Every Wes Anderson Movie, Ranked

In honor of Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, it’s worth taking stock of the director’s impressive filmography. But it’s no easy feat to rank all of Anderson’s films, which are always expertly made, if not always kindly received.

In the nearly 30 years since he released his debut, Bottle Rocket, Anderson’s visual style has become so recognizable it’s been turned into a popular meme that the director himself is not all that interested in giving credence to. To be fair, a meticulously shot TikTok send-up doesn’t quite get at the care and craft that goes into Anderson’s films.

Anderson has been accused of many things: putting style before substance, being too sardonic as to lack emotionality, leaning too hard into nostalgia, becoming too fastidious for his own good. But his fans know that within all the jewel box recreations, symmetrical framing, and pastel details, are films full of pathos. It certainly helps that he continuously employs some of the most interesting actors in Hollywood—Ralph Fiennes, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, his go-to guy Bill Murray, just to name a few—to drolly deliver his message.

With his earliest films, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson made intricately designed deadpan comedies about grief, dysfunctional families, and loneliness. As he has matured as a filmmaker, so have his films. His most recent pictures, The French Dispatch and Asteroid City, have used complicated interlocking story structures to deal with mortality, existential dread, and tyranny. All three themes are in play in The Phoenician Scheme, a dark comedy about a ruthless billionaire (Benicio del Toro) who must reconcile with his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton) if there is any hope of keeping his checkered legacy alive. 

Anderson’s films are always idiosyncratic and never straightforward; many are still trying to unpack the “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep” line from Asteroid City. It’s why it can be hard for some viewers to connect with his films. But the more you watch of his work—and yes, his 2023 short film collection, The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar and Three, did make the list—the more it becomes clear that he is a director who is very in touch with the harsh and sad realities of the world. He just chooses to wrap it all up in a perfectly tied millennial pink bow to keep audiences on their toes. 

From Bottle Rocket to The Phoenician Scheme, here’s a ranking of all of Wes Anderson’s movies and the most valuable performers for each one.

13. Bottle Rocket (1996)

Nearly 20 years after its release, Anderson’s debut offers very little sense of the brilliance that was to come. That isn’t a slight to Bottle Rocket, a charming crime comedy about a couple of budding small town crooks played by brothers (and Anderson’s long time buddies) Owen and Luke Wilson, who are not playing brothers in the movie despite having the same Texas drawl. (Their older brother, Andrew, also pops up in the film playing the brother of a different character.) But this movie feels more fly by the seat of your pants than anything Anderson would conceive of doing now. 

In those days, Anderson thought he would follow in the footsteps of John Cassavetes, a pioneer of indie film who was known for his raw, improvisational directing style. This looser, more straightforward approach works for the smaller scale and scope of Bottle Rocket, which begins with Luke Wilson’s Anthony leaving a voluntary treatment facility in Arizona after suffering a nervous breakdown. There is a spontaneity to everything his dimwitted friend Dignan (Owen) does in his mission to help Anthony get back on his feet by recruiting him for a team of part-time criminals led by Mr. Henry (James Caan), the owner of the Lawn Wranglers landscaping company. The two rob a local bookstore, but, no surprise, the job doesn’t go as smoothly as they hoped. They end up hiding out in a motel a few towns over where Anthony falls in love with Inez (Lumi Cavazos), a Paraguayan housekeeper who only speaks Spanish.  

Hijinks definitely ensue, most notably in the form of a slap dash robbery gone unsurprisingly wrong at the local cold storage facility. This Looney Tunes-esque scene, which ends with Dignan in a freezer, feels like the blueprint for Chas’ emergency escape plan in The Royal Tenenbaums. And that’s the thing about Bottle Rocket—it’s downright quaint compared to the more ornate films Anderson has become known for, but thematically, this comedy about two young men looking to find their purpose in life, is just as earnest and sincere as the rest of his filmography. 

The movie’s MVP: Owen Wilson as Dignan, a well-meaning slacker with ridiculous dreams of grandeur. It’s easy to laugh at his 75-year plan built around doing crime and mowing lawns, but it’s hard not to respect the hustle. 

12. The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Three somewhat estranged brothers, played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman, look to process the loss of their father (Bill Murray) and reconnect with their mother (a standout Anjelica Huston) by traveling around India by rail. The hope is that by visiting the country’s spiritual sites together, the men will mend their broken brotherly bond and finally put their family back together. 

