Michael B. Jordan just became the sixth Black man to win Best Actor at the Academy Awards, taking home the Oscar for his dual role as twin brothers Smoke and Stack in Ryan Coogler’s supernatural thriller Sinners. It was his first nomination. It was not, by any stretch, the first time he earned one.
Jordan has been one of the most compelling actors of his generation for over a decade, delivering standout performances across action, drama, superhero cinema, and courtroom films. The Oscar puts a name on something that audiences and critics have known for a while. Now is the right time to go back through the catalogue.
Here are the ten best Michael B. Jordan movies, ranked.
10. Chronicle (2012)
Chronicle is the movie where the wider world first noticed Jordan existed. A found-footage superhero film about three teenagers who develop telekinetic powers after discovering something beneath the earth, it was a lean, tightly plotted surprise hit that punched well above its budget. Jordan plays Steve, the charismatic popular kid whose friendship with the introverted Andrew drives the emotional centre of the film. He makes Steve feel genuinely warm in a way that the genre rarely allows, which makes what follows hit harder. Chronicle is a cult film now and Jordan is a big reason why.
9. Without Remorse (2021)
Without Remorse is not a great film by any measure, but it is a useful reminder that Jordan can carry an action movie on physicality and screen presence alone. Based on the Tom Clancy novel, he plays John Kelly, a Navy SEAL who loses his pregnant wife and goes on a one-man mission for answers and revenge. The script is serviceable at best and the plot mechanics are predictable, but Jordan commits fully. His preparation for the physical role is visible in every scene. If you want to understand why he was being cast as a leading action star, this film makes the case even when everything around him does not.
8. Fahrenheit 451 (2018)
The HBO adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s novel is not the film the source material deserves, but Jordan’s performance in it is better than the film around him. He plays Guy Montag, a fireman in a near-future America where books are illegal and burning them is the job, until an encounter with a young woman who challenges his beliefs sets him on a different path. Directed by Ramin Bahrani and co-starring Michael Shannon, the film premiered at Cannes and landed on HBO to mixed reviews, with criticism aimed mostly at the screenplay rather than the lead. If you want to see Jordan operating in a quieter, more internalised register than his usual physical roles, this is worth your time. The performance holds up better than the film.
7. A Journal for Jordan (2021)
Directed by Denzel Washington and based on a true story, A Journal for Jordan follows First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, a soldier deployed to Iraq who begins keeping a journal of love and life lessons for his infant son. Jordan plays King with warmth and patience, navigating a role that is less about dramatic confrontation and more about quiet devotion. It is a love story as much as a war story, and Jordan handles both registers. The film was not a major awards contender, but the performance is a side of his range that is easy to overlook.
6. Creed III (2023)
Creed III marks Jordan’s feature directorial debut, which alone makes it worth your attention regardless of what you think of the result. He proves he understands visual storytelling, leaning into Japanese cinema influences and staging the fight sequences with an operatic intensity that the franchise had not quite reached before. As an actor, he is comfortable with Adonis Creed now, and the material gives him a more internal, guilt-ridden arc than either previous film. Creed III is a strong debut for a director and a sign that Jordan’s ambitions behind the camera are as serious as what he has accomplished in front of it.
5. Creed II (2018)
Creed II is a smaller film than its predecessor in nearly every way, but it does something interesting with Adonis Creed: it puts his identity under pressure in ways the first film could not. Facing Ivan Drago’s son forces the question of legacy and what violence costs across generations, and Jordan plays the conflict with more nuance than the sequel format usually demands. The final fight is genuinely powerful. Creed II is not the revelation that Creed was, but it is a worthy continuation that adds texture to Jordan’s most career-defining role.
4. Just Mercy (2019)
Just Mercy is the most important film on this list in terms of what it is trying to do. Jordan plays Bryan Stevenson, the civil rights attorney who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and spent his career fighting for wrongly convicted men on death row, including Walter McMillian, played by Jamie Foxx. The film is a straightforward and deliberately accessible legal drama, and Jordan plays Stevenson without vanity or performance. He makes Stevenson feel like a real man rather than a symbol. In a film designed to make audiences angry about systemic injustice, Jordan is the calm, steady centre that makes it watchable.
3. Black Panther (2018)
Jordan plays Erik Killmonger, the antagonist of Black Panther, and delivers one of the best villain performances in the history of the MCU. The film largely works because Killmonger’s motivations are coherent and even sympathetic: he is angry at the right things, even if his methods are indefensible. Jordan makes him charismatic, wounded, and genuinely threatening all at once, and his final scene is one of the most memorable in the franchise. The film belongs to Chadwick Boseman, but Jordan is the reason it stays with you.
2. Fruitvale Station (2013)
Fruitvale Station is the film that introduced Jordan as a serious actor and it remains one of the most powerful performances of his career. The film documents the final day in the life of Oscar Grant III, a young Black man shot by a BART police officer in Oakland on New Year’s Day 2009. Jordan carries the entire film on his presence alone, making Oscar feel vivid and specific and alive in a way that makes the ending devastating rather than merely sad. There is no scenery-chewing, no moment of obvious Oscar-bait performance. Just a man, living a day, and Jordan not looking away from any of it.
1. Sinners (2025)
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is not only the best film of Michael B. Jordan’s career: it may be one of the best films of the decade so far. Set in the Jim Crow South in the 1930s, it follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack, both played by Jordan, who fought in World War I before making their way to Chicago and then returning home to Mississippi to open a juke joint, only for the night to turn violent and strange when vampires arrive. Playing two characters with genuinely distinct personalities, one measured and pragmatic, the other impulsive and hungry, Jordan never lets the technical feat of dual performance overshadow the humanity underneath. The film is about music, Black identity, history, and grief, and Jordan holds all of it. The Oscar was not a surprise. It was an acknowledgement of what was already there.
Jordan has now done something very few actors manage: he has built a body of work where even the weaker films reveal something about his range. The Oscar for Sinners is the exclamation point on a career that has been building for over a decade. If you have only seen him in one or two of these, the rest of the list is worth your time.
The Ranking at a Glance
- #1 — Sinners (2025)
- #2 — Fruitvale Station (2013)
- #3 — Black Panther (2018)
- #4 — Just Mercy (2019)
- #5 — Creed II (2018)
- #6 — Creed III (2023)
- #7 — A Journal for Jordan (2021)
- #8 — Fahrenheit 451 (2018)
- #9 — Without Remorse (2021)
- #10 — Chronicle (2012)