Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has enjoyed a rapid rise to prominence since his breakout year in 2018, but which of his movies ranks best? Born July 15th, 1986, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s road to stardom has been a continuous road of self-improvement and discovery in an effort to find his limits, as described by Abdul Mateen himself (via Wall Street Journal Magazine). In this way, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s early years represent perpetual motion, with the New Orleans-born actor competing as a hurdler for the California Golden Bears and working as a city planner in San Francisco before pursuing his passion for acting full time.
Abdul-Mateen has not looked back since landing the part of Clarence “Cadillac” Caldwell in Baz Luhrmann’s 2016 musical drama series The Get Down. In the subsequent whirlwind six years, Abdul-Mateen has enjoyed a meteoric rise en route to becoming one of the most sought-after actors in contemporary culture, owed in part to his incredible range that has seen the New Orleans-born actor star in a diverse range of genres, including sci-fi, horror, drama, and biopics. Alongside taking home three awards as part of The Trial of the Chicago 7‘s star ensemble, Abdul-Mateen has also won the Critics’ Choice Super Award for Best Actor in a Horror Movie after his chilling performance in Nia DaCosta’s Candyman reboot. Abdul-Mateen’s most recent role is in Michael Bay’s break-neck speed thriller Ambulance, in which he plays the affable bank robber Will Sharp.
As a result, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s body of work since 2016 is a slim yet high-quality collection. From big-budget blockbusters such as James Wan’s Aquaman to the more nuanced storytelling of Boundaries, Abdul-Mateen’s credits are already as eclectic as they are impressive. Here’s every Yahya Abdul-Mateen II movie ranked from worst to best, including Ambulance.
Shawn Christensen’s indie drama The Vanishing of Sidney Hall is a tremendously misguided piece of filmmaking that pedals casual misogyny with almost every narrative development. The Vanishing of Sidney Hall centers on a titular writer as he cheats and boozes his way across the united states, leaving a trail of heartbreak and trauma in his wake. Christensen’s almost risibly self-assured indie flick is essentially an appeal to the male ego and fantasy interchangeably, with even a stellar cast of Michelle Monaghan, Kyle Chandler, and Elle Fanning unable to save it from itself. Mercifully, Yahya Abdul Mateen II’s part in the movie is rather minor as his first credited role, with Abdul-Mateen playing an English teacher who encourages Sidney’s (Hunters‘ Logan Lerman) writing despite his inappropriate remarks to the rest of his high school class.
Sporting the cringe-inducing tagline “Beaches Ain’t Ready” in the majority of its marketing materials means Seth Gordon’s Baywatch reboot was never destined to be nuanced entertainment. The sad truth about Baywatch, however, is that it beelines for the grossly outdated “jiggle factor” of its tv predecessor without giving a second thought to a cohesive narrative or building a semblance of multi-dimensional characters. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s performance is, unfortunately, as ham-fisted as the rest here, with his bumbling Sergeant Garner Ellerbee going through the typical “you’re alright kid” cycle of distrusting the protagonists before arriving to help at the end following a change of heart.
Zeresenay Berhane Mehari’s Sweetness in the Belly follows Lilly (Dakota Fanning), a British girl raised as a Muslim in Morocco after being abandoned by her parents. As a young woman in the early 1970s, she is sent to Ethiopia, where she falls in love with a doctor named Aziz (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), but they are separated when the Ethiopian Civil War begins. Based on the riveting Camilla Gibb novel, Sweetness in the Belly failed to hit the heights of its source material upon its 2019 release, in part due to the allegations of whitewashing surrounding the movie’s lead role. However, more pertinent here is the fact that Mehari’s adaptation spends too little time on Lilly’s familial struggles, which serves to lessen the movie’s final, emotional coda.
Netflix’s All Day and a Night amounts to an extremely frustrating feature, with the movie’s excellent themes and performances counterbalanced by a tired, cliched plot. All Day and a Night sees aspiring rapper Jahkor Lincoln (Ashton Sanders) arrive in prison to serve a life sentence for murder before looking back on the days preceding his arrest and the circumstances of his childhood to find clues to his way forward in life and his survival. Director Joe Robert Cole’s movie is littered with stellar turns, with Jeffrey Wright’s JD and Adbul-Mateen’s Big Stunna just two such examples. These, however, are tempered by All Day and a Night‘s lack of imagination, with the movie’s narrative a pale imitation of Craig Brewer’s cult classic Hustle & Flow.
The 2018 comedy-drama Boundaries is propped up almost single-handedly by the seminal Christopher Plummer, whose turn as the pot-dealing, free-spirited Jack Jaconi is a far cry from his usual sage roles. Yet Plummer’s excellence alone cannot save Boundaries from otherwise being a run-of-the-mill coming of age story in which an estranged father manages to find his daughter and her family once again, with even the normally excellent Vera Farmiga seemingly bogged down in Boundaries‘ minutiae. Although Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s cameo as Serge here is rather brief, Boundaries marks the start of his meteoric rise as an actor, with Abdul-Mateen landing his Aquaman part off the back of this film.
