Top 13 Brie Larson Movies, Ranked

What happens when an actor refuses to coast on charm alone and keeps choosing roles that actually cost something? You get a filmography as varied and surprising as Brie Larson’s. At TV Hulk, we ranked these performances by how much they stayed with us: the moments where she disappeared so completely into a character that you forgot you were watching an actor work, where the camera caught something in her eyes or the set of her jaw that felt genuinely unguarded. From intimate indie group homes to billion-dollar superhero franchises, Larson has built a body of work that consistently rewards close attention and repeat viewing. The range on display across these films is striking, and the commitment she brings to each one never wavers. Here are her 13 best films, ranked from good to unforgettable.

13. Fast X (2023)

Tess is a new face in a franchise running for over two decades, and Larson steps into that world with a relaxed confidence that makes the transition feel natural. She holds her own alongside Vin Diesel and Jason Momoa, and there’s a sharpness to how she plays Tess’s loyalty that hints at more interesting things to come. The film is overstuffed in the way late-era Fast movies tend to be, squeezing her for screen time, but the moment she squares off against Dante’s chaos without flinching, you can see exactly where the franchise wants to take her. With over $700 million at the worldwide box office, Fast X is a massive commercial platform, and Larson uses her limited space well enough to leave you wanting more from Tess.

12. Unicorn Store (2017)

Kit refuses to grow up in the way the world keeps insisting she should, and Larson commits to that refusal completely, playing her with a wide-eyed sincerity that never tips into parody. The fact that she also directed the film gives the whole thing a personal quality you can feel in every scene: the glitter-soaked art school sequences, the painful family dinners where Kit’s parents exchange worried glances, the moment she walks into a mysterious store and decides, against all adult logic, to believe in what she finds there. The film doesn’t always land its tonal shifts, but Larson the performer never wavers. Her willingness to look strange and exposed on screen makes Kit someone you root for even when the story around her loses its footing.

11. The Gambler (2014)

Amy Phillips exists somewhere in the orbit of a man who is actively trying to destroy himself, and Larson plays that gravitational pull with a quiet intensity that the film around her doesn’t always earn. In her scenes with Mark Wahlberg, she finds a way to render Amy’s attraction complicated rather than convenient: there’s a scene where she watches Jim Bennett lecture a classroom and you can see her working out, in real time, whether this person is worth the trouble. It’s a small, precise moment in a movie that tends toward the grandiose. Sitting between her indie breakthrough in Short Term 12 and everything that came after, The Gambler is an easy entry to overlook in her filmography, but Amy is more carefully drawn than the film’s reputation suggests.

10. 21 Jump Street (2012)

Molly Tracey is the cool girl at school who turns out to be a good person through and through, and Larson plays that combination with enough warmth and comic instinct that she never feels like a plot device. The scene where Channing Tatum’s Schmidt fumbles through trying to impress her while completely misreading every social cue is funnier because of how Molly reacts: not with cruelty, but with a kind of amused patience that makes her instantly likable. The film became one of the sharper studio comedies of its era, grossing over $200 million worldwide, and Larson’s performance is a big reason why the romantic subplot actually works. She plays straight-faced cool without ever becoming a prop for someone else’s joke.

9. Free Fire (2016)

Justine is the only person in Ben Wheatley’s single-location shootout who seems to have a functioning brain, and Larson leans into that with a dry, sardonic energy that’s a pleasure to watch. When everyone around her is either panicking or posturing, she delivers lines with a flat, almost bored precision that gets funnier the more chaotic the situation becomes. There’s a moment midway through where she’s pinned behind cover, negotiating between two groups of armed idiots, and she plays it with the exhausted patience of someone who knew this was going to happen. It’s a side of Larson that most of her dramatic work doesn’t get to explore, and Justine stands out as proof that she can hold a room even when the room is actively on fire.

8. Just Mercy (2019)

Eva Ansley is not the center of this story, and Larson knows it. Her performance as Bryan Stevenson’s colleague and co-founder of the Equal Justice Initiative is built on restraint: she listens more than she speaks, reacts more than she drives scenes, and lets Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx carry the emotional weight of the foreground. But in quieter moments, particularly when Eva is processing the human cost of the work, you feel the weight she’s carrying without Larson ever announcing it. The film’s civil rights legal drama is grounded and serious, and her understated presence gives it a steady emotional anchor. It’s a reminder that stepping back from the spotlight is its own kind of skill, and she does it here without disappearing entirely.