The film received the most tepid reviews of Wes Anderson’s career, but its reputation has grown in recent years. Some of that comes from the way in which it was shot. The director’s longtime cinematographer Robert Yeoman captures the joy of traveling around a foreign land through the Anderson gaze, from the buttery yellow sunshine to the intricately hand-painted luggage to a fantastically designed romantic mode of transportation. But for all the care it takes with India’s sweeping views, The Darjeeling Limited does little to humanize the people who live there. 

Early on, the film pokes fun at these desperate Americans who claim they want to experience the real India, but spend more time bickering over their dad’s belongings, ignoring the rules of the train, getting high on foreign pharmaceuticals, and performing pseudo sacred rituals with peacock feathers. Yet, later on, these clueless men find enlightenment at the expense of a young Indian boy’s life. 

At the climax of the movie, the brothers come upon three local kids as they try to make their way across a raging river. When their boat flips over, the men jump in to save the boys, only for their rescue mission to end in tragedy. (“I didn’t save mine,” Brody’s character says as he holds the boy’s limp body in his hands.) When they arrive in the boy’s village, they are welcomed with open arms and are even invited to attend the funeral, but this scene is only there so that we can get a flashback of them together on the day of their father’s wake. (Also, to cast Irrfan Khan as the dead boy’s grieving father and give him nothing to do is a crime.) 

The nameless boy becomes nothing more than collateral damage on the men’s superficial spiritual journey, cheapening any real progress that the brothers had made. A shame since there is a lot to be moved by in this story, written by Anderson, Schwartzman, and the director’s frequent collaborator (and Schwartzman’s cousin) Roman Coppola, about three broken men trying to ditch their family baggage—by the end, quite literally—and find their way back to one another. 

The movie’s MVP: Adrien Brody as Peter Whitman, the middle brother who is struggling with the reality that he is about to become a dad just as he is starting to work through his complicated feelings surrounding his own late father. It’s Brody’s first appearance in the Andersonverse, but you understand why it wouldn’t be his last. 

11. Isle of Dogs (2018)

Wes Anderson’s second stop-motion feature is a whimsical political thriller about an island of misfit dogs. 

In 2038, after two highly contagious diseases, snout fever and dog flu, start spreading through the canine community of the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki, the cat-loving Mayor Kobayashi (voiced by Kunichi Nomura) banishes all stray and domesticated dogs to a floating garbage dump with the diabolical intent of eradicating the entire species and replacing them with robot dogs.

The mayor’s 12-year-old ward and distant relative Atari (Koyu Rankin) flies to the island with the goal of saving his beloved pet Spots (Liev Schreiber) from certain death. But once he discovers what his uncle has planned, he finds himself on a mission to save man’s best friend. To do this, he enlists the help of a group of displaced dogs that includes Chief (Bryan Cranston), ​​a lifelong stray who bites and is quick to let everyone know it. 

With a cast that includes Ed Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, and Harvey Keitel as Gondo, the leader of a pack of alleged cannibal dogs, Isle of Dogs is a dog lovers dream. Despite the horrors these neglected doggos have endured, they are droll, eccentric, and incredibly perceptive beings. Basically, they’re the four-legged versions of the archetypical Anderson characters.

The film’s political plot, which involves the assassination of a political rival, a thwarted cure for dog flu, and an enterprising American foreign-exchange student (voiced by Greta Gerwig) may wear thin for some viewers. (Though, the movie’s heavier themes of deportation, xenophobia, and demagogy feel as prescient as ever.) Same goes with Anderson’s choice to not use subtitles for some of the Japanese-speaking characters, which, as the New York Times pointed out in its review of the film, could leave viewers feeling as if  “few of the Japanese characters, including Atari, have the depth or dignity given the dogs.” But the message at the heart of Isle of Dogs, that saving others is the only way to save one’s self, is enough to turn the most cynical viewer into a believer—and maybe even a dog lover.  

The movie’s MVP: Bryan Cranston brings a real Glengarry Glen Ross vibe to his performance as Chief, a short-haired Oceanic speckle-eared sport hound who proudly disobeys anyone who tries to tame him. That initial gruffness is what makes his journey to becoming a good boy all the more heartwarming.

10. The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

Like Wes Anderson’s previous film, Asteroid City, there is a Russian nesting doll-like structure to The Phoenician Scheme. This time, the complicated plot—perhaps, unnecessarily so—is quite literally hidden in shoeboxes. 

