It occurred to me that nearly as long as I have been watching movies, Tom Hanks has been starring in them. I was born in 1974; Tom Hank’s first cinematic appearance was a bit role in a 1980 slasher flick called He Knows You’re Alone. Many of my favorite films of all time are Tom Hanks outings, including Joe vs. the Volcano, Forrest Gump, and The Green Mile. I remember watching Big with my cousins when we were nearly the same age as the protagonist in the story; and I remember watching The Man with One Red Shoe with my parents when I was much too young for it (I never did get to see the end, because they shut it off part way through).
So I have to agree with Stephen Colbert on this one. If any one deserves to be called my “Movie Dad,” it’s probably Tom Hanks, who has more or less been with me since childhood.
It inspired me, somewhat impulsively, to set a goal to see if I couldn’t watch every single movie Tom Hanks ever made. Looking up the entire list on Wikipedia, I discovered that—not counting cameos and Toy Story spin-off cartoons—the entire Tom Hanks filmography includes no less than 64 films, spanning a full 40 decades. I invited my wife to join me, and sometime around the end of June, 2022, we started, working our way through the list, more-or-less in chronological order, watching roughly one film a week.
A few weeks ago, about a year and a half later, we watched the final film on the list (it was Elvis for us, but only because we'd watched Asteroid City out of order). We were amazed to discover the breadth and depth of his acting career. There were some pretty deep cuts on the list that we’d never even knew existed; but there were also some classics that, coming back to them after a few decades since first seeing them, took on new light and deeper meaning than we’d ever seen in them before.
Part way through the project, I started to notice some running themes and consistent motifs in Tom Hanks’ acting career that seemed to intersect in curious ways with Christian spirituality and theology. Not that any of his movies were explicitly, or even allusively Christian. One of the curious things in the full Tom Hanks filmography is how seldom anyone thinks much at all about God. Instead, what I found in Tom Hanks were hazy hints at powerful ideas that a robust Christian understanding of the world would want to reply to with a, “Yes, and….”
For me, the Tom Hanks filmography was like a huge, unfinished connect the dots of concepts and intuitions. On its own, it seems somewhat scattered, but my own faith allowed me to connect these dots in ways that formed a fascinating picture of profound spiritual significance.
All of this is by way of introduction to a new series I’m planning for the next few weeks here at terra incognita, which I’m calling “You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get: Christian Reflections on the Filmography of Tom Hanks.” My goal is to spend some time reflecting deeply on the movies of Tom Hanks and seeing what theological themes emerge.
We’ll get started doing that in earnest in the days to come, but for today, let me answer the most common question I got asked when people heard I was working my way through the entire filmography of Tom Hanks: which movie is your favorite?
It’s actually a bit difficult to answer that question succinctly, since, as I said above, the full list includes no less than 64 films; so instead of naming a single movie, let me offer here, in closing, a few top-ten lists of best and worst Tom Hanks performances.
Top Ten Favorite Tom Hanks Performances
1. Forrest Gump
2. The Green Mile
3. Greyhound
4. Catch Me if You Can
5. Castaway
6. Cloud Atlas
7. News of the World
8. Philadelphia
9. Saving Private Ryan
10. Captain Phillips
Top Ten “Diamonds in the Rough”
1. Punchline
2. Every Time We Say Goodbye
3. Joe vs. the Volcano
4. A Hologram for the King
5. The Post
6. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
7. Nothing in Common
8. The Terminal
9. A League of Their Own
10. Bridge of Spies
Top Ten Worst Tom Hanks Films
1. Bachelor Party
2. Volunteers
3. The Ladykillers
4. The Da Vinci Code
5. Larry Crowne
6. The Circle
7. The Man with One Red Shoe
8. Pinocchio
9. Bonfire of the Vanities
10. Toy Story 4
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