begin their Christmas vacation in a tranquil seaside resort in Khao Lak, Thailand. However, when a series of massive tidal surges smash the area on Boxing Day, killing over 200,000 people, the tourists will be violently divided. Now, as the death toll from the horrific 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami continues to grow, the severely injured mother must muster the fortitude to stay alive with her elder son, while a desperate father and his two young children must try everything possible to locate them. In the midst of anguish, tangled debris, and death, the heroic survivors must summon the courage to hold on to hope and beg for the impossible to become possible.
5. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Director- Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Riggan Thomson is a British actor who played the classic superhero “Birdman” for almost 20 years. Now in his forties, he’s making his Broadway debut with “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” a drama based on a Raymond Carver novel. He’ll play out the show previews with the help of his assistant and daughter Sam, as well as his producer Jake, even when a talented actor he hired, Mike Shiner, acts arbitrarily, the internal issues between him and the other casts, his futile maximum efforts to critics, and the unexpected voices of his old character- the Birdman, all push his sanity until the first debut show.
6. While We’re Young (2014)
Josh and Cornelia are in their 40s and married, but they aren’t old and boring yet, are they? He has been attempting to make a documentary for the past ten years in order to escape Cornelia’s famous documentary filmmaker father’s shadow. Josh meets Jamie, a young aspiring filmmaker who had seen Josh’s first film, in a class he teaches, and the two fall in love right away. Josh imagines himself and Cornelia to be like Jamie and his teenage girlfriend Darby. They cling to the present, reject new technology, and revere the past. Josh gradually transforms into a new-age hippie with Jamie-like characteristics. Josh is also introduced to a new documentary filmmaking technique by Jamie. He can get investors, but in this struggle of new vs. conventional, young vs. old, and maturity vs. immaturity, Josh’s route may not be worth the price.
7. Stay (2005)
Director- Marc Forster
Sam Foster, a prominent New York psychiatrist who is filling in for a sick colleague, is confronted with disturbed art student Henry Letham. Henry reveals that he would kill himself Saturday at midnight—the moment he turns 21–apparently inspired by his idol, a painter famous for committing suicide on his 21st birthday. Foster, who had previously saved his suicidal lover Lila, takes the threat seriously, but fails to have Henry arrested. Instead, while attempting to locate his patient, Sam becomes increasingly immersed in Henry’s obsessions.
8. King Kong (2005)
Director- Peter Jackson
Carl Denham, a visionary but financially strapped filmmaker, convinces Ann Darrow, a down-and-out New York City Vaudeville actress, to accompany him to Singapore for his impending film extravaganza at the height of the Great Depression. Instead, the party finds themselves in the back of beyond, in the impenetrable jungles of Skull Island, home to terrible primaeval treasures and the enigmatic land of Kong, the all-powerful eight-metre-tall silverback gorilla. Now, while the enormous ape takes the flaxen-haired protagonist hostage, a small band of brave but insignificant defenders must fight tooth and nail against fearsome foes and the isle’s strong monarch, all while the manipulating filmmaker captures incredible raw video.
9. Demolition (2015)
Direction- Jean-Marc Vallée
Davis, a wealthy private equity fund partner, is struggling following the sad death of his wife in a vehicle accident. Davis continues to collapse despite efforts from his father-in-law, Phil, to get it together. What begins as a letter of complaint to a vending machine company evolves into a series of letters disclosing stunning personal revelations. Karen, a customer service representative, is drawn to Davis’ letters, and the two strike up an odd friendship despite her own emotional and financial struggles. Davis begins to rebuild with the help of Karen and her son Chris, beginning with the deconstruction of the life he formerly knew.
10. Fair Game (2010)
Director- Doug Liman
Valerie Plame, a CIA supervisor of covert operations, is tasked with determining whether Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons in the run-up to the Iraq War. She secretly interviews Iraqi scientists and advises that her husband travel to Niger to look into a claim from the Vice President’s office that Iraq purchased enriched uranium there. Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson, argues in the New York Times that the report is untrue as the country goes to war, in part because of the President’s allegation that the sale took transpired. To shift the focus, the White House smears the pair. Their marriage begins to crack as her career is wrecked and his reputation is questioned.
