My Wes Anderson movie rankings

Bobby Schroeder April 10, 2024

This year I got a Letterboxd account in an attempt to watch more movies. Early in the year, I watched and thoroughly enjoyed Asteroid City, and afterwards decided to watch the rest of Wes Anderson's filmography as well, since I'd been meaning to watch a lot of these for years. Below are my short reviews for each film, ordered from my least favorite of his films to my favorite.

Pretend to act surprised when I give a high ranking to his stop motion furry movie.

11. Isle of Dogs

"Wes Anderson stop motion animated movie about dogs starring Bryan Cranston" seems like it should tick a lot of boxes for me. Unfortunately, the restrofuturistic Japanese setting is such a broad pastiche of stereotypes that it just feels like Wes listing things he knows from Japan off the top of his head for 100 minutes, like a feature length version of the Sakura-Con 2009 commercial. This and the decision to leave much of the human characters' dialogue untranslated combine to make large swaths of this movie kind of insufferable.

10. Bottle Rocket

Deciding to watch Wes Anderson's filmography from the start means realizing that his first movie lacks almost all of his stylistic quirks (aside from the snappy deadpan humor and the occasional symmetrical close-up shot of a prop) and instead feels more like if Mike Judge had done a heist movie. It's a charming little movie, though it does drag during the long part where they're just hanging around the motel.

9. The Darjeeling Limited

A lot of this really feels like Wes Anderson playing the hits from his previous films. A dysfunctional family with three estranged siblings coming back together as adults! Owen Wilson is a kinda weird guy who tries to boss the others around! Jason Schwartzman is a writer! They're still processing the death of someone close to them! Much of the movie is spent traveling on a vehicle with sleeper cabins! One of the main guys falls for a member of the wait staff at the place where they're staying! A woman with a posh British accent is there! The mom is Anjelica Huston! But this time, it's all set in India!

That being said, I think the more dramatic turn in the second half saves it from just feeling like a greatest hits compilation and gives it more of its own identity. It also helps when they finally get off the damn train and it stops being a movie that feels like it mostly takes place in one sleeper cabin, letting the fact that this is perhaps the Anderson movie most immersed in the real world shine.

8. The Royal Tenenbaums

Eh... didn't hit as hard for me as I hoped it would. There's a lot to like, but the beginning takes a while to get going with how much it has to set up the eccentric cast of characters and the specific tone and style of the movie, and the parts that are less funny or dramatic kinda drag. (The adopted sibling romance subplot really did not do much for me.) Maybe I'll appreciate it more on a rewatch someday.

7. The French Dispatch

Anderson's most visually and structurally experimental film. The anthology structure that frames the film as a series of magazine articles via heavy narration is one thing, but even within the individual stories he jumps around in time, shifts between black and white and color, changes aspect ratios, breaks the fourth wall, cuts to scenes at the French Dispatch offices, and in one story even jumps to 2D animation inspired by French comics. The tradeoff is that it's harder to get attached to the characters in a series of loosely connected vignettes, and not all of them are equally engaging, but I still had a fun time with this overall.

6. Moonrise Kingdom

Good little encapsulation of childhood and puberty and how weird kids can be. The combination of the deadpan Anderson dialogue and the slightly wooden performances from Sam and Suzy meant I didn't get super emotionally invested in their love story, but that might actually work to the movie's advantage? It's, like... are they even really in love, or are these two troubled kids just play-acting at being in love like adults to explore their own feelings and try to gain some agency over their own lives? I think the emotional ambiguity adds something to the melancholy tone here.

5. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

"You don't know me. You never wanted to know me. I'm just a character in your film."
"It's a documentary. It's all really happening."

After not 100% clicking with The Royal Tenenbaums, I'm glad I ended up thoroughly enjoying this one. It had a stronger emotional throughline for me, I thought it was funnier, and I just really dug the vibes of the setting. But in particular, I find it a little fascinating that Wes Anderson's first movie where he really starts to push how fabricated the reality of his films is - with stop motion creatures and multi-floor cross section sets and whatnot - is about a man obsessed with fabricating a cleaner for his own life through his art. Also loved Owen Wilson and Willem Dafoe's fake-ass accents, and the fact that despite Anderson's reputation as a "whimsical" and "twee" filmmaker this is a movie about a scumbag version of Jacques Cousteau who gets into multiple shootouts. Consider me one of the people who thinks this one's underrated.

4. Asteroid City

It's impossible not to be familiar with his style through cultural osmosis, but this was the first Wes Anderson movie I've seen in full (not counting the part of The Royal Tenenbaums I caught on TV once years ago). Considering this is apparently the Most Wes Anderson film to date, this could have very easily been a "smoke the whole pack" situation for me.

I tend to like art that plays around with the medium it's in, though, and this movie is framed as a play, which in turn is framed within another play about the play's creation, which I think is also supposed to be a TV documentary(?), with actors playing dual roles and occasionally breaking the barriers between these two stories. So that turned out to be a great introduction to Anderson for me, as a weirdo who loves shit like Alan Wake 2 and Homestuck. It also helps that I also just really liked the deadpan humor in this, and the theme of characters struggling to process the unknown through things like art and science. Also I loved the alien.

I just have to admire Anderson for being so wholly committed to this unique, self-indulgent, meticulous style that makes zero effort to come off as naturalistic in any way. He's still unapologetically making exactly the shit he wants to make, which is shit no one else would ever make, and I always respect that. I guess I really do have to watch the rest of his movies now.

Editor's note: Yep, I sure did do that, but Asteroid City is still one of my favorites of his, even after watching the rest of his filmography. The layers of metatext and the stylistic touches still really stand out, anchoring the experimental style of The French Dispatch with a stronger central narrative. It's really good.

3. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Truly, Wes's whole career to this point was leading up to this: his stop motion Roald Dahl furry midlife crisis heist movie about how you should be able to do a little robbery if you think that deep down in your soul that's just who you are.

I like the way the fur on the scruffy puppets moves around in closeups, a sign that they were touched by human hands between each frame. It doesn't make for the cleanest stop motion animation I've ever seen, but I think it adds to the charm.

2. Rushmore

"I think you just gotta find something you love to do and then do it for the rest of your life" is the most fitting possible line to have 11 minutes into the movie where Wes Anderson figures out his personal style. I'm glad that style includes giving Jason Schwartzman a career, because god, he's so fucking funny in this. I can't believe this was his first acting gig.

Editor's note: Yeah, even after watching the rest of his filmography, Rushmore is probably still Wes's funniest movie. I also think that the way it showcases a lot of his stylistic quirks while being much more grounded in reality than a lot of his later films makes it stand out as something kinda unique for him.

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel

I immediately understand why this is Wes's most popular film, because it really might be his best work. A visually and structurally inventive movie that's probably the most emotionally affecting and intellectually interesting of any of his movies. It uses its nesting doll structure to tell a story about the march of time, the scars left by fascism, and the ways in which we all carry the past within us, sometimes completely altering the life trajectories of people we cross paths with only briefly. And yet, despite the heavy subject matter and copious murder, it also manages to be one of Wes's funniest movies. (The "Holy shit, you got him!" moment might be the best gag he's ever filmed.) An instant favorite. Five stars.