Russell Crowe isn’t wasting any time kicking off his 2026 movie slate, thanks to his latest release, Beast, which is currently playing in select theaters worldwide. The thriller pulls inspiration from other notable MMA films like Warrior (starring Tom Hardy) and The Smashing Machine (starring Dwayne Johnson), and it features Crowe as a seasoned coach guiding a fighter through a major comeback. Crowe is also riding the momentum from his biggest hit of 2025, the WWII legal drama Nuremberg (co-starring Rami Malek and Michael Shannon), which saw solid box office success before going on to perform well on Netflix. After a career filled with major blockbuster roles, it’s only natural that some of Crowe’s projects have landed better than others — it’s safe to say his filmography includes its share of divisive entries.
Despite plenty of movies with mixed reception, one thing Crowe has done remarkably well throughout his career is diversify his filmography. No one can argue that he’s a one-trick pony, especially after seeing how many different types of roles he’s taken on over the years. Back in 2022, he starred in his first and only Vietnam War movie, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, with Zac Efron and Kyle Allen. The film isn’t like other intense Vietnam War movies, though, and instead acts as more of an adventure comedy than a classic war epic. The Greatest Beer Run Ever was panned by critics upon release, but the film earned a strong 91% from audiences on the Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes. The only way to watch The Greatest Beer Run Ever is with an Apple TV subscription, but the film is still in the top 10 in several countries around the world, despite being released several years ago.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
What Is ‘The Greatest Beer Run Ever’ About?
The official synopsis for The Greatest Beer Run Ever, which was written and directed by Peter Farrelly, reads as follows:
“Chickie (Zac Efron) wants to support his friends fighting in Vietnam by doing something wild — personally bringing them American beer. What starts as a well-meaning journey quickly changes Chickie’s life and perspective. The film is based on a true story.”
Brian Hayes Currie, and Pete Jones also contributed to the script for The Greatest Beer Run Ever, which is based on the novel of the same name by Chick Donohue and J.T. Molloy. Check out The Greatest Beer Run Ever on Apple TV and stay tuned to Collider for more streaming updates and coverage of Crowe’s future projects.
