Every Wes Anderson movie, ranked from worst to best

Let’s be clear upfront: Bottle Rocket is a very good movie. It’s inventive, sweet-natured, sometimes riotously funny, and features an indelible debut performance from Owen Wilson as Dignan, a stubborn oddball who ensnares his best friend Anthony (Luke Wilson) into a “75-year plan” involving a series of incompetently executed heists. Bottle Rocket is also particularly beloved by anyone who might like Wes Anderson in theory but wishes he’d drop the dollhouse fussiness of his later work (which is to say, almost all of all of his work). In other words, in some quarters it’s become a victim of First Album Syndrome, that yearning for artists to return to a time before they matured, developed, or changed in any significant way. Bottle Rocket has a Tom-Sawyer take on ’90s Tarantino knockoffs that’s both brilliant and occasionally frustrating; it’s Anderson’s pokiest movie despite it being one of his shorter works, a sign that he hadn’t quite mastered his own form yet.

The probable consensus choice for Anderson’s worst is this train trip through India featuring bickering brothers played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman—reflected in The A.V. Club’s contemporaneous review, which characterized the film as possibly “doomed to wilt in [the] shadow” of the similarly sibling-centric The Royal Tenenbaums. Yet there’s plenty to love about Darjeeling (and, frankly, this writer would place it much higher on his own personal Anderson list). It feels more intimate than Anderson’s more ensemble-heavy efforts, with two mainstays (Wilson and Schwartzman) joined by a then-newcomer (Brody) to create a believably imperfect family bond, full of resentments, melancholy, and a touch of familiar helplessness. Though the movie’s baggage metaphors can feel simplistic and its view of India a bit touristy, Darjeeling’s strengths are crystalized in a flashback set piece, where the brothers make a frantic detour on the day of their father’s funeral: It depicts the chaotic shared history of the people you’re stuck with.

Anderson’s sourest movie is also one of his most moving. It’s really quite impressive that his good-luck charm Bill Murray could come across as significantly more of an asshole than Gene Hackman’s Royal Tenenbaum. Murray’s Steve Zissou isn’t quite the Lost in Translation figure of charming melancholy many came into Life Aquatic expecting; he’s careless, impatient, self-centered, and drops the occasional slur. What’s more, the movie around him was received at the time—as nearly every subsequent Anderson film has been since—as the director’s most fastidious and over-directed project yet. These days, that complaint about Aquatic feel pretty silly, especially because the movie is so frequently hilarious, with Steve’s mean streak cutting through any potential treacle. The perfect embodiment of this movie’s funny-sad-cruel cocktail: Steve is legitimately heartbroken about the shark-attack death of his colleague Esteban, but his cries of clarification—“He was swallowed whole?” “No! Chewed!”—are laugh-out-loud funny. The movie builds to Steve’s confrontation with that shark, a moment that The A.V. Club’s Mike D’Angelo accurately described as “[hitting] the impending void button hard.” It’s one of the loveliest scenes in his filmography.

There’s an irresistible all-star pedigree to the screenplay for Fantastic Mr. Fox: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach (who also co-wrote Life Aquatic) adapted a book by beloved author Roald Dahl. Frankly, it threatens to feel like overkill. All three of these writers are awfully distinctive on their own, so is there any real sense in combining them into a single stew? As expected, Anderson’s voice dominates the other flavors: His Mr. Fox (voiced with perfect snap by George Clooney) is basically a more cheerful Royal Tenenbaum, another irascible, slightly scammy dad who loves his family without necessarily understanding their needs. Yet despite turning a beloved children’s classic into a movie about a midlife crisis, Anderson’s sense of slapstick whimsy makes this a surprisingly accessible kids’ movie, with all-ages animal antics and a keen understanding of childhood frustrations and pettiness, plus a kid’s necessary introduction to Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker (who really deserved an Oscar nomination for “Petey’s Song,” despite the admonishments of cruel cider man Bean).