Set in 1956, Benicio del Toro plays Zsa Zsa Korda, a cold-blooded industrialist who, after barely surviving the latest of many attempts on his life, believes his long-gestating multi-level business venture is going to get him killed. In order to keep his life’s work afloat, an international construction scheme, the details of which are kept in those aforementioned shoe boxes, he calls upon his estranged daughter, nun-in-training Liesel (Mia Threapleton, who happens to be Kate Winslet’s daughter) to become the sole heir of the family fortune. Unfortunately, his ruthless business practices—using slave labor, intentionally causing a famine in a third world country, all of which he is quite proud of—don’t quite jive with her holy aspirations. In order for him to get what he wants, he’ll have to choose between building his portfolio or saving his humanity. 

Taking cues from John le Carré and Michael Powell, Anderson constructs an espionage family drama about the battle for the soul of capitalism that just so happens to be his funniest movie in years.   

The movie’s MVP: With a hangdog expression that can be both sympathetic and menacing, Benicio del Toro perfectly embodies the embittered and embattled billionaire tycoon experiencing an inopportune dark night of the soul. 

9. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024)

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Anderson’s Academy Award-winning short based on the 1977 Roald Dahl short story of the same name, feels like a children’s pop-up book come to life. 

To tell the tall tale of the pseudonymous protagonist, an obscenely wealthy man, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who teaches himself to see things without his eyes, and the three additional Dahl stories—“The Swan,” “The Ratcatcher,” and “Poison”—production designer Adam Stockhausen created elaborate theatrical sets that would make Max Fischer jealous. 

The shorts are filmed like mini stage plays in which the leads read Dahl’s stories word-for-word straight to camera. “In order to support the storytelling, we wanted to make a kind of blocking and staging that could happen live,” Anderson explained in a behind-the-scenes video. “We make our way through spaces without actually leaving the same set, we just bring in pieces of scenery. And the scenes could change while the actors stay engaged with the audience.” 

This approach makes each film feel delightfully tactile and frenetic. Members of the cast, which include Dev Patel, Rupert Friend, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley, often change costumes and switch characters mid-scene right in front of our eyes. This highly controlled bit of chaos makes it feel as if anything can happen. It’s a delicate dance that is hard to take your eyes off of, even if it can feel exhausting watching these actors flutter around. But perhaps the most exciting part of Anderson’s second adaptation of Dahl’s work is that it is more than just a visual feast. Close your eyes and it becomes a star-studded audiobook read at 2x speed. 

The movie’s MVP: Ralph Fiennes in The Ratcatcher, in which he plays the “Rat Man” who may or may not be part rat. Either way, by channeling his inner vermin, Fiennes gives a tour de force performance in under 20 minutes.

8. The French Dispatch (2021)

A love letter to the New Yorker, Wes Anderson’s tenth film channels the feeling of reading a magazine. Each story in the anthology film is presented as an article written for the titular fictional publication’s final issue following the death of their owner and founder. There is a “Shouts & Murmurs”-esque opening section where the cycling reporter (played by a beret-wearing Owen Wilson) takes readers on a tour of the rather mundane French city Ennui-sur-Blasé that has become the international outpost for the Liberty, Kansas-based publication. There are three longer “features,” inspired by real New Yorker articles, that delve into the relationship between a mentally ill incarcerated artist (Benicio del Toro) and his prison guard (Léa Seydoux), a student protest led by a chess savvy gang led by a French-speaking Timothée Chalamet, and a high octane profile of the police chief’s chef from lovelorn food journalist Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright), a character loosely inspired by James Baldwin. The epilogue takes the form of an obituary for the magazine’s late founder, but also acts as Anderson’s charming ode to the golden age of longform journalism. 

Each section takes on different styles, tones, and aspect ratios, becoming a Whitman’s sampler of Anderson iconography that will delight his most fervent admirers, but likely infuriate those who wrote him off long ago. 

The movie’s MVP: Jeffrey Wright, in his Anderson debut, brings a poignancy to the final section of the film that stays with you long after the credits roll. 

7. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson’s stop motion debut and first adaptation of a Roald Dahl novel, is a playful reimagining of a work by one of literature’s most inventive authors, made by one of Hollywood’s most visionary directors. 

Mr. Fox, a clever, but impulsive robber-turned-newspaper columnist voiced by George Clooney, gives up a life of thievery to raise a family with his supportive wife (Meryl Streep), misfit son (Jason Schwartzman), and monosyllabic nephew (Eric Anderson). Lately though he’s found himself yearning for the excitement of his former life. When an opportunity arises to steal from his nasty farmer neighbors, he takes it in hopes of setting his family up for a better life, but also in hopes he’ll get his mojo back.

