All the Wes Anderson Movies, Ranked from Worst to Best

• Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Owen Wilson
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 75%

Anderson's most recent work, The French Dispatch, is certainly not a bad movie, but it doesn't quite stack up with the rest of his resume. Part of what makes Anderson's movies so interesting is the razor sharp focus with which they are produced. Despite including massive casts and vivacious color palettes, the films are finely tuned and free of any excess in the narrative.

The French Dispatch, while featuring memorable performances and a nice iteration of the auteur's signature style, lacks a bit of this focus. This may just be an overall critique of the pseudo-anthological format of the film; that said, I found that the organized chaos of Anderson's work is better paired with a more airtight narrative. The sprawling nature of The French Dispatch leaves a viewer a thoroughly entertained, but perhaps a bit taxed.

• Starring: Maya Hawke, Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Adrien Brody
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 75%

In a way, Asteroid City's faults are derived from Wes Anderson's impressive progression of his visual style over the years. It's a delight to behold visually, but after seeing the same style repeatedly honed down to a razor thin point, the style begins to seem vapid. It's the same pitfall The French Dispatch falls into. Once we've been inundated with Anderson's trademark style and are no longer drawn to the mere aesthetic, we yearn for something more to grab onto. And in a way, these movies are starting to become purely style.

That is not to say the movie wasn't an absolutely lovable cacophony of exciting visuals in an entirely new color palette; it was. Lovers of Anderson's style will, too, enjoy this film—as I did. The performances were a major highlight. Seeing Tom Hanks paired up with Anderson for the first time will hopefully signal more collaborations. Anderson's films no longer feel groundbreaking, but that doesn't mean they aren't fun.

• Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 69%

When writing this list, it was immediately clear that very good movies would find themselves near the bottom of the ranking. The Darjeeling Limited is a wonderful movie; its placement ends up being a matter of personal taste. Its visual style is less kaleidoscopic than its contemporary, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Its themes less fleshed out than those of The Grand Budapest Hotel. What remains is a film that feels a bit like a layover for Anderson. It incorporates some of the global feel that is so honed in Budapest without sacrificing the charm and loneliness of Rushmore.

It's a movie that is relatively unmemorable in Anderson's roster, but could easily be a respectable choice for a favorite film from the auteur.

• Starring: Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, James Caan
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 85%

Bottle Rocket is Wes Anderson's first movie. And that much is exceedingly clear in watching it. But nestled in all of the gritty lack of refinement is the seedling that would burgeon into Anderson's signature style—both aesthetically and narratively.

This film also marks the beginning of Anderson's longstanding partnership with Owen Wilson; they wrote the movie together and Wilson would go on to appear in every single Wes Anderson movie but two.

• Starring: Bill Murray, Ed Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Brian Cranston, Tilda Swinton
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 90%

Opinion of Isle of Dogs really comes down to a personal love of animation. The claymation style is more precise and vivid in Isle of Dogs than it was in Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the narrative is simple without being boring. In short, it is a delightful film.

The film includes an interesting phenomenon: taking place in Japan, all the Japanese language is left untranslated. While this sparked a bit of controversy upon its release, numerous interpretations have arisen since, such as Moeko Fuji's take for the New Yorker: "As I walked out of the theatre, Anderson’s decision not to subtitle the Japanese speakers struck me as a carefully considered artistic choice. 'Isle of Dogs' is profoundly interested in the humor and fallibility of translation."

• Starring: Bill Murray, Ed Norton, Bruce Willis, Jason Schwartzman, Kara Hayward, Jared Gilman
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 93%

Moonrise Kingdom is exceptionally cute. It lacks much of the global thematic complexity of some of the films that appear later on this list, but it more than makes up for that with its sense of ephemeral charm. It's one of the easiest to watch of Anderson's films, and a great choice for a rookie viewer who just wants to get a sense of what that trademark style looks like.

One of the films that Anderson co-wrote with Roman Coppola, the duo studied works like The 400 Blows in an effort to cultivate a true coming-of-age story. In that way, it is a successful film that is as fun to watch as it must have been to produce.

Fans of French New Wave films may notice Anderson's fascination with the genre; many of his trademark visuals—symmetrical shots, knick knacks laid out on tables and other repeated looks—are commonplace in films by Agnès Varda and other auteurs of that generation.

• Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Anjelica Huston
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 57%

I toyed with the placement of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou more than any other film on this list. It is, in my opinion, one of the most indulgent films of Anderson's narratively. Rather than a streamlined experiment in point A to point B, Life Aquatic glories in its excess. What begins as a fairly straightforward satirical biopic cascades into an untethered, almost Simpsons-like Rube Goldberg machine of a movie.

Conversely, the movie may be Anderson's most enticing, visually. That's not to say the aesthetic doesn't also defy logic, but the vibrant blues, reds and whites that punctuate its 118 minute runtime make it impossible to forget. Those who don't adore Anderson's trademark style will certainly tire of this movie initially. It is, at times, so pronounced that it seems almost like a satire of a Wes Anderson movie. But fans of his movies will rejoice.

