Top 5 – Leonardo DiCaprio Movies NOT Directed by Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. He has worked with some of the greatest directors to ever work behind the camera and has starred in some of the biggest and most rewarded movies of all time. He himself has garnered tons of praise over his career, including winning an Oscar in 2016 for his performance in The Revenant. DiCaprio is one of my favorite actors working today and I get excited whenever I know he is will be starring in a new movie.

For this list, I am going to break down my favorite DiCaprio movies and performances.  However, I am excluding the ones he did with director Martin Scorsese, the director he has collaborated with the most, as those performances would dominate this list.  So there will be no Shutter Island, Aviator, or Wolf of Wall Street here (they would arguably be the top three), though excluding those films and still having a list this strong shows how incredible DiCaprio’s filmography really is.  Here are my picks for the best Leonardo DiCaprio movies.

And remember, these movies are based on DiCaprio’s performance and the quality of the movie.

5 – COBB in INCEPTION  (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

• Christopher Nolan’s Inception is one of the great movies of this decade.  It is one of Nolan’s biggest and most ambitious films and really established him as one of the premier auteurs.  Through all the visuals, action, and twisting plot, there are a number of excellent performances, most notably DiCaprio as the leader of this group of dream thieves.  DiCaprio plays a desperate, almost obsessed man trying to extract information from the mind of a business tycoon’s son.  But what DiCaprio does best is take us on the journey.  This is an exposition-heavy movie, as Nolan has so many rules and twists in this wild dream world, and DiCaprio delivers the exposition to where we can follow and we believe Cobb is this veteran thief.  This is a masterpiece movie and DiCaprio is in the center of it.

4 – CALVIN CANDIE in DJANGO UNCHAINED (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)

• In Quentin Tarantino’s Western epic, DiCaprio gives a performance that he had never done before. Always the protagonist in his films, he plays the villain in the film and the worst kind at that. Calvin Candie is a character with no redeemable feature to him.  He is a blood-thirsty, despicable slave owner, who is the definition of evil.  For all his evil, DiCaprio makes Candie amazingly compelling and a blast to watch on screen.  DiCaprio dives into Candie and never leaves, reaching deep into his soul to portray the most despicable of humans I’ve ever seen on screen. DiCaprio’s villainous turn as Candie might have been ignored in terms of awards, but it is a staggering performance that has stayed with me to this day.

3 – FRANK ABAGNALE JR. in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (Steven Spielberg, 2002)

• In Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, DiCaprio plays Frank Abagnale Jr., a teenager who forged millions of dollars worth of checks while posing as a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, and a legal prosecutor all before the age of nineteen.  What’s insane is that DiCaprio was almost 30 when he made this film, yet you don’t bat an eye in believing that he is this troubled teen.  DiCaprio pulls out the boyish charm and Hollywood charisma to make us believe this kid charmed his way into millions of dollars.  DiCaprio also shows us the sadness beneath Abagnale Jr., as he would give up all his money and lavishness just to have his family whole again. This is one of Spielberg’s most underrated movies and subtle, yet powerful performance from DiCaprio.

2- JACK DAWSON in TITANIC (James Cameron, 1997)

• Titanic is an astounding achievement and even though I had seen the movie numerous times, it still blows me away every time I see it.  DiCaprio’s performance is one that gets overlooked by the film’s scale and scope, as well as the great performances from Kate Winslet, Gloria Stewart, and wonderfully smarmy Billy Zane, but his performance as Jack Dawson is one only he could have done.  James Cameron is a good writer in terms of story but not so much with dialog.  If you listen to the dialog that comes out of Jack Dawson’s mouth, it’s kind of hokey, yet DiCaprio makes it sing and makes us fall in love with the street-rat artist.  This was the movie that made the world fall in love with DiCaprio.  Yes, his boyish good looks and charm made teenage girls go wild, but this was a movie-star performance from an up-and-comer and one of the key pieces to Titanic’s success.  They don’t make movies like Titanic anymore.

1 – RICK DALTON in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

• After what seemed like a decade of DiCaprio doing everything in his power to win an Oscar, whether it was playing a villain in Django Unchained or playing a powerful historical figure in J. Edgar, DiCaprio finally won what had eluded him for so long in his career for his performance in The Revenant, a performance that found DiCaprio getting his ass kicked by frigid temperatures and eating a real buffalo heart. After all the intense performances DiCaprio had given, he took a bit of break and came back in the ninth Quentin Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, a truly great performance. DiCaprio plays Rick Dalton, a fading actor in Hollywood whose best friend is his stunt double, Cliff Boothe (an equally great Bad Pitt). We watch as Rick struggles with the possibility of making movies in Italy while also playing the heavy on a very popular TV show. DiCaprio is equally hilarious and heartbreaking, as we are watching a former star whose shine may officially be gone. DiCaprio wears Dalton’s sadness and fear beautifully, while also delivering brilliant comedy and having excellent chemistry with Pitt. The trailer sequence is one of the crowning achievements of DiCaprio’s career. This is arguably the funniest performance of DiCaprio’s career and one of his very best regardless of director.

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