Bradley Cooper's 10 best and 10 worst movies, according to critics

Not every performance can be Oscar-worthy.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 29%

After Adam, a chef played by Cooper, flames out at his high-end Parisian restaurant due to drug use and erratic behavior, he moves to New Orleans to get sober, and then to London to try to rebuild his career.

"Barreling his way through scene after scene of sweary, shouty kitchen violence, the three-time Oscar nominee excels where the screenplay, script (and everything else) doesn't," wrote One Room with a View's Alex Flood.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 24%

The film's main story is actually a reading of a novel written by Clayton Hammond (Dennis Quaid). Hammond's protagonist is Rory (Cooper), a struggling author who secretly passes off a manuscript he found as his own.

According to Chicago Reader's Drew Hunt, "The premise is ambitious — if not a little hokey — but the meager themes of ephemeral authorship and constructed realities aren't exactly revelatory."

Rotten Tomatoes score: 23%

When 35-year-old Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) won't move out of his parents' home, they devise a plan to hire Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker), who specializes in getting immature men to get their own places. Predictably, they fall in love. Cooper plays one of Tripp's friends, who has a similarly arrested development.

"A strange idea for a romantic comedy results in quite a strange film. Not much to like about the main plot, but some fun to be had on the fringes," writes the Herald Sun's Leigh Paatsch.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 22%

Social worker Emily Jenkins (Renée Zellweger) bonds with a troubled foster care child, Lillith, whose foster parents tried to burn her alive. However, Emily eventually deduces that Lillith is a demon who can cause people to hallucinate their worst fears. In one such scene, memorably acted by Cooper, his character, Douglas, is terrorized by hornets.

According to the Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov, the film is "neither so awful as to be enjoyable nor eerily artful enough to be anything other than a snoozy also-ran."

Rotten Tomatoes score: 21%

Four years after the events of the first "Hangover" film, the crew heads back to Las Vegas after their friend Doug (Justin Bartha) is kidnapped, due to their recklessness in the first film and their relationship with Chow, a criminal played by Ken Jeong. The trio of Alan (Zach Galifianakis), Stu (Ed Helms), and Phil (Cooper) must once again team up to solve the mystery.

"If you loved 'The Hangover' but loathed its nastier, cruder, non-hilarious sequel — apart from that quite amusing monkey — you'd be right to approach this threequel with caution," wrote Metro's Larushka Ivan-Zadeh.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 20%

Cooper plays Brian, a military contractor, who returns to Hawaii on behalf of a billionaire trying to turn local land into a space center. He also reunites with his ex-girlfriend and her new husband and meets a new woman, Allison (Emma Stone), who is in the Air Force.

"Half the time while watching 'Aloha,' I had no clue what was going on. Not so much the plot — although I was admittedly a bit muddled on that, too — but why anyone acted the way they did," wrote Max Weiss of Baltimore Magazine.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 18%

The Garry Marshall film follows multiple intersecting plots across Valentine's Day, including Holden (Cooper) and Katherine (Julia Roberts), two strangers who bond while sitting next to each other on a plane. Holden is traveling to visit his boyfriend, and Katherine is briefly returning home to visit her son, as she is in the military and rarely gets to come home.

"A brutal St Valentine's Day massacre of comedy, of love, of believable human emotion," wrote The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 17%

Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence costar as George and Serena, a married couple living in Depression-era North Carolina, whose schemes, jealousy, and resentment catch up to them in a tragic fashion. The film is based on the 2008 novel of the same name and is the lowest-rated film costarring Cooper and Lawrence.

According to Buzzfeed's Alison Willmore, the film is "an odd misfire from two actors at the peak of their game, but a misfire nonetheless."

Rotten Tomatoes score: 7%

Mary, a quirky yet lonely crossword puzzle writer played by Sandra Bullock, stalks Steve (Cooper), a cameraman for a local news station, around the country after going on a date that she perceived as perfect — but for him, not so much. Along the way, Mary makes friends and becomes more confident in herself.

"On paper, a crazy romcom starring Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper could only be a good thing. Wrong," wrote Simon Braund for Empire Magazine.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 0%

This mockumentary follows Dax Shepard as he tries to pivot from comedy to action star by making a martial arts film called "Brother's Justice." He (unsuccessfully) attempts to get Cooper to costar in the film with him.

"Reeks of a throwaway joke that should have been left to die; even at a mere 80 minutes, this halfhearted Tinseltown satire still feels padded," wrote Time Out's Eric Hynes.

