Wes Anderson Films, Ranked

[Deset Gled]

Top tier:
Grand Budapest Hotel - Just a good movie in every way.
Fantastic Mr. Fox - Great example of why adults shouldn't think animation is just for kids.
Rushmore - I get the impression that Wes Anderson was much more externally restrained making this movie, and I think it's a better movie for it.

Good tier:
French Dispatch
Moonrise Kingdom
Life Aquatic

Did not particularly enjoy:
Darjeeling Limited - Good cinematography, good acting, but just a slog of a movie. It felt kind of like a homework assignment to watch.
Asteroid City - Just too much. An aesthetic that looks beautiful in the beginning but feels almost painful to look at by the end. Way off on the style/substance ratio. I feel like if someone had just managed to get him to hold back maybe 15% this could have been amazing, but no one was willing to reign him in. There are many scenes where this movie is indistinguishable from someone doing a Wes Anderson parody.

Have not seen:
The rest.

 

[Mercurius]

I guess a break the mold: I neither love nor hate his films. They're generally good, but they don't warrant re-watches as either guilty pleasures or cinematic experiences.

of the half a dozen or a bit more that I've seen, The Royal Tenenbaums was by far my favorite.

 

[Mannahnin]

Having not posted a thread in a little while, and having a short period of time on my hands, I thought I'd put up the following for discussion and/or debate!

Today's topic .... Wes Anderson movies. As a general rule, I have found that people either love, or hate, Wes Anderson ... with few people falling into the "meh" category. That said, I am one of those people that definitely fall into the "love" category. In my opinion, he is one of the few directors working that I make sure to see every single new release; simply knowing that he was the director of a film is enough to make me go and see it.

While I normally have "rules" for these types of things, this is very simple- it has to be a Wes Anderson movie. It cannot be a commercial. It cannot be a short. It cannot be a "short movie" (which includes the charming trilogy of Roald Dahl adaptations recently released on Netflix ... if you have seventeen minutes, watch The Ratcatcher). All movies are included, whether animated (stop motion) or not. This will include all eleven of his feature length films, from Bottle Rocket to Asteroid City, and will be listen in order of awesomeness, with #11 being the least awesome.

1. Grand Budapest Hotel. Agreed. It's wonderful. Funny and moving and hilarious and tragic and gorgeous.
2. Moonrise Kingdom. I think it's ALSO basically perfect and it has additional resonance to me as someone whose childhood involved a lot of time spent in New England woods, among those sun-dappled paths and rocky prominences.
3. The Royal Tenenbaums. Pretty much an archetype of his work, beautifully written, acted and scored, and very accessible.

All three of these I can revisit endlessly and end them wanting more time in their worlds.

I've still only watched Asteroid City and The French Dispatch once each, so I don't think it's possible to rank them correctly yet. I need to absorb them more. I suspect that they're going to grow on me.

The Life Aquatic I found off-putting on first viewing but it really grew on me later. It's excellent. I rank it with Rushmore and with Darjeeling in the second tier (maybe they'll become third tier if AC and TFD develop for me the way LA did). I found Darjeeling better than you did; maybe it's the personal resonances again, my relationships with my brother and my mother in particular. Rushmore was the first of his movies I saw. It's a good'un, and has some great elements, but for me it's still not really there yet.

Bottle Rocket I agree is a rough work but shows seeds of what was to come. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a Wes fan, but it's definitely neat to see the elements starting to come together.

I tried Fantastic Mr. Fox once and it didn't grab me at all. I need to try again.

I haven't seen Isle of Dogs.

Of the Netflix shorts I've just watched Henry Sugar, which was fun, if slight, and I look forward to getting to the others.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I must confess the only Wes Anderson movie I have seen (with the exception of catching thirty minutes of The Royal Tenenbaums onTV) was Moonrise Kingdom. I am not even sure why, I just haven't seen them for some reason

 

[Mannahnin]

I must confess the only Wes Anderson movie I have seen (with the exception of catching thirty minutes of The Royal Tenenbaums onTV) was Moonrise Kingdom. I am not even sure why, I just haven't seen them for some reason

Did you enjoy what you saw? Did you find the style appealing, or less accessible than other movies?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Did you enjoy what you saw? Did you find the style appealing, or less accessible than other movies?

I don't mind films that are done in this style. I remember particularly liking the Royal Tenenbaums. Moonrise Kingdom I saw with my dad and we both didn't know how we felt about the movie a the end (I liked his aesthetic, but we both had the same "I don't know how I feel" response). That may sound like a criticism, but I like when movies provoke that kind of reaction in me. It wasn't less accessible than other movie but certainly there is probably more of a hurdle for me to sit down and decide to pop in Wes Anderson on a whim than the Cable Guy or something. I really don't know. I think I need to see more of his movies to know what I think of him overall (and I would probably need to see Moonrise Kingdom again to know what I think of it)