Wes Anderson is one of America’s best-working auteurs, one of the few directors left who can basically make anything he wants without much fuss.
The filmmaker’s latest film Asteroid City is playing in theaters nationwide, and it just scored the best opening at the box office in the filmmaker’s career.
While the director’s ornate style and quippy dialogue might not be for everyone, he is one of the true originals left working in the world of movies. If you’re a fan, you are as big a fan as you can possibly be. ra
Going all the way back to 1996’s Bottle Rocket, we’ve ranked all of Anderson’s films through Asteroid City. While the director has never made a project that’s anything less than excellent, we’ve still compiled a list of how they stack up in the grander picture of his filmography.
Let’s walk through Anderson’s films and stack them up. It can be like trying to pick your favorite flavor of ice cream, but at least they’re all delicious.
11. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
While most Anderson detractors point to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou as why they don’t like the filmmaker, even arguably his weakest film is still pretty outstanding.
If you’re going through and ranking Anderson needle drops, however, this one ranks high on the list. It’s a great film, if maybe a step or two behind some of the other films on this list. That ending is pretty perfect, though.
10. Moonrise Kingdom
Moonrise Kingdom feels like a smaller work in Anderson’s multi-decade filmography, though some would cry foul for it being so low on a list like this since it’s widely regarded as one of his best movies.
It’s a delightful tale of young love, punctuated with an irresistible array of New England-inspired production design and another perfectly utilized cast.
Even if this one ranks much higher for most, it’s still a pretty great film compared to most of what’s out there. That’s the Anderson guarantee.
9. Isle of Dogs
While Isle of Dogs could never clear the impossibly high bar of Fantastic Mr. Fox, it’s still a wonderfully creative and perfectly bittersweet tale about people and their relationship to the canine world.
The voice cast here doesn’t hit a single false note, and the film’s blend of stop-motion whiz-bangs and Anderson-ready humor really made this one stand out.
However, it’s the central “boy and his dog” narrative that just works every single time a filmmaker uses it. It’s not an Anderson special, but he does with the formula more than most would.
8. Bottle Rocket
Anderson hit the ground running with Bottle Rocket, a lovely heist film that showed the world exactly what he was capable of as a filmmaker.
This one is perhaps the director’s most underrated work, and it’s the one most grounded in a standard style of storytelling.
It’s fascinating to see Anderson telling such a genre-driven crime comedy, one with plenty of heart and wisdom to spare.
7. The French Dispatch
The French Dispatch gets richer the further you are from your first watch.
Anderson’s tribute to storytellers and the persnickety bedrocks who support those storytellers finds the filmmaker in a surprising anthology mode. However, each vignette tops the last, concluding with Jeffrey Wright’s revelatory debut in one of Anderson’s movies.
It’s a tender, vastly underrated title in Anderson’s filmography, one that should grow even more in esteem as the years go on.
6. The Darjeeling Limited
Anderson’s soaring ode to brotherly love saw him collaborate with three of his all-time luminaries: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman.
This film’s journey through India is marked by plenty of soul-searching and sorrow, as the three brothers dig into their fractured pasts and make sense of their uncertain futures.
The central performances are just delightful, and the film’s emotional current will make you want to hug your sibling as soon as the credits run.
5. Asteroid City
4. The Grand Budapest Hotel
Perhaps the filmmaker’s most culturally relevant works, The Grand Budapest Hotel saw Anderson flex his production design chops as hard as he ever had.
Ralph Fiennes turns in a career-best turn here in his first collaboration with Anderson, and the film’s sweeping scale and absolutely monumental score from Alexandre Desplat support the stunning sets and cinematography.
It also helps that this is a rollicking mystery and romance all baked into one sensationally delicious story. Anderson was just showing off here, and it was a delight to see.
3. Rushmore
Schwartzman really cemented himself as an all-time Anderson player with Rushmore, the film that really saw Anderson come into his own as a storyteller and the one most credited for showing us the depths of the filmmaker’s dollhouse style.
It’s a bittersweet tale about growing up, anchored by sensational turns from the cast and a pitch-perfect script. Schwartzman’s Max remains one of Anderson’s richest, most complicated characters, and this one is one of the filmmaker’s true masterworks.
2. Fantastic Mr. Fox
One of the great stop-motion films in the medium’s history, Fantastic Mr. Fox is all at once a deliriously great Roald Dahl adaptation and an achievement in finding something wildly original in the adaptation process.
Anderson making one of the true animated masterpieces of the last 20 years on his first at-bat in the medium stands tall in his filmography.
You’ll find something new every time you watch it, and you’ll be more and more impressed with the craft. It’s something you can say about every Anderson film, but especially this one.
1. The Royal Tenenbaums
The film that saw Wes Anderson absolutely perfect his style and his command over an ensemble, The Royal Tenenbaums is a major work.
Equal parts hysterical and empathetic, the dysfunctional Tenenbaums gave Anderson his best-ever cast of characters and one of his most irresistible sets with the Tenenbaum house.
It’s a stone-cold classic that announced to the world that Anderson was here to stay, and it’s still his best film.
