Tilda Swinton · Filmography Ranked

Best Tilda Swinton Films, Ranked by IQ Score

Three decades of cinema's most-canonical art-house leading actress. Every Swinton film, ranked.

8 titles · ranked by IQ Score

1. 1
   

   Memoria

   Masterclass drama, international, experimental

   Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 2021 Cannes Jury Prize-winning film — his first English-language work, anchored by Tilda Swinton as a Scottish woman in Colombia hearing a mysterious sound. The structural commitment to lettin…

   165/200
2. 2
   

   Only Lovers Left Alive

   Masterclass drama, romance, vampire

   Jim Jarmusch's 2013 vampire film anchored by Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as centuries-old vampires living in Tangier and Detroit. The structural commitment to letting bohemian-vampire-cognition operate as the actual…

   164/200
3. 3
   

   Snowpiercer

   Masterclass sci-fi, thriller, drama

   Bong Joon-ho's 2013 English-language post-apocalyptic film set on a perpetual-motion train circling a frozen Earth. The structural commitment — class-warfare allegory rendered as horizontal train-car ascent rather than v…

   162/200
4. 4
   

   I Am Love

   Masterclass drama, international

   Luca Guadagnino's 2009 Milan-set film anchored by Tilda Swinton (who learned Italian for the role). The structural commitment to letting wealthy-Italian-family cultural-cognitive material be the actual subject — and the…

   162/200
5. 5
   

   Suspiria

   Masterclass horror, dance

   Luca Guadagnino's 2018 remake of Dario Argento's 1977 horror film. Tilda Swinton plays three roles. The structural commitment to letting late-1970s-divided-Berlin political-cognitive material operate alongside the dance-…

   161/200
6. 6
   

   Asteroid City

   Stimulating comedy, drama, sci-fi

   Wes Anderson's 2023 nested-frame film — a black-and-white television documentary about a 1950s stage play set at a fictional Southwest desert town's stargazing convention. The structural commitment to the film-within-a-t…

   159/200
7. 7
   

   The Killer

   Stimulating action, thriller, international

   John Woo's 1989 Chow Yun-fat-anchored film — the canonical Hong Kong heroic-bloodshed entry. The structural commitment to letting Woo's choreographic-violence register operate as actual cinematic argument — the extended…

   156/200
8. 8
   

   Burn After Reading

   Stimulating dark-comedy, crime, satire

   The Coens' CIA satire whose central argument is that institutional incompetence and personal narcissism compound into geopolitical-grade idiocy faster than anyone notices. The ensemble (Clooney, Pitt, McDormand, Malkovic…

   137/200