When The Phoenician Scheme hits cinemas on 30th May, it’ll mark director Wes Anderson’s twelfth full-length standalone movie.
This Houston, Texas native has been a remarkably consistent presence behind the camera, turning out a new film every two to three years since his 1996 debut.
Along the way, he has constructed a distinctive aesthetic like few other directors. You know a Wes Anderson film when you see one, to the point of parody.
![THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters May 30 - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/GEuMnPl2WI4/maxresdefault.jpg)
Of course, such parodies rarely hit the target with much force, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the technical skill and the fastidious attention to detail that goes into every Anderson production makes them extremely difficult to mimic with any precision.
For another thing, each and every Anderson film is so shot through with humour and positivity that any semblance of mockery or ill-will just feels churlish.
That’s not to say that every Wes Anderson movie evokes unalloyed delight. Here is one highly personal on where each of his films falls in the rankings.
All objections and disagreements should be handwritten on a vintage French postcard, or else relayed in person via semaphore. We feel it’s what Wes would have wanted.
11. The French Dispatch
The French Dispatch lacks nothing in terms of style (this is a Wes Anderson movie after all) or star power (ditto). It’s a genuinely beautiful watch. But it’s also one of those Anderson productions that somehow seems to amount to less than the sum of its considerable parts. This collection of four ‘magazine articles’ too often tips over into tiresome self indulgence. Somehow, this gloriously shot ode to journalism starring some of Hollywood’s most talented and handsome people (far too many to list here) is... a little boring.
10. Bottle Rocket
We can’t really assemble a list of the best Wes Anderson movies without tipping our hat to his debut – if only because it’s possibly the least ‘Wes Anderson’ film Wes Anderson has ever made. Completely absent of the mannered visual style that has become the director’s calling card, Bottle Rocket has a fascinatingly relaxed, dare we say generic indie movie feel to it. The film also represents the acting debut of both Owen and Luke Wilson, which has to count for something.
9. Asteroid City
We may never get a full on live action Wes Anderson sci-fi movie, but Asteroid City comes the closest yet. Set in a sunny, optimistic 1950s America, it tells a typically Andersonian tale within a tale of a documentary about a play, all centred around the titular fictional desert town and its eclectic inhabitants. We’re not quite sure how it’s taken this long to add Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johannson to the Wes Anderson troupe, but they slot into place predictably well.
8. Fantastic Mr Fox
Anderson had already indicated an interest in stop motion technology with some of the ‘wildlife’ scenes in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, but few would have predicted that he would go all-out Aardman on us. Fantastic Mr Fox is a pretty loose adaptation of the Roald Dahl children’s story, but Anderson’s quirky style – which includes unusually naturalistic dialogue for a ‘kid’s film’ – somehow makes sense of it all. He’s ably assisted, of course, by a phenomenal voice cast, led by George Clooney in the lead role.
7. The Darjeeling Limited
The Darjeeling Limited’s subject matter of three privileged brothers (played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman) bumbling across India in a rickety old train doesn’t seem to have hit the spot with a number of critics. For our money, however, the film’s tight road movie structure, allied to a brilliantly nostalgic Kinks-heavy soundtrack, gives the film a level of emotional directness that helps it to stand proud among the director’s oeuvre. Needless to say, it looks positively sumptuous.
6. Rushmore
Anderson’s second film, Rushmore, centres on Max Fischer (a young Jason Schwartzman, making his debut), an ambitious yet academically struggling scholarship student who falls for Olivia Williams’s teacher. It’s more than just the obvious age difference that thwarts him, with Bill Murray’s friend and industrialist Herman Blume embarking on an illicit affair with the object of Max’s affection – and kicking off a war of attrition that goes to some surprisingly dark places.
5. Isle of Dogs
Wes Anderson’s second stop motion animated film after Fantastic Mr Fox is the better film of the two, and a complete original at that. With that said, it’s a full-on ode to Japanese cinema, and follows a young Japanese boy as he searches for his missing dog, who has been banished to a junk-filled island. Smart, funny, and surprisingly violent despite its ostensibly kid-friendly themes, Isle of Dogs sees Wes Anderson at his most off the wall and creative.
4. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Bill Murray is one of Wes Anderson’s most faithful collaborators, and nowhere is he more prominently featured than in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Here the great comic actor plays an eccentric oceanographer, loosely based on Jacques Cousteau, who chooses to document a revenge-tinged hunt for the jaguar shark that ate his best friend. However, the true star here is the set design, including a near-full-sized cross-section model of the Zissou’s research vessel and some particularly characterful stop motion animation.
![Moonrise Kingdom - Official Trailer [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/_eOI3AamSm8/maxresdefault.jpg)
3. Moonrise Kingdom
There’s a sense of wide-eyed innocence (albeit with a pronounced dark note) to many of this auteur’s films, but has there ever been a sweeter Wes Anderson production than Moonrise Kingdom? Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman play a pair of lovelorn ‘tweens who run away from home on their idyllic New England island, hiking across the wilderness while a cast of eccentric adults and feral kids set off in not-so-hot pursuit. Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, and of course Bill Murray play their supporting roles with perfectly pitched humour.
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
As the film that first really put Anderson on the map, The Royal Tenenbaums is arguably the director’s most critically beloved production – at least until Grand Budapest Hotel arrived some 13 years later. It’s also one of Anderson’s most intimate and focused movies, as it details the shifting dynamics of an extended family of eccentrics, led by Gene Hackman’s grizzly patriarch and Anjelica Huston’s long suffering wife. As with all of the best Wes Anderson films, there’s plenty of pathos to accompany the stylistic fireworks and droll humour.
1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Grand Budapest Hotel is, in many ways, peak Wes Anderson, with its stylised period European set dressing, painstakingly mannered deliveries from an all-star cast, and a plot that flirts with farce as much as drama. So far, so worthy of an AI-generated parody. Where The Grand Budapest Hotel stands out, however, is that it also packs bags of heart and genuine stakes. Many of the director’s works are admirable at a technical level, but this one gives you the feels, as Ralph Fiennes’s immaculate concierge runs an ornate European resort during increasingly troubled times.
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