It’s the classic “one last job” storyline led by carefully handcrafted anthropomorphic animals. And like those stories, everything that could go wrong does. Mr. Fox is ambushed by a violent bodyguard rat (played by Willem Dafoe), contends with a rabid beagle, and is nearly drowned by a river of cider. Not to mention, his antics nearly get his poor neighbors killed. Mr. Fox soon realizes that in order to become a better husband, father, and friend, he must put those he loves before his selfish desires.

It’s a teachable moment, which is why Fantastic Mr. Fox has become a go-to animated flick for cinephile parents who prefer Miyazaki over Disney. But the feature feels a bit like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. On the outside, it appears as if it’s a sweet children’s movie about a fox who lets his pride get in the way of loving others. On the inside, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a wry and incredibly sincere look at a dad in the midst of a midlife crisis, which just so happens to be a fantastic idea for a stop-motion picture.

The movie’s MVP: George Clooney and his smoky baritone turn Mr. Fox into Danny Ocean. 

6. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

Many critics and fans believe The Life Aquatic, a silly, sometimes sardonic, and deeply sincere ode to the renowned red beanie-wearing oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, is Wes Anderson’s most underrated film to date. 

Anderson’s melancholic fourth film, which he co-wrote with Noah Baumbach, is about a man who can’t let go of the past. And like its messy protagonist, the titular washed-up ocean explorer and documentarian played by Bill Murray who is embarking on an expedition to murder the jaguar shark that killed his best friend, the movie is a little all over the place.

It has all the playful hallmarks of an Anderson movie: eccentric costuming in the form of Team Zissou’s matching cherry red beanies and sky blue jumpsuits, a whimsical soundtrack full of Seu Jorge’s Portuguese-sung David Bowie covers, a stop-motion underwater creature, and a breathtaking full-scale model of the interior of Zissou’s ship, which feels like a quite literal response to all those who have said his movies are like little dioramas. 

But for all its brightness, the film lacks the warmth of his earlier films, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. Zissou’s need for revenge has caused him to become bitter. He’s more focused on making a new documentary and regaining his relevance than connecting with his surviving crew, which includes his estranged wife (Anjelica Huston) and his possibly long lost son (Owen Wilson). 

Life Aquatic, like Zissou, keeps the audience at an arm’s length, which, for better or worse, is by design. I would argue for worse, since the scene in which Zissou is moved to tears when he finally comes face-to-face with the murderous speckled shark may be the most emotionally impactful moment of any Anderson film. 

The movie’s MVP: While I could make a case for everything Willem Dafoe is doing, this is hands down Bill Murray’s movie—and possibly the best dramatic performance of his career. 

5. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Moonrise Kingdom tells the bittersweet story of two star-crossed 12-year-olds who fall in love and run away together, only for their romantic rendezvous to turn into a slapstick search and rescue mission. 

Set on the fictional New England island of New Penzance in the 1960s, Sam (Jared Gilman), an emotionally disturbed orphan, and Suzy (Kara Hayward), a sophisticated, yet troubled girl in the vein of Margot Tenenbaum, long to grow up and get away from the chaos that surrounds them. And who could really blame them. The adults in Moonrise Kingdom are either thoroughly unhappy, in the case of Suzy’s parents (played by Frances McDormand and Bill Murray), or rather delusional, like Sam’s self-important troop master (Edward Norton). They believe they know what’s best for these prepubescent kids, but Anderson questions whether these tweens who follow their hearts can’t teach the disillusioned adults a little something about life and love.

In Anderson’s hands, Moonrise Kingdom is a French New Wave take on the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. He leans into the artifice of his storybook world that is designed to look like a faded Polaroid. But he takes his young protagonists’ heightened emotions very seriously. He never questions whether what they are experiencing is really love knowing they believe it is. It all makes for an eccentric, yet exhilarating look at what it feels like to fall in love for the first time. And a reminder to never get so old that you forget what it was like to feel so deeply. 

The movie’s MVP: Bruce Willis’ lovelorn local officer, who becomes Sam’s greatest ally, offered a side of the actor that he hadn’t tapped into for far too long. 