7. Trainwreck (2015)

Kim is the responsible sister, the one who has her life together, the one who keeps showing up to clean up messes she didn’t make, and Larson plays all of that without ever making Kim feel like a scold. Her chemistry with Amy Schumer feels completely lived-in, like these two actually grew up together and have the specific shorthand to prove it. The scene at their father’s funeral, where Kim has to hold herself together while Schumer’s Amy falls apart, is the emotional core of the film, and Larson handles it with a warmth that earns every laugh and every tear. Trainwreck was a massive mainstream hit, and it introduced Larson to a comedy audience right before Room arrived and reshaped how people thought about her entirely.

6. The Glass Castle (2017)

Jeannette Walls spent her childhood loving a father who was brilliant, charismatic, and completely unable to care for his family, and Larson carries that contradiction across decades of screen time without resolving it too neatly. The film moves between Jeannette as a child and as an adult building a new life in New York, and in the adult sections Larson holds the tension between resentment and devotion in the same breath. There’s a scene where she confronts Rex Walls (Woody Harrelson) about the gap between who he promised to be and who he actually was, and she plays it without tipping into either forgiveness or condemnation. That kind of emotional precision gets lost in a crowded release year, making The Glass Castle one of the more underappreciated entries in her dramatic work.

5. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

Envy Adams walks into Scott Pilgrim’s world and immediately shrinks everyone else in the room, and Larson plays that power with a cool, almost weaponized elegance. She has maybe fifteen minutes of screen time total, but the moment she appears at the battle of the bands and Scott completely loses his composure, you understand exactly why this woman still has that effect on him. Larson even performed the musical numbers herself, and there’s a charged, theatrical quality to how she plays Envy’s confidence that makes the character feel like a real threat rather than just a plot obstacle. The film has become a genuine cult classic, and for a whole generation of fans who caught it on cable or streaming, Envy Adams was the first time they noticed Brie Larson.

4. Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Mason Weaver arrives on Skull Island as a war photojournalist who has already seen enough of what humans do to each other, and that history shapes every choice Larson makes in the role. Where other characters react to Kong with fear or aggression, Mason watches him with something closer to recognition: the scene where she reaches out toward the massive creature and holds eye contact is quiet and completely convincing, reframing the whole film’s emotional stakes in about thirty seconds. The movie has a sprawling ensemble including Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Goodman, but Larson gives Mason a moral clarity that cuts through the chaos. Kong: Skull Island was a huge commercial success, and her performance proved she could anchor a blockbuster on presence alone.

3. Captain Marvel Franchise (2019–2023)

Carol Danvers starts Captain Marvel without access to her own memories, and Larson plays that fractured identity with a careful, searching quality that gives the origin story more emotional texture than it might otherwise have had. The scene where Carol pieces together who she was before the Kree rewrote her history, then decides that version of herself is worth fighting for, lands because Larson has been building toward it quietly the whole film. In Avengers: Endgame, her arrival during the climactic battle works precisely because she plays it without a single word: just momentum and certainty. The solo film was a massive box office success, and across all three installments, Larson made Carol one of the MCU’s most commanding presences.

2. Short Term 12 (2013)

Grace supervises a group home for at-risk teenagers while quietly carrying her own unresolved trauma, and Larson plays that double life with a rawness that feels almost uncomfortably real. There’s a scene where she sits in her car after a brutal shift and just falls apart — no telegraphing, no buildup, just the kind of acting that makes you forget you’re watching a performance. Destin Daniel Cretton’s small independent production hit the festival circuit and immediately made people pay attention to her in a way nothing before had. Short Term 12 laid the foundation for everything that followed: the dramatic instincts, the ability to hold complexity without explaining it, the willingness to go somewhere deeply uncomfortable. It’s the film that made Room possible.

1. Room (2015)

Joy Newsome has been held captive for years when Room begins, and she has built an entire world inside a single small space to protect her son Jack from understanding what that means. Larson plays Ma with a fierce, exhausting love you feel in her body: the way she holds Jack, the way her voice shifts between performing normalcy for him and letting herself break down after he’s asleep. The film’s second half, when they escape and Ma has to learn how to exist in the outside world again, is where the performance reaches something extraordinary — Larson plays the reentry not as relief but as its own kind of unraveling, her stillness and disconnection more unsettling than any of the captivity scenes. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and it pointed at something specific: a performance that left audiences completely undone, carried in the body as much as the dialogue.