I wrote a ranking of Wes Anderson’s movies for The Hollywood Reporter. His newest movie, The Phoenician Scheme, is in theaters now. It’s his twelfth feature film, but the ranking has more than twelve entries, because if you’re gonna be eccentric with any list, it should be a Wes Anderson list. I hope you like the piece. I’m grateful to THR for the opportunity to write about so many amazing movies — I count at least six masterpieces — and grateful for the opportunity to revisit a few films that really popped for me on rewatch.
It’s also fun to write about Anderson’s bad movies, which are always cool-looking. You may think his bad movies are his great movies, or vice versa. Even among fans, the fights get testy. I think I’m a fairly standard Anderson guy of my generation. One of his early films was an all-encompassing sensation for my teenaged brain, redefining certain key tenets of my personality — my sense of humor, my private canon of crucial pop culture references, what clothes I foolishly thought looked good on me. I wanted to be a Wes Anderson character for five, maybe ten years? Anderson has a style that remains unique, even after decades of rank imitation and solid parody. But his commitment to his particular aesthetic — perfectly posed tableau framing, sumptuous yet synthetic chromatics, characters hiding realms of emotion beneath well-costumed exteriors — has gotten much more extreme with age.
Anecdotally, I’ve talked to some people who think Anderson got lost in his own style decades ago. Other people seem to think he’s fundamentally on Great Director cruise control now, and all his movies are arthouse events. I kinda love one movie he’s made in the 2020s, kinda hate another one, feel middling about the third. (It’s Phoenician I’m middling on. But the score, by Alexandre Desplat, is real good. It sounds like a very dainty doomsday clock.)
As I was putting together the list, the most interesting rewatch — not necessarily the best movie — was Bottle Rocket. I remembered it as the debut-iest of debut films, young dudes making a movie about young dudes. The last time I watched it in full was probably in 2003, when all the characters were still older than me. I forgot just how funny the script by Anderson and Owen Wilson is. (Bullying big brother Future Man is a character who makes me laugh every time he appears, or is even mentioned.) I also forgot how it felt to watch a Wes Anderson movie with, well, oxygen. Bottle Rocket is half a hangout movie, with a playful second act set around a motel the criminal protagonists sorta flee to (even though no one seems to notice the crime they committed.) As the main character, Luke Wilson is very likable and seems super chill. It’s lighthearted, but not lightweight, starting in a mental institution and ending in a penitentiary. In that final scene, the convict tells visiting friends he has a plan for a prison break. A few later Anderson movies actually DO feature prison breaks — elaborate, heisty, Big Setpieces. In Bottle Rocket, though, it’s just a joke — or a confession, from a man full of ridiculous plans, that his big bold ideas have been always doomed adventures.
Past a certain point in his filmography, Anderson’s movies can feel totally relentless — and sometimes, that’s what makes them so exciting! The effects he’s going after are not simple. I admire his world-building; Phoenician does a decent job conjuring a violent-cartoon version of the Middle East. His work might be set in remote times and places, but it tangibly connects to what we’re living through right now. He really is an epic filmmaker, even if his playfulness and absurdity also veers near outright spoof. I wonder what the guy who made Bottle Rocket would make of 2025, though. Maybe his movies’ escape to history is the answer.
In conclusion, my ranking is right and wrong in equal measure, but I hope you agree the best Hotel is not always the grandest one.