4. Asteroid City (2023)

Asteroid City is a whole lot of movie to take in in one sitting. It’s a family drama, a coming-of-age romance, a classic western, and an alien invasion picture all rolled into one. It’s a story within a story that is structured as a TV show about a playwright trying to put together a production called “Asteroid City.” It’s a meta-narrative with intertwining storylines, two of which are happening simultaneously, bouncing back and forth between the making of the titular play, which is shot in black and white, and the finished production itself which is set in a fictional 1950s desert town seen in all its technicolor glory. The cherry on top may be that Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, and others are playing characters in the production of “Asteroid City” and also the actors that play those characters. Are you still with me?

If not, I can’t blame you. That labyrinthine structure is what led some critics and fans to write the film off. But for those willing to embrace Asteroid City’s complicated format you will be rewarded with a heady meditation on grief, hope, and the cosmic unknown. 

The movie’s MVP: Twenty-five years after Rushmore, Jason Schwartzman expertly pulls double-duty as Augie Steenbeck, a widowed war photographer, and Jones Hall, the sorrowful method actor who plays him in the titular production.

3. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Taking its cues from J.D. Salinger and Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, The Royal Tenenbaums is a wistful comedy about a fractured family of former child prodigies.

When charismatic absentee dad Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) loses his home, he goes looking for help from his ex-wife (Anjelica Huston) and three currently down on their luck kids—disgraced tennis player Richie (Luke Wilson), recently widowed dad Chaz (Ben Stiller), and his adopted playwright daughter (Gwyneth Paltrow). Royal’s estranged family isn’t all that interested in a reunion so in order to make his way back into their life, and, more importantly, into their grandiose New York City home, he pretends to be on the brink of death. 

Anderson has always been interested in the complicated relationships between parents and kids, especially those amid a tense reconciliation. But out of all his bad dads, Royal may be the worst. Early in the film, Royal seems completely unable to say or do the right things. It is only because of his two red Adidas jumpsuit-wearing grandchildren, who are struggling to find some autonomy under the watchful eye of their uptight father, that Royal feels compelled to become the dad that his once gifted children need. Full of sadness and regret, The Royal Tenenbaums is a touching redemption story about a man who finally learns to put others first.

The movie’s MVP: If you believe Bill Murray, the late Gene Hackman was not the easiest actor to work with on The Royal Tenenbaums set. But perhaps Hackman’s natural gruffness is what makes Royal Tenenbaum such an endearing curmudgeon. Just watch his final scene with Stiller’s Chas and try not to cry, I dare you.

Only two years after Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson returned with a uniquely stylized coming-of-age comedy that would become his calling card. 

Rushmore stars Jason Schwartzman, making his film debut, as Max Fischer, an odd, overly confident teenage boy whose life revolves around the titular private school. (Fun fact: much of the film was shot at St. John’s in Houston, where Anderson actually went to school.) That is, until the 15-year-old social outcast and failing student falls in love with a lovely, but lonely first-grade teacher twice his age (played by Olivia Williams), who also happens to be the object of wealthy industrialist Herman Blume’s affection. This bizarre love triangle results in Max and Herman (Bill Murray) waging a war of one-upmanship to the sounds of the ‘60s British invasion. 

It’s easy to laugh at Max, who with his bushy eyebrows and collegiate enthusiasm is the anti-Ferris Bueller. He’s not taking days off from school, but spending every moment he can there, joining the fencing club, saving Latin, and staging high school productions of gritty films like Serpico. But Anderson never treats Max like a joke. Instead, he paints a sympathetic portrait of a lonely kid who was forced to grow up too soon after the death of his mom. His arrogance is a defense mechanism, a way to cover up his deep rooted sadness and fear that he will lose everything and everyone he loves. 

Max’s melancholy is what bonds him to Herman, an immature man with failed aspirations. But it’s their decision to fill their respective voids with the romantic notion that there is something more out there that makes this such a moving look at what it means to find closure.   

The movie’s MVP: Rushmore is a real two-hander; it just doesn’t work without both Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. But the fact that Schwartzman, in his first film, was given the difficult task of stealing laughs away from a comedy legend, and so often succeeds in doing so, gives him the slight edge. 

It’s Anderson’s most critically acclaimed film to date—and most award-winning, taking home four Academy Awards—but it’s also his most realized. 

Eighteen years into his career, Anderson took everything he had done well up to then—ornately composed framing, stop motion animation, matte paintings, rear projection, well-cast ensembles—and added a few new flourishes—boxier frames, smaller aspect ratios, nesting doll storytelling—to create a millennial pink-soaked madcap caper centered around M. Gustave, a charismatic hotel concierge played by Ralph Fiennes, and Zero, his lobby boy (Tony Revolori).