My favorite part of the film is the soundtrack. The score was composed by frequent Anderson collaborator and founder of Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh (a frequent Wes Anderson collaborator). Interspersed between Mothersbaugh's masterful score are a series of renditions of David Bowie songs performed on acoustic guitar by Seu Jorge.

• Starring: Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 81%

The Royal Tenenbaums is Anderson's first film that executed his now-iconic vision in full grandeur. Much more stylized than its predecessor, Rushmore, is an ensemble film characterized by idiosyncratic sets and—for lack of a better word—"costumey" costuming. He also introduced presenting the film as a book, with corresponding title cards and chapters. This is a format he would go onto repeat in some capacity in later films.

The film tells the story of three now adult precocious siblings all dealing with the fallout of adolescent success. It is at times an exploration of a dysfunctional family, and others an investigation into the existential feeling of lost greatness.

The Royal Tenenbaums is one of Wes Anderson's funniest films, with an ensemble cast who masterfully portrays the lowest aspects of the human experience coupled with its absurdist whimsy.

• Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Bill Murray, Tony Revolori, Tilda Swinton, Ed Norton
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 92%

The Grand Budapest Hotel is, in my opinion, the quintessential Wes Anderson movie. Incorporating elements of the chaos of the Life Aquatic packed into a much more intentional narrative, it's a beautiful, thoughtful, sprawling saga of a movie. Each one of Anderson's films has a trademark color palette, and the vivid purples, pinks and reds of The Grand Budapest Hotel make it a viewing experience unlike almost any other movie.

Color, in this movie, is more than just an indulgent aesthetic choice. The vividness of the colors fluctuates with relativity to war; the prewar era is characterized by flamboyant hues of purple, red and pink; the postwar punctuated by pale colors verging on monochrome at times.

In addition to its visual style, which I view as the most pleasing iteration of Anderson's most-pronounced aesthetic, the movie is a winding exploration of imperialism and the reverberations of war. Anchored by beautiful performances from Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori, the movie is backdropped by—with increasing focus throughout its run—the acceleration of a fascist regime. Rather than the narrative being entirely centered around this element, it begins as merely part of the milieu, trickling more and more into the limelight as the circuitous story unfolds.

• Starring: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 93%

I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn't enjoy Fantastic Mr. Fox. Anderson's first claymation movie, the film demonstrated just how conducive miniatures and other techniques could be to his trademark aesthetic.

This movie finds a lot of its goodness in its simplicity. Based on the Roald Dahl novel of the same name, it's a far less sprawling narrative than some of his other works. It's a tale of a fearless underdog—with his own flaws—fighting for his family.

The scruffy stop motion used to concoct the film gives it a look that weirdly feels like realism. It isn't realism in the sense that it reflects our world, but it seems to deeply reflect a world.

One of my favorite aspects of the film is the voice cast and the process by which they were able to produce such a wonderful sound. George Clooney is a notable inclusion in the cast as he's one of the only stars of a Wes Anderson movie to have not appeared in another one of his films. To capture the audio, they opted to record outdoors in forests and other locations to retain the feel of the scenes themselves. "We went out in a forest, … went in an attic, [and] went in a stable. We went underground for some things. There was a great spontaneity in the recordings because of that," Anderson told Rotten Tomatoes in 2010.

It is truly just a wonderful movie that fans of Anderson and newbies to the auteur alike will surely enjoy.

• Starring: Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Olivia Williams
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 90%

Rushmore is a triumph. The film effectively launched Wes Anderson's career (and Jason Schwartzman's) and remains one of the most well-crafted coming-of-age stories in modern cinema. Starring a then 17-year-old Schwartzman, the movie explores the bizarre friendship between the teenager and rich industrialist Herman Blume (portrayed by Bill Murray, whose career also saw a revitalization from this appearance), centered around their mutual obsession with elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross.

While not nearly as stylized as some of Anderson's future works, the groundwork was clearly laid in this film—which features symmetrical shots and unorthodox transitions that give it an almost uncanny feeling. The film is not an ensemble film; it focuses primarily on the main duo and their interactions with Rosemary throughout its duration.

The score was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh as well—one of four collaborations between the Devo founder and Anderson. The score aside, the soundtrack is comprised of music of the British Invasion, with tracks from The Kinks, the Who, Faces and more sprinkled throughout the film. On this choice, Anderson told the Houston Chronicle in 1999: "Max always wears a blazer and the British Invasion sounds like music made by guys in blazers, but still rock 'n' roll."

It is the rare coming-of-age story that somehow averts sentimentality, instead exploring the tragedy and neurosis of youth—without sacrificing a consistent eye for the goofiness of it all. For viewers who find the later Wes Anderson films to be a bit too stylized for casual viewing, Rushmore is a welcome solace that maintains a lot of the less visible things that make Anderson so talented.