Wes Anderson Ranked
Moonrise Kingdom was my introduction to Wes Anderson. My cousin and I watched it on a train to Amboise, France, where there are rolling hills and colorful layered fields—much like the beauty found within Anderson’s work itself. Needless to say, seeing this film was a formative experience for both of us: my cousin still has it as her phone screensaver, and I sometimes burst out into random one-liners from its endless spring of memorable quotes. Wes Anderson, as anyone who’s seen one of his films knows, is not a director you can forget easily. Over the last quarter of a century, he’s become so ingrained into our cultural vocabulary, so easily referenced and aestheticized, that to witness his evolution as a filmmaker is to witness, in a sense, the evolution of how we ourselves perceive reality. Anderson presents mundane life as a series of neat, perfectly organized stills, always shot at a right angle, always teeming with depth and wonder, never quite as boring as everyday tasks really are. Because of this tendency, his movies are strangely relatable—not in terms of how true to actuality they are, but insofar as we’re able to long for a stylized, idealized world in the same way Anderson longs for them. That, above all else, is what sets Wes apart as one of the most visionary writer-directors of our era.
Enough mindless jabbering! Here are the twelve Wes Anderson movies, ranked.
The Phoenician Scheme (2025)
3/10
There are people who say The Phoenician Scheme is the first great Wes Anderson film in years. But I disagree. If The Grand Budapest Hotel is a beautifully frosted cake from Mendl’s, then The Phoenician Scheme is like the cardboard box it came in, which is to say that it’s flimsy, flat, and fundamentally forgettable. “All style, no substance,” however, is too generous of an evaluation for this disaster, since it’s somehow missing the director’s trademark style. Gone are the hallmark eye-popping colors of Anderson’s other vibrant works, replaced by some of the most dull gray scenes of concrete walls and old warehouses in recent memory. Ostensibly a father-daughter espionage tale but also featuring an undercooked and head-scratching depiction of heaven, the film treats its plot like a chore as it lays out the exact tasks the characters have to complete. This is followed by the characters completing the tasks. Such an Excel spreadsheet of a narrative repeats itself many times and gets less interesting with each development, so that The Phoenician Scheme is the cinematic equivalent of Balenciaga selling a white t-shirt for $800.
Asteroid City (2023)
5/10
This is a divisive film. Unlike The Phoenician Scheme, it has some fresh ideas, and presents them in relatively artistic ways. Set in a fictional 1950s desert town hosting a Junior Stargazer convention, the film is wrapped in a meta-narrative about a theater troupe putting on a play, using its box-within-a-box structure to present a rather detached depiction of grief. Because of Asteroid City’s obvious ambition, it’s not hard to see why it sits at the top of more than a few “best of Wes” lists, but it also hits rock bottom on many of them—Anderson’s distant and indifferent tone, so often criticized for alienating his audience, is at its least affecting here, in a film that absolutely needs some semblance of emotion to carry its ideas through. Without that emotion, Asteroid City is emotionally inert, a diorama of grief that’s so meticulously curated it doesn’t realize its viewers are humans who need imperfections to connect with. Re: the actual human ruptures—the death of a mother and the existential confusion of a child—Anderson almost sidesteps them, covering them up in a few lines as nothing more than props to be color-coordinated (in the disgusting shades of washed blue-and-orange that started a hot TikTok trend and undoubtedly birthed a generation of little Weses with everything to shoot and not much to say). Asteroid City is a film that talks incessantly, sounds pretty good, but unfortunately never manages to have an honest conversation with us, leaving it almost stimulating but ultimately a shell of a movie.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
5/10
The Life Aquatic is another film which many diehard Andersonians defend as one of the best of its decade—depicting a flawed relationship with a father and his son on their quest to find the mythical “Jaguar Shark,” it explores humiliations of aging and Zissou’s burgeoning professional irrelevance, as well as the wrestling and reconciling with childhood trauma (this seems to be a common theme in the filmography). It saddens me to put The Life Aquatic so low because it's not “bad” by any means, it’s just incredibly boring. This was Anderson’s fourth feature and the first movie he made without partner Owen Wilson, whose screenwriting presence just vanishes in Wes’ debut solo effort. It’s cold and distant in comparison to their first three works together, and like The Phoenician Scheme, most of it is just plain uninteresting. That’s not to say this movie is unrewarding: it boasts the greatest, most tearjerking, life-affirming scene in Wes Anderson’s filmography, a moment of genuine vulnerability set to Sigur Rós’ “Starálfur.” It almost makes up for everything else about The Life Aquatic… almost. Avoid watching on less than seven hours of sleep.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
6/10
Speaking of familial dramas, here is cult classic The Royal Tenenbaums, a movie that has exposed countless viewers to Nico’s “These Days” and Elliott Smith. It certainly has the best set of needledrops in a filmography full of iconic needledrops. The premise—a clan of former child prodigies unraveling into disappointment and arrested development—is also undeniably fertile ground, previously explored in beautiful detail by J.D. Salinger’s stories about the fictional Glass family from whom Anderson gained his inspiration. Burnout, resentment, and failed potential are themes of The Royal Tenenbaums, and they are clearly trying to sting deep into the heart of the viewer. And sometimes, they do! There are moments where the film brushes up against something bruised and real, particularly in its depiction of each family member’s various eccentricities as a coping mechanism in response to the mental tolls of their early lives. But these moments arrive sporadically and without the necessary scene-by-scene buildup to render them as meaningful as they should be. If there is any movie that could pair with Good Will Hunting in a double feature, however, it’s this one. Best watched while wearing a headband and contemplating your wasted life.