Plenty prefer Mr. Fox, but Isle Of Dogs has its own allure in the Anderson filmography: Not only is it an original piece of stop-motion animation rather than a kid-lit adaptation, it’s also the director’s only foray (so far) into science fiction. Though its Japanese setting and characters (not to mention the white-girl heroine voiced by Greta Gerwig) brought understandable concerns of cultural appropriation, Isle Of Dogs is also a loving pastiche fantasy, set in a stylized Japan 20 years into the future, when a long-standing political dynasty enacts their long-standing grudge against dogs. The magical cure-all serums, robot dogs, and other sci-fi trappings depicted in ultra-detailed stop-motion glory make this a distinctive visual marvel even in a filmography full of them. Isle Of Dogs is admittedly less saturated with memorable characters, especially on the human side; beyond the dodgy Gerwig character, most of them speak in unsubtitled Japanese, while the dogs’ barks are “translated” into the usual Anderson Gang vocal tones, courtesy Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban, and newcomer Scarlett Johansson (who’s due to appear in her first Wes Anderson picture when his currently shooting project is released). If this is one movie where Anderson’s world-building really does overtake the characters, story, and even laughs, that same world-building is also more purely inventive than most American-made science fiction.

A prime example of Anderson’s artistic evolution, and arguably the apex of his presentational style, his latest movie expands on several aspects of The Grand Budapest Hotel, including a stories-within-stories nesting structure. The French Dispatch dresses up its triptych of “features” running in the final issue of a New Yorker-like periodical with an obituary and a brief travelogue (as well as multiple framing devices involving the creation of those stories). This, in turn, involves even more visual shifts than Grand Budapest, as the movie toggles from square-ish aspect ratios to wider compositions and from color to black and white, sometimes within the space of a single scene. The film has already inspired a new round of Anderson’s detractors calling it just too much. Why can’t he settle down and tell a regular story without all of the accoutrement? What these criticisms sometimes miss is how much story the accoutrement itself tells. Many of Anderson’s characters, especially the writers and subjects of The French Dispatch, are trying to impose order on the chaos around them—not necessarily out of need for fastidious control so much as a belief that these systems and institutions should work, despite so much evidence to the contrary. And even in a cast packed with Wes World regulars, the film finds room for some revelations, like Jeffrey Wright’s wonderful turn as a writer tagging along with a chef (not chief) of police.

When Moonrise Kingdom was first released in 2012, it was greeted in some corners as a return to form—a modest, sweet-natured period piece (which, it seems strange to say now, Anderson had never really done before). As the original A.V. Club review pointed out, the movie synthesizes the youthful energy of Rushmore and the melancholy-adults-as-grown-children sensibility of The Royal Tenenbaums. At the same time, this isn’t a cynical back-to-basics move; the film has its own bittersweet summer-camp vibe, starting with its setting: a fictional island off the coast of New England, only accessible by ferry and seemingly populated mainly by Khaki Scouts and quietly dysfunctional families. It’s also the backdrop for an unlikely romance between a nerdy orphan scout (Jared Gilman) and a rebellious girl (Kara Hayward) who refuses to admit she’s wearing Sunday-school shoes. Though the movie is as funny as his others—there’s a dizzying epistolary sequence, a slapstick lightning strike, and Jason Schwartzman performing a non-legally-binding marriage ceremony—its fumbling young romance is depicted with perfect tenderness. This is also the movie where Anderson found several members of his later-period ensemble, with first-time appearances from Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Edward Norton, perfectly cast as a scout leader. (Maybe Bruce Willis, who gives one of his last great performances to date, should get back in touch.) If there’s anything that keeps Moonrise Kingdom from ascending even further up this list, it’s the antic climax and happy ending that feel—compared to some of Anderson’s other curtain-closers—a tiny bit pat.