Based on the story and life of P.T. Barnum, creator of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Greatest Showman is raucous musical entertainment that acts as a vehicle for the talents of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. As a musical entry, The Greatest Showman shines brightly, creating a spectacle worthy of Broadway as Hugh Jackman’s Barnum galavants across late 1800s New York City. However, as a movie, The Greatest Showman pales in comparison to its soundtrack, with much of the film’s narrative structure almost created entirely to house Pasek and Paul’s music rather than focussing on Barnum’s eccentricity and singular drive that made him a household name.
Although failing to capture the sheer verve and originality of the first Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections is still a solid return to the Wachowski’s dystopian future. The Matrix Resurrections is a film steeped in nostalgia, treating audiences to flashbacks and re-runs of classic Matrix moments while still attempting to move forward with its use of updated technologies such as Swarm Bots and Portals. Lambert Wilson’s cameo as the exiled Merovingian is the pinnacle of Revolutions‘ new cutting-edge satire, with the now devolved character ranting about the ills of social media plaguing the Matrix’s inhabitants. While a far from a perfect movie, The Matrix Resurrections does act as a signpost for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s burgeoning contemporary draw, with his faux-Morpheus performance another nostalgic wrinkle within Resurrections‘ complex aesthetic makeup.
Standing as a stark silhouette against the grinding tedium of the majority of the DCEU entries at the time, 2018’s Aquaman is bombastic, all-action superhero fare that veers between feeling like a melodrama and a satire interchangeably. Arthur Curry’s (Jason Momoa) origin story is undoubtedly grandiose and is made all the more verbose by James Wan’s gleeful direction, with his remit seemingly to make the most loudly entertaining movie he possibly can. This is not to say Aquaman is without its flaws, containing the usual cheesy superhero dialogue and some questionable CGI, but it is nevertheless a must-watch feature as a testament to making superhero movies as fun as they can possibly be.
Ambulance is the kind of fast-paced actioner whose trailer and premise belie its substantial entertainment. Ambulance marks a triumphant return to form from director Michael Bay, with Ambulance garnering the highest ratings of any of his films since 1996’s The Rock. Following a series of flawed Transformers entries, Michael Bay’s Ambulance appears designed to restart his Hollywood career and take the director back to the no-holds-barred style of direction that made him such a singular directorial proposition, to begin with. This consensus is owed not only to Bay’s break-neck speed direction but also to standout performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II who sparkle as the oft-maligned Sharp brothers in his latest offering.
Netflix’s First Match is a movie that firmly falls into the “hidden gem” category, housing a breakout performance from Elvire Emmanuel and cementing Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s credentials as a top-tier actor. First Match follows Monique, who, hardened by years in foster care, decides that joining the all-boys wrestling team is the only way back to her estranged father. The beauty of First Match is director Olivia Newman’s willingness to tell a rough-around-the-edges story that grapples with the complexity of father-daughter relationships while perfectly encapsulating each character’s desperation regarding feeling stuck in their respective situations.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman reboot is a majestic movie that effortlessly weaves horror overtures with a riveting social commentary to create a unique spectacle. Alongside legendary horror screenwriter Jordan Peele, DaCosta intertwines elements from Bernard Rose’s original Candyman and its Clive Barker source material to placate Candyman franchise fans, while also adding a new twist on the creeping dread that Cabrini Green elicits in its various forms. Whereas Bernard Rose’s movie spoke on White anxieties and the image of the Black community in 1992, DaCosta expands this taut conversation and artfully widens Candyman to fit a contemporary, yet equally troubling, lens. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is also riveting as Anthony McCoy here, as his obsession with the Candyman urban legend takes him into increasingly harrowing territory. This is to say nothing of Candyman‘s gruesome finale that brings McCoy’s heritage into sharp, skin-crawling focus as Barker’s legend takes flight once more.
With an awe-inspiring ensemble cast including Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, John Carroll Lynch, Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Jeremy Strong, Damian Young, and Ben Shenkman, Aaron Sorkin’s riveting based on a true story narrative was always likely to be a riveting piece of cinema. This turned out to be exactly the case, with The Trial of the Chicago 7 taking home a slew of prestigious awards in 2020 for its portrayal of the real Chicago Seven and their part in inciting the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Put simply, The Trial of the Chicago 7 sheds light on some shocking home truths that, while being featured in a dramatization, are even more real and biting in contemporary culture – making it a compelling offering from Netflix and Sorkin alike.
The beauty of Jordan Peele’s Us is how, despite its clear messages of race, family, and the self-serving nature of capitalist culture, the film’s ultimate meaning is left open to debate. With this in mind, Us‘ doppelgangers are as ambiguous as they are terrifying, stepping back and forth from the shadows and tethered to “our” plane of existence with little overt explanation. These “Tethered” could ostensibly be the worst reflections of the self, or equally, they could represent a different walk of life mirrored back at the viewer, as well as contain myriad other meanings depending on viewpoint. This knawing, nuanced terror is what Peele does best, with Us acting as a towering achievement that cemented his status as a singular talent in 2019 following Get Out‘s success. Us is also considered a huge springboard for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II‘s career in 2019, with his riveting flashback performance as Russel Thomas/Weyland carrying more than a shade of Candyman‘s Anthony McCoy that would arrive just two years later.