Published: October 10, 2024 | Last Updated: November 15, 2024
One of the most prominent examples of a modern-day auteur is the award-winning writer/director Wes Anderson, known for his unique filmmaking and storytelling. Each of Wes Anderson’s ten feature films holds a place in any aspiring filmmaker’s heart. Especially mine.
Here is my list of the best Wes Anderson movies, ranked from worst to awesome, and tips for film students on what to look for in each movie.
11. Asteroid City (2023)
Asteroid City is not just a place, but a state of mind where the stars align and the impossible seems merely improbable.
– Conrad Earp
- Genre: Comedy-Drama, Science Fiction
- Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman
- Screenwriters: Wes Anderson
- Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Fisher Stevens, Liev Schreiber, Jarvis Cocker, Timothée Chalamet
Description: Set against the backdrop of a retro-futuristic 1950s, ‘Asteroid City’ is a whimsical Wes Anderson film that explores the convergence of a youth astronomy convention and unexpected extraterrestrial events in the fictional desert locale of the same name. War photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) meets actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), but UFOs and military lockdown interrupt their romance.
Film Students: Watch how Anderson mixes sci-fi elements with his signature style. The movie shows how to keep your artistic voice while working with big casts and new story types. The ensemble cast brings to life a story of love, revolt, and cosmic wonder, all hallmarked by Anderson’s distinctive style.
You might enjoy The Best Sci-Fi Moves Of All Time.
10. The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
I wonder if the three of us would’ve been friends in real life. Not as brothers, but as people.
Jack Whitman
- Genre: Comedy Drama on a Train
- Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman
- Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman,
- Starring: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, Amara Karan, Wallace Wolodarsky, Waris Ahluwalia, Irrfan Khan, Barbet Schroeder, Camilla Rutherford, Bill Murray
Description: Aboard the luxury train “The Darjeeling Limited,” three estranged brothers Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrian Brody), and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) meet in India the year following their father’s funeral for a “spiritual awakening.” The train becomes a moving stage for their family drama.
Film Students: The Darjeeling Limited is an excellent example of Wes Anderson’s attention to detail in a small setting. See also how Anderson uses small spaces to push the story forward. Notice his careful shot composition in train corridors and how he blends Indian colors with his style.
9. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
I’m going to find it, and I’m going to destroy it. I don’t know how yet. Possibly with dynamite.
Steve Zissou
- Genre: Comedy Drama at Sea
- Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman
- Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach
- Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Bud Cort, Noah Taylor, Seu Jorge, Robyn Cohen
Description: Eccentric oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) sets out on an extravagant expedition to exact revenge on the “jaguar shark” that ate his partner Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel). His mission gets complicated when his possible son (Owen Wilson) and a pregnant reporter (Cate Blanchett) join his crew.
Film Students: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is the first film to embody the Wes Anderson aesthetic we know today fully. It’s also the first film to involve stop-motion characters with sea creatures and animals.
The film is also worth studying for the synergy of a unique soundtrack of original scores and classical music. Pay attention to how Seu Jorge’s David Bowie covers work as both music and story elements, i.e., as diegetic and extra-diegetic elements.
8. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
I always wished I was an orphan. Most of my favorite characters are. I think your lives are more special.
Suzy
- Genre: Coming-of-Age Comedy Drama on an Island
- Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman
- Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola
- Starring: Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel, Bob Balaban, Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward
Description: On the fictional New England island of New Penzance, young orphan Sam (Jared Gilman) escapes his Boy Scout camp to reunite with his rebellious pen pal and love interest Suzy (Kara Hayward).
The kids feel neglected by their families and friends and find a hideaway on a secret beach. A ragtag group of clueless adults, including the island’s police, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), and Scout Master Randy Ward (Edward Norton), leads the search for the children.
Film Students: Learn from Anderson’s work with young actors. Unlike other Anderson films that use the kids as secondary characters, this film focuses on their story of young love, mental health, and sexuality alongside the backdrop of an impending natural disaster.
Throughout the film, the characters’ personalities swap, with the children acting with maturity and the adults acting juvenile as a form of juxtaposition. This characteristic is an aesthetic of Wes Anderson’s filmmaking.