Isle of Dogs (2018)
7/10
I’m usually not one to scream racism at any old movie off the street, but there were clearly some very curious creative decisions made when it came to Isle of Dogs. Set in the fictional, near-future Japanese city of “Megasaki” (vine boom), the film follows a pack of exiled dogs on a literal island of trash—a premise that, on a purely visual level, creates perhaps the most staggering stop-motion achievement in the history of the medium, far beyond Anderson’s own Fantastic Mr. Fox. But it sits at a 7/10 because Anderson’s quirky aesthetic obsessions don’t quite succeed at fetishizing an entire culture. There is something extremely uncomfortable about how every Japanese character is left untranslated, relegating them to background noise and handing the narrative solely over to the dogs, who are voiced by Wes’ usual roster of deadpan American actors. Anderson and crew have named many Japanese films that influenced Isle of Dogs, and there are clear homages to these influences within the film, but overall it feels less like a tribute to Asian cinema and more so a plot using Japan as a wonderful prop to assist what is a purely American story. (This disconnect is most glaring in the “white savior” trope embodied by Tracy Walker, Greta Gerwig’s American exchange student who somehow becomes the sole moral voice inciting a Japanese political revolution.) Under all of this, however, is a lovely, well-designed stop-motion narrative of redemption from an Anderson at the peak of his creative run in the 2010s.
The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
7/10
Not too much to say about The Darjeeling Limited, a film squarely in the middle of “really bad” and “really good” in the Wes Anderson regime. Mostly a comedic tourism brochure about three brothers on a trip across India to find their mother, a lot of it is forgettable, but it’s also one of the few times Anderson utilizes his aesthetic style to unpack serious material. The premise of this movie could easily slide into the same cultural fetishization found in Isle of Dogs, but here, unlike in the emotionally inert art installations of his later career, the grief of the brothers is physically manifested in their father’s literal baggage, which they haul across the desert in a ridiculous but heartbreakingly sincere way. More than that, spirituality is a major theme of The Darjeeling Limited, and the journey to find their mother is mirrored in each brother’s relationship with India’s religious landscape and the people who help them along the way. A solid movie.
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
7/10
One of the most fun films to come out of the 2000s, Fantastic Mr. Fox may be the quintessential centerpiece of any respectable family movie night. It certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously, with one of my favorite montages in history featuring a series of unprecedented dances as the animals, who were fighting just moments before, gleefully raid room after room of the evil farmers’ storehouses. Based on the Roald Dahl classic of the same name, Anderson takes full advantage of a fresh opportunity to wax eloquent about “different” children and the fathers who fail them. This is the movie that arguably turned “Wes Anderson” into a concept, a kind of lifestyle brand, spawning a million Pinterest boards of the orange corduroy and autumn leaves that make this film’s appearance so iconic. Fantastic Mr. Fox, however, is far more than a good-looking work of art. At its core, the film is a mid-life crisis masquerading as a heist movie, exploring the tension between our wilder, “feral” instincts and the suffocating cages of domestic respectability, and doing it all with a set of talking animals. While it occasionally slides into the trap of over-quirkiness that complicates his later works, it’s nonetheless a chaotic, vibrant experience that manages to have a heart-to-heart about identity, acknowledging the wildness we lose when we settle for a mortgage and a steady job. I’ve never tried a Snapple, but I imagine this film would be best enjoyed while drinking one.
Bottle Rocket (1995)
8/10
The film that started it all. There’s a famous photo of Anderson and Owen Wilson gleefully jumping off the stairs in front of an office building, for years said to have been taken moments after the duo secured a deal to make Bottle Rocket, but later revealed by Anderson himself as a random picture that Wilson’s mom took beforehand (she told the boys to jump and look excited) This is a film that feels remarkably alive because Anderson hadn’t yet decided to pursue absolute visual perfection–in fact, the average viewer would never be able to tell that it was a Wes-directed movie. It’s an 8/10 for me because it’s the most unrefined and low-stakes entry in his filmography, possessing a shaggy-dog sincerity that his later, more meticulous works seem positively afraid of. Owen Wilson’s fingerprints are all over this script; his presence, both as a writer and as the lead actor, provide a warmth that flows through the film and makes it charming in a natural way. Ostensibly, Bottle Rocket is about a manic guy who makes plans to execute a robbery, but it’s more about friendship and coming to terms with the fact that you might just be a regular person.