Between his Marvel career, "A Star Is Born," and his collaborations with directors David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson, Cooper has been in his fair share of new classics.

Here's what the high points of his career are, according to critics.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 82%

Cooper returned to voice Rocket, a raccoon, for what may be the final time in "Vol. 3," which lets viewers learn about Rocket's tragic past, how he was created by a mad scientist playing god named the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), and how he has truly found a new family.

ScreenCrush's Matt Singer wrote that the film "completes Rocket's transformation from a footnote to one of Marvel's greatest characters."

Rotten Tomatoes score: 85%

A few months after the events of the first "Guardians" film, this installment sees the crew travel across the universe to meet Peter Quill's (Chris Pratt) father and, once again, save the galaxy.

According to David Sims of The Atlantic, "In Marvel lingo, 'Guardians 2' feels like a great six-issue arc, the kind of storytelling that used to be the backbone of superhero comics."

Rotten Tomatoes score: 85%

The Guardians of the Galaxy meet the Avengers in 2018's "Avengers: Infinity War," in which Rocket teams up with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on his quest to construct a weapon that can kill Thanos.

Simran Hans of The Observer wrote, "This chaotic but surprisingly nimble installment, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, brings together an eye-popping ensemble cast of A-listers (imagine the table read!) and pushes them into playful new configurations."

Rotten Tomatoes score: 90%

Paul Thomas Anderson's "Licorice Pizza" follows 15-year-old Gary (Cooper Hoffman) and the object of his affection, 25-year-old Alana (Alana Haim), as they meander their way through '70s San Fernando Valley. Cooper pops in for a couple of scenes towards the end in a truly electrifying performance as the real-life movie producer and ex-boyfriend of Barbra Streisand, Jon Peters.

"The things in 'Licorice Pizza' that are so good, like the performances from Haim and Hoffman and Cooper and the period fidelity, make you wish that the entire movie was just as good," wrote Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 90%

Like the three "Star Is Born" films that preceded it, the story follows a young up-and-coming singer/actress, played by Lady Gaga, and her relationship with an aging star, played by Cooper, dealing with the pressures of fame and addiction, and what it means to be truly authentic.

This was also Cooper's directorial debut.

"At its huge, pulsating heart this is a story about lovers desperately trying to save one another — from the loss of integrity in an industry that disdains it and from self-destructive impulses with roots too old and deep to be touched," wrote Matthew Norman of The London Evening Standard.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 91%

After breaking up with her fiancé Ben (Cooper), Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) embarks on a road trip, only to get into a car accident and awaken chained to a pipe inside a bunker owned by the mysterious Howard Stambler (John Goodman), who claims there was some type of attack on the US. The film follows Michelle as she keeps trying to escape.

Ben doesn't ever appear on screen — Cooper has a voice cameo only.

Kevin Maher of The Times called it a "wildly entertaining genre mash-up."

Rotten Tomatoes score: 92%

Cooper plays Pat, a man with bipolar disorder who leaves a mental health facility after an eight-month stay, while Lawrence plays Tiffany, a young widow with an unspecified mood disorder. The two connect after they meet at a dinner at Tiffany's sister's house, and the film follows their relationship as it grows throughout a football season.

"It's a rom-com that succeeds in revitalizing that discredited genre where so many others have failed, injecting it with the grit and emotion of realist drama rather than with amped-up whimsy or social satire or montages of people walking on the beach," wrote Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 92%

Five criminals — Gamora, Peter Quill, Drax, Groot, and Rocket played by Zoe Saldaña, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, and Cooper — come together to keep a destructive stone out of the wrong hands and become a family along the way.

According to Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair, "'Guardians' bounces with the energy of pure invention."

Rotten Tomatoes score: 92%

Irving and Evelyn (Christian Bale and Amy Adams) are con artists who devise a scheme with Richie (Cooper), an FBI agent, to help keep themselves out of prison and implicate the mayor of Camden, Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), in illegal activities. The film is based on the actual 1970s FBI Abscam sting operation.

"It's a sly film that slips through your fingers, leaving the glitter of great performances, but one you'll be hustling to watch again," wrote Metro's Larushka Ivan-Zadeh.

Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%

After the tragic events of "Infinity War," the Avengers work together to bring back everyone they've lost in the best-reviewed movie of Cooper's career.

"The only complaint about 'Avengers: Endgame' is that it raises the bar so high that there may well never be a superhero movie to match it," wrote The London Evening Standard's Matthew Norman.