Also, check out his use of zoom shots – especially crash zooms.
7. The French Dispatch (2021)
Please turn away. I feel shy about my new muscles.
Zeffirelli
- Genre: Romantic Comedy-Drama at a Newspaper Outpost
- Cinematographer: Robert D. Yeoman
- Screenwriter: Wes Anderson
- Starring: Benicio del Toro, Adiren Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson
Description: The French Dispatch is a collection of three different storylines following the employees of the fictional French town of Ennui at the foreign bureau of the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, creating their final newspaper before they close forever.
Film Students: The French Dispatch is one of Wes Anderson’s most ambitious undertakings. It adopts the styles of previous films, using a precise location and fictional town as the backdrop for the slew of eccentric characters.
Study how Anderson connects the three separate stories. Notice his smart use of different screen sizes and switches between color and black-and-white. Also, notice how the movie pays strict homage to French cinema‘s artistic influences.
6. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
I understand what you’re saying, and your comments are valuable, but I’m going to ignore your advice.
Mr. Fox
- Genre: Stop Motion Animated Comedy with Woodland Creatures
- Cinematographer: Tristan Oliver
- Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach
- Starring: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Michael Gambon, Wallace Wolodarsky
Description: Based on a Roald Dahl novel of the same name, the Fantastic Mr. Fox follows the former thief, Mr. Foxy Fox (George Clooney), and his wife Felicity’s (Meryl Streep) attempt to start a new life when he is pulled back into the dangerous world of robbing farms and stealing produce.
Film Students: The first entirely stop-motion Wes Anderson film is jam-packed with an all-star voiceover cast. The film fully interprets Anderson’s vision without human limitation and instead of a permanent focus on visual storytelling and character development.
Watch how Anderson adapts a children’s book into his own style. The movie also shows great ways to bring live-action techniques into animation.
5. Bottle Rocket (1996)
I really want to be a part of this team.. and I’m the only one with a car.
Bob Mapplethorpe
- Genre: 90’s Crime Comedy
- Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman
- Screenwriters: Owen Wilson, Wes Anderson
- Starring: Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Robert Musgrave, Andrew Wilson, Lumi Cavazos, James Caan, Ned Dowd
Description: In Arizona, Dignan (Owen Wilson) rescues his friend Anthony Adams (Luke Wilson) from his voluntary psychiatric stay for exhaustion. The elaborate breakout plan is only the beginning of his mischievous plans. He plans to pull off a series of heists, starting with Anthony’s family as the practice round.
Film Students: Bottle Rocket is Wes Anderson’s first feature film, an adaptation of his short film of the same name. The film put Anderson, along with frequent collaborator Owen Wilson, on the map. This is also one way short films do make money down the line.
There’s an apparent lack of his signature visual style, which wasn’t fully realized until films like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Instead, the film is reminiscent of the classic 90s era of American indie movies like Pulp Fiction.
The promise of Wes Anderson’s career was evident as this film received the attention of Martin Scorsese and other notable filmmakers.
4. Isle of Dogs (2018)
I’m not doing this because you commanded me to. I’m doing it- because I feel sorry for you.
Chief
- Genre: Stop Motion Animated Science Fiction Comedy on a Trash Island with Dogs
- Cinematographer: Tristan Oliver
- Screenwriter: Wes Anderson
- Starring: Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Kunichi Nomura, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe, Akira Ito, Greta Gerwig, Akira Takayama, Frances McDormand, F. Murray Abraham, Yojiro Noda, Fisher Stevens, Mari Natsuki, Nijiro Murakami, Yoko Ono, Harvey Keitel, Frank Wood
Description: Twenty years in the future, a canine flu outbreak in the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki risks becoming infectious to humans, leading to authoritarian mayor Kenji Kobayashi’s (Kunichi Nomura) exile of all dogs to the isolated Trash Island against the protest of Professor Watanabe (Ken Watanabe) on the verge of a cure. A young boy named Atari crashes there looking for his dog and finds a government plot.
Film Students: This is another good study of Anderson’s stop-motion skills and how he tells stories across language barriers. The movie shows ways to mix political ideas with personal stories.