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021)
8/10
That is a mouthful of a title. This is also an eyeful of a movie. Definitively the most “Wes Anderson” Wes Anderson movie that has ever been made, or ever will be, The French Dispatch is paradoxically the ultimate Andersonian experience and also somewhat of a departure from his previous works. This is an anthology film following three separate storylines in France, connected by the fact that they are all stories told by journalists working for a derelict publication… in Kansas (?). It is also, not very subtly, a love letter to Wes’ beloved New Yorker magazine. The visuals are brighter and bolder than ever in this movie, and there are a number of one-off aesthetic moments, such as cartoon characters running around in the middle of live-action scenes, that are unique to The French Dispatch in Anderson’s filmography. To my knowledge, this is also the only one of his movies to feature a shaky camera shot, which is used for precisely three seconds–more than enough time for it to stand in stark contrast to Wes’ usual static, 90-degree-angle shots. There are parts of the movie that are in black and white, and there are parts in color, and there are parts that are mostly in black and white but with color in a few select elements. It’s all over the place, but in the best possible way. Unfortunately, at least in my experience, the second and third parts of the anthology are considerably less interesting than the first, but that doesn’t stop The French Dispatch from being an excellent late-game contribution to an exceedingly colorful body of work.
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
9/10
I first watched Moonrise Kingdom on a train breezing through the fields of southern France, which I believe should be the intended viewing experience for everyone who desires to see this film. The premise follows two twelve-year-old outcasts who run away together on a remote New England island, a narrative that could have easily devolved into a cutesy, indie-oddball trope. Instead, Anderson treats their pre-adolescent romance with a startling gravity (to this day I don’t know if this was done ironically, or if the romance is meant to be taken at face value), acknowledging that for a child, being misunderstood by adults feels like the end of the world. The film is at its best when it honors the playful melancholy of these kids’ lives, whether that’s by pitting boy scout against boy scout in a standoff on the remote island, or by inciting the now-iconic dance scene between our two protagonists on the beach, where a record player is the only tool they have to combat a culture of “adulting” that wants to medicate their sadness away. Moonrise Kingdom is an ode to nostalgia and the longing for an innocence that no longer exists.
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
9/10
Is it controversial that The Grand Budapest Hotel doesn’t occupy the top spot on this list? Perhaps. It’s easily the most well-known of Anderson’s movies, in a body of work chock-full of well-known movies. There are so many things about it that are just absolutely perfect—from the instantly recognizable pink color palette to the creativity of the prison scenes to the whip pans inside the hotel. The film follows the whirlwind adventures of Gustave H., a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between world wars, and Zero, a lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend and protégé. It’s a story about the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune, set against the solemn landscape of a continent rapidly and violently changing under military regime. While a lot of his work seems like we view it through a thick pane of glass, this movie manages to shatter that distance through the sheer, foul-mouthed charisma of Gustave H., a man who uses the pedestrian details of his hotel’s hospitality to stave off the encroaching darkness of fascism. To me, The Grand Budapest Hotel represents the best reconciliation of everything Wes Anderson represents—it hits the exact spot between wit and emotion, nostalgia and the future, and visual flair and resonance. A near-perfect reminder of why so many people fell in love with the “Wes” aesthetic in the first place.
Rushmore (1998)
10/10
Rushmore is the heart and soul of everything about life, not just in the context of Wes Anderson’s work, but as part of our existence as humans, going through endless cycles of failure, regret, longing, and hope. It is at the top of this list rather unconventionally because it doesn't encapsulate what Wes Anderson as a concept stands for: all the box-within-the-box games and obsessive, suffocating symmetry are largely absent here. Instead, this is one of the greatest humanist films in history, capturing a slice of adolescence and generalizing it to the larger mortal experience with a heart-rending, uncomfortable sincerity that is never again reflected in an Anderson movie. The film centers on Max Fischer, a teenager who is simultaneously a genius and a complete failure, excelling at everything except the things that matter to him. When he falls in love with a first-grade teacher, Rosemary, and enters into a bizarre, competitive relationship with the depressed industrialist Herman Blume, the film spirals into a comedy-tragedy of arrested development, making it the most sincerely funny of Anderson’s mostly offbeat works, but also the most crushing. It is, perhaps, the blueprint for the “anxiety-based conversation” that defines the best of independent cinema, where every interaction is loaded with a melancholic tension that is somehow flippant and restlessly energetic at the same time. The messiness of life is on perfect display in Rushmore—no adult dramedy comes close to it, no teen comedy is like it, and no film, period, reaches the emotional catharsis of this beautiful movie. A classic.
Caleb Lee is a sophomore at Columbia College studying English. He’s best known for his work on “Untitled Document,” an upcoming Double Exposure article.