Is it the opening chords of The Creation’s “Makin’ Time” that make Rushmore feel so much like Anderson’s most punk-rock creation? There’s certainly not much that’s obviously punk about the story of a nerdy yet academically underachieving prep-school student (Jason Schwartzman) mentored by a rich guy (Bill Murray) and trying to woo a reserved schoolteacher (Olivia Williams). Yet there’s an anarchic spirit to this comedy— by this site’s reckoning, the second-best movie of 1998—even in its moments of lonely reflection. Schwartzman’s Max Fischer isn’t an angry kid by nature, yet there is a reservoir of insecure, adolescent fury beneath his can-do exterior; he’s filled with class resentment over his better-off schoolmates, grief over his mother’s death, and—what would become a Wes Anderson favorite—anxiety over his elaborate plans not coming to fruition. As good as Bottle Rocket is, Rushmore feels like Anderson’s real origin story: in whatever autobiography he and co-writer Owen Wilson poured into Max, and in the movie’s establishment of long-term collaborations with Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray (whose career today would look pretty different if not for this movie).

If the earlier years of Anderson’s career have a couple of clear best-of choices, The Grand Budapest Hotel may be the consensus later-period pick. (Though not for everyone—A.V. Club film editor A.A. Dowd is steadfast in his devotion to his original B+ review.) This international hit and multiple Oscar nominee is certainly one of Anderson’s most ambitious undertakings, nesting his central story of hotel concierge M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his “lobby boy” protégé Zero (Tony Revolori) within no fewer than three frames (and varying aspect ratios), skipping through the ’60s, ’80s, and present day, sometimes with effusive narration from any number of actors. The main story alone qualifies as Anderson’s plottiest, a zig-zagging 1932 caper that involves murder, art theft, a prison break, and a downhill ski chase, among other curlicues and accents, matching the movie’s meticulous production design. It’s almost too speedy to be as eminently quotable as some other Anderson comedies, but Fiennes gives one of the best comic performances in the Anderson oeuvre, punctuating his self-consciously refined poetic taste with unbridled profanities—and standing against fascism with a healthy dash of self-interest.

Ultimately, what lingers about the movie is the less funny stuff. Grand Budapest makes an oddly fitting (and surely unintentional) complement to Quentin Tarantino’s own later-period masterwork, Inglourious Basterds: While Tarantino’s World War II ultimately has a different outcome than the one remembered by history, Anderson imagines a more fancifully stylized version of the same war but with an outcome that ultimately can’t be changed. As Anderson travels through time so casually, his characters accumulate devastating losses. Unlike in some of his other movies, none of the most heartbreaking deaths happen on camera; they’re folded into the stories within stories, every era as bygone as the last.

Speaking of Quentin Tarantino: If you’re putting together a hacky parody of Wes Anderson tropes (or even a well-observed one), chances are you’re cribbing as much from The Royal Tenenbaums as other unimaginative video-makers take from Pulp Fiction. Cases for other movies as Anderson’s best can certainly be made (just as they can be made for other Tarantino pictures), but with 20 years of hindsight, this one feels like the Anderson urtext. It takes place in a wistful alternate reality with some resemblance to our own; features loads of memorably costumed characters with the immediate iconography of a great comic strip; is soundtracked by an eclectic mix tape that includes the Ramones, Elliott Smith, and a song from A Charlie Brown Christmas; and chases big laughs (really big laughs—it nearly topped our list of the best comedies since the year 2000) with genuine heartbreak.

Anchored by a performance that feels like Gene Hackman’s swan song even though he made a couple more movies afterward, The Royal Tenenbaums recognizes an essential truth amidst its stylizations: that who we are as adolescents can come to define us as adults, for better or worse. For all his supposed nostalgia, Anderson doesn’t indulge it shamelessly. He gives us characters who struggle with how to stay true to themselves while moving forward, iconic outfits or or childhood crushes in tow. Richie Tenenbaum may have failed to develop as a painter, but Anderson has a gift for revisiting his favorite flourishes and finding new notes within them.