The 6 Best Aubrey Plaza Movies, Ranked
It might seem strange that Aubrey Plaza’s essential movies can be whittled down to a list of six. However, if you know Plaza from anything, it’s likely for her work on the small screen — either for her breakout role as April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation or her more recent Emmy-nominated turn in Season 2 of The White Lotus, if not both.
In movie land, Plaza’s work can be easily categorised into two distinct types: bit parts and supporting roles in mainstream comedies and more unhinged and more central parts in off-kilter indie passion projects. In the list below, which I’ve arranged in chronological order, you’ll find examples of both of these — in her work to date, of course, and also in her quite tasty-looking slate of upcoming movies.
Read on to learn a bit more about Plaza’s best movies so far (as well as four upcoming projects we’re dying to see) and use the guide below to find them on services like Apple TV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
Plaza had already played April Ludgate for 2 Seasons of Parks and Recreation (and appeared in a small role in Judd Apatow’s Funny People) by the time that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World — a movie that kind of puts High Fidelity, Street Fighter and pop punk music into a blender with very entertaining results — was released in August 2010. However, it’s her portrayal of Julie Powers in that Edgar Wright movie that helped to cement the Plaza screen persona.
Powers is not a central figure in the story, but she is exactly the kind of sardonic side character that Plaza quickly became known for — oh, and toxic-ex-boyfriend behaviour aside, the movie is a total blast.
Before basically becoming the Kevin Feige of the Jurassic Park franchise for a while (he directed World and Dominion and wrote Fallen Kingdom), Colin Trevorrow made his name with Safety Not Guaranteed, a sci-fi comedy (think Palm Springs-esque, but a little more Sundance-coded) starring Mark Duplass and Aubrey Plaza that was essentially her first lead movie role.
The story follows Plaza’s intern reporter as she investigates a mysterious classified ad from a man (Duplass) who claims to have invented a time machine.
As Parks and Rec soared in popularity, Plaza started to pick up even bigger supporting turns in movies like Dirty Grandpa and Charlie Countryman, but it wasn’t until after that beloved sitcom’s final season wrapped that she found (with respect to The To Do List) her next major starring role.
That role came in Ingrid Goes West, a darker-than-you’d-expect comedy from director Matt Spicer that follows a somewhat unstable Pennsylvania woman (Plaza) who moves to LA to stalk her favourite influencer (Elizabeth Olsen). Seen today, Spicer’s 2017 exploration of the terminally online will probably seem a bit quaint compared to what we’re dealing with in 2026, but it’s a sharply written and well-acted movie that was perhaps ahead of its time.
If you like claustrophobic psychological thrillers, imaginative story concepts, and movies about moviemaking, Black Bear offers a fascinating mix of all three. For this one, Plaza plays a writer and filmmaker who retreats to a remote cabin for inspiration. We then see two dramatic scenarios play out that are somehow different but complementary to each other — both of which feature Plaza and Cristopher Abbott (of Girls fame). It would be wrong to give much more away.
It’s tempting to lump Black Bear into the genre of elevated horror, but in terms of oddness, tone and setting, it’s far closer to the likes of Martha Marcy May Marlene.
For my money, the best Plaza performance to date (in movies or TV) came in John Patton Ford’s Emily the Criminal, in which the actress played a young woman whose student debt forces her to get involved in a credit card scam, which she turns out to be rather good at.
The con involves finding someone trustworthy looking enough that they can buy an expensive product from a shop with a stolen card and make it out before the card company flags it — a wonderfully economical cinematic conceit that allows Patton Ford to fill his low-budget movie with plenty of nerve-shredding crime sequences.
If you enjoyed Patton’s new movie, How to Make a Killing, it’s well worth seeking this superior debut.
For pure originality and one-of-a-kind-ness, I was tempted to add Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (in which Plaza plays a character called Wow Platinum) to this list, but in the interest of brevity, we’ve decided to cap this list at ten titles overall. This means that the latest movie on our rundown of Aubrey Plaza’s best to date is Megan Park’s My Old Ass — a movie that attempts to finally answer the question of what you might say to your 18-year-old self if you could go back in time.
For this one, Plaza plays the time traveller, but Park makes the interesting choice of keeping her in the supporting role — almost like an imaginary friend to her younger self, who is played (in a terrific performance) by Maisy Stella. Set on her family’s cranberry farm in rural Ontario, the movie is really a twist on the queer coming-of-age (it has, to my knowledge, the first straight-leaning coming-out scene in American cinema). If you liked recent movies like Lady Bird and Eighth Grade, you’re probably going to like this one.
