Your Webb critic has two favorite actresses.
One — though she’s really before my time — is Golden Age golden-girl Myrna Loy. For years America’s favorite wife, Loy starred in the marvelous Thin Man movies, and was partly responsible for the bullet-riddled end of John Dillinger’s criminal career. (Look it up!)
My other fave is Naomi Watts, whose resume covers several huge hits and cult classics: Birdman, Mulholland Drive, The Ring, St. Vincent, 21 Grams and Peter Jackson’s colossal King Kong remake.
And that doesn’t include an impressive roster of lesser-knowns — nor her latest. So in honor of the April 2025 release for The Friend — in which she co-stars with Bill Murray and a great Great Dane — here’s a handful of under-the-radar worthies from Watts’s glowing filmography:
Boss Level (2021) Colorful sci-fi actioner about a soldier (Frank Grillo) trapped in a time-loop where everyone wants to kill him — apparently several dozen times. Watts plays his wife, whose work seems to have generated the loop — along with an impending apocalypse. Fast and funny, with an abrupt but finely fitting final moment. Co-starring Mel Gibson, with a cameo from the NFL’s Rob Gronkowski.
Eastern Promises (2007) Viggo Mortensen snagged an Oscar nom with this career-topping work as an enigmatic driver for the Russian mafia in London. Watts is a labor-and-delivery nurse who inadvertently tangles with the mob while caring for an orphaned newborn. Expertly directed by David Cronenberg, whose resume includes another Mortensen crime thriller, A History of Violence — though the artist generally leans toward horror (The Dead Zone, Videodrome, eXistenZ). So be forewarned: This film’s unforgettable bath-house knife-fight is just one of several gruesome moments; but the ultimate ending is quite hopeful.
The Impossible (2012) In this true-life tale of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Watts plays Maria Belon, who was vacationing in Thailand with her family when the first wave swept her away. Having latched on to a floating tree, Belon saw her oldest boy afloat in the distance and reached him only after being gravely injured. Meanwhile, neither of them had any idea what had happened to the husband and two other sons. Though it has a good ending, you’ll need tissues for this one; Watts notched her second Oscar nod for the shattering tale — and frankly, she should have won.
Matinee (1993) When I spent a year watching films for my book The Best Movies You Never Saw (which includes most of the titles here), this sadly neglected gem was literally my favorite find. Watts, however, has only a tiny role in Matinee, an enchanting sleeper that’s part nostalgia, part coming-of-age and mostly satire on cheesy old sci-fi like Them! and The Fly.
Set on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it concerns a gaggle of Key West adolescents jockeying to attend the latest fright-fest from fictional Hollywood producer Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman). Watts features briefly in one film-within-a-film, a spot-on Disney spoof called The Shook-Up Shopping Cart.
Ophelia (2018) Shakespeare purists won’t care much for this revisionist take on Hamlet, which tells the tale from Ophelia’s viewpoint. Yet despite drastic changes, I really liked this handsome and well-acted version. Daisy Ridley and 1917’s George McKay have the leads, with Watts and Clive Owen playing the queen and king.
Penguin Bloom (2021) Among Watts’s finest moments is yet another true story — this one involving an active young mother who was suddenly paralyzed from the waist down. Distressed and angry over her inability to participate in family life, she is almost ready to give up when her son rescues an injured magpie — which, while serving as a marker for the struggling wife, also restores hope to the home.
Stay (2005) What if I told you that Watts had made a movie with Ryan Gosling and Ewan McGregor? And that it was written by David Benioff (Game of Thrones) and directed by Marc Forster (Kite Runner, Quantum of Solace, Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction, Monster’s Ball).
That film is Stay, and it involves a fiery accident on the Brooklyn Bridge; its enigmatic survivor (Gosling) baffles his psychiatrist (McGregor), especially as he begins to predict his own death … which sounds disturbingly like the original crash. Stick with this one; it’s what I call a “jigsaw-puzzle movie” — where the plot’s many odd-shaped pieces somehow all fit together at the end.
While We’re Young (2014) Ben Stiller fans shouldn’t miss this story in which he and Watts play childless Manhattan middle-agers who suddenly start swinging with a hipper young crowd — headlined by co-stars Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried. Sobering, savvy satire from writer-director Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story, Barbie).
The Friend opens Friday at The District in Muncy.
