The Top 5 Matthew McConaughey Movies You Don’t Wan’t To Miss!

Matthew McConaughey has had one of the most enigmatic careers imaginable for an actor. He stuck to goofy comedies and romantic leading roles for a while, always playing that smooth-talking, inexplicably good-looking guy that the leading women would fall for over and over. It was bad there for a while — some would say cringey, even. But then the McConaissance happened and the actor began turning down big paychecks for trite Hollywood productions and started accepting smaller paychecks for more intimate, inventive, independent movies.

He’s treated like acting royalty, continually getting fascinating roles, the polar opposite of the way his career began. At this point, as a matter of fact, McConaughey’s best roles completely overshadow his passable ones.

As we celebrate his birthday, here’s Mathew McConaughey’s Top 5 movies unmissable movies:

1. Bernie – Reunited with one of his first directors, Matthew McConaughey and Richard Linklater create magic once again with the 2011 film Bernie (starring Jack Black also reuniting with the director many years after School of Rock). The film is based on an insane true story, with McConaughey playing a true-to-life district attorney. It’s a subtle yet important part of the actor’s filmography.

2. Dallas Buyers Club – This Oscar-season darling would’ve managed to do alright, alright, alright (get it?) with a different actor than McConaughey, but there’s no doubt his performance made the movie into the awards-season treasure that it truly was. The film has a couple of great supporting roles played by Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto, but McConaughey is the anchor of this one. It takes place during the AIDs crisis of the 1980s, and McConaughey seems to encapsulate the uncertain times with tremendous vulnerability and skill.

3. Dazed and Confused – This movie may have been a really big deal for its writer/director Richard Linklater, but it was just as big a deal for McConaughey, as well. It showed audiences how talented he truly is and how much potential he was harboring inside him as an actor before getting cast in all those bland comedies. The movie takes place in the late 70s but was released in the early 90s, flopping at the box office but quickly became a cult classic. Turns out, it’s the kind of role he should’ve been getting all along.

4. Wolf of Wall Street – While he might only exist in the first act, that’s a lot more screen time than it sounds like in a Martin Scorsese movie. What might be about twenty minutes in another film ends up being somewhere around an hour here — an hour of McConaughey being a dopey, rich weirdo who guides Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘Jordan Belfort’ in the right (or rich) direction on Wall Street. His character is as important as he is iconic.

5. Interstellar – Getting cast in the leading role in a Christopher Nolan movie is almost a surefire way to score the best acting credit of your career. Regardless of how one feels about Nolan — whether you’re excited by his work or bored out of your mind—there’s no denying McConaughey’s craft in Interstellar. He’s a dad on the edge, willing to do anything for his kids and their future. It’s a science fiction film first and foremost, but it’s certainly a character-driven one at that.

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