3. Rushmore (1998)
With Friends Like You, Who Needs Friends?
Dirk Calloway
- Genre: Coming of Age Comedy at a Private School
- Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman
- Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson
- Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Olivia Williams, Bill Murray, Brian Cox, Seymour Cassel, Mason Gamble, Sara Tanaka, Connie Nielsen, Luke Wilson, Stephen McCole
Description: At the prestigious private institution Rushmore Academy in Houston, Texas, an eccentric 15-year-old scholarship student, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), with obsessive participation in extra-curricular activities, finds a mentor in a disillusioned businessman, Herman Blume (Bill Murray). When Max falls for a 1st-grade teacher, Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), his friendship with Blume becomes complicated when he takes things too far and gets removed from Rushmore.
Film Students: Watch Anderson develop his style while mixing comedy and honest emotions. The movie shows how to build strong characters. This film started Murray and Anderson’s strict partnership, with collaborations in every single movie following.
2. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
I didn’t think so much of him at first. But now I get it, he’s everything that I’m not.
Royal Tenenbaum
- Genre: Comedy Drama about a Dysfunctional Family
- Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman
- Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson
- Starring: Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Kumar Pallana, Seymour Cassel
Description: Based on a fictional novel with the influences of J.D., Salinger follows the lives of three gifted siblings who lose their sparkle and shine in adulthood. When he returns with a mysterious terminal illness, the Tenenbaum kids confront the abandonment and neglect of their peculiar father, Royal Tennenbaum (Gene Hackman).
The adult children, Chas (Ben Stiller), Richie (Luke Wilson), and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), each battle with their insecurities and their father’s presence in the setting of an upscale New York neighborhood.
Film Students: Look at how Anderson gives each character their own style and world. The sets and costumes tell as much of the story as the words do. An introduction to Anderson’s attention to detail with each character’s backstory, aesthetic, and dialogue delivery indicates his whimsical precision.
The film shows how Anderson can take quirky yet dysfunctional influence from classic films like Orsen Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and Louis Malle’s The Fire Within (1963) and transform it into a modern allegory.
Also, check out his use of pan shots to follow the character’s actions and focus.
1. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Did He Just Throw My Cat Out Of The Window?
Deputy Vilmos Kovacs
- Genre: Comedy Drama in a Hotel
- Cinematographer: Robert Yeoman
- Screenwriters: Wes Anderson
- Starring: Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, Léa Seydoux, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, Tony Revolori
Description: The film follows the story of a young author (Jude Law) who visits the once-famed Grand Budapest Hotel in the fictional countryside of Zubrowka. He meets its precarious old owner, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), and learns his journey from a simple lobby boy to the hotel’s caretaker. Years before, young Zero (Tony Revolori) arrived at the hotel under the management of the concierge, Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes).
Zero becomes entangled in a nefarious plot of wealth, betrayal, and a looming fascist takeover involving Monsieur Gustave’s affair with the death of the elderly dowager Madame D (Tilda Swinton), her evil son Dmitri (Adrien Brody), and the pursuit of the hair-brained police investigator Albert Henckels (Edward Norton).
Film Students: This shows Anderson at his best. Study how he tells stories within stories, uses different screen sizes (fx the 4:3 aspect ratio) for different periods, and his insane attention to details, symmetry, and colors. Anderson juggles all this while still managing to have room for all those signature small, personal moments and quirky characters within the bigger story.
Also, check out his use of whip pans for transitions between scenes.
Summing Up
Wes Anderson’s films rely on the stories of romance, family dynamics, childhood, or hidden emotions. Anderson’s cinematic influences include classic French filmmakers and American notables like Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese.
In his later films, he sometimes uses stop-motion animations and miniatures for specific animals or entire movies featuring these characters, which is uncommon for world-famous directors and stresses his versatility as a filmmaker.
Anderson’s method of storytelling includes his attention to fast-paced comedic stories with melancholic undertones. The visual style incorporates symmetrical compositions, strict camera movement, models, and a carefully calculated color palette, which every film student should pay attention to.
What parts of his style resonate most with you? Which film would you consider the best or worst Wes Anderson movie?
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