Every Wes Anderson Movie, Ranked

Probably Anderson’s most joke-dense and politically charged movie, Isle of Dogs is a stop-motion animated sci-fi fable about loyalty and corruption. It was a prescient comedy about quarantine, and also one of Anderson’s most emotionally detached movies. The film is a masterpiece of tiny visual details, but its weighty themes are often overwhelmed by the aesthetics, as well as a dystopian vision of a futuristic Japan that doesn’t feel fully realized. It doesn’t help that the humans speak Japanese without subtitles, while the dogs banter in English — a curious creative choice that can be alienating. Still, the cast is impressive, especially Bryan Cranston’s Chief, an exiled stray who helps a 12-year-old orphan find his beloved pet pup. Three screenwriters wrote Isle of Dogs with Anderson, which may explain why the story feels somewhat unfocused. There’s a bleakness in this sprawling movie that lacks Anderson’s usual charm, although it’s hard to argue with the core thesis that dogs are awesome, far more so than man.

This is the closest we’ll get to The New Yorker: The Movie. Anderson’s first live-action film after a seven-year hiatus finds his love letter to literary magazines crammed with creativity, but the ratio of style to substance teeters heavily toward style. The framing device — and Anderson loves a framing device — is simple: The French Dispatch is a Midwest literary magazine, and each story within the film is a feature in that magazine. The best of the bunch stars Benicio Del Toro as an artistic criminal inspired by a prison guard played by Léa Seydoux. The second-best entry in the anthology features Jeffrey Wright, in his first time working with Anderson, as a journalist sharing a tale that blends true crime with the culinary arts. The French Dispatch is one of Anderson’s most cerebral films, a manifesto about art and its relationship to life and society. And yet, there’s a touch of romanticism — Anderson roots for bohemians and revolutionaries.

Anderson’s first movie, as well as that of its two stars, Owen and Luke Wilson, who jointly possess the most doleful eyes in show business. The IRL brothers star as old friends, one of whom breaks the other out of a psychiatric ward with plans for a life of crime. It’s a comedic crime caper that gently pokes fun at gritty Nineties indies and explores themes that have informed Anderson throughout his career, including complicated misfit sibling dynamics. Anderson’s visual flair is muted here, though brewing underneath the antics: There are a few satisfying sight gags, and the movie glows with raw energy — a cult hit back then that has evolved into a portrait of the director as a young man.

Benicio Del Toro is a quasi-Trumpian industrialist whose rivals are trying to kill him; the man can’t fly in a plane without someone trying to blow him out of the sky. This movie trods familiar Andersonian ground: daddy issues, loyal assistants, and theatrical special effects drive its story of ambition and redemption. But there are just enough surprises to distract from the same old, same old. Del Toro is a light-footed brute torn between Ayn Randian greatness and a yearning to bond with his estranged daughter, a pipe-smoking aspiring nun played by an excellent Mia Threapleton (Kate Winslet’s daughter!). Somehow, this is also Michael Cera’s first appearance in a Wes Anderson film, and these two geeks were meant for each other. He’s brilliant as Bjorn Lund, an awkward Norwegian entomologist who gets drunk on three beers.

One of Anderson’s most controversial movies — a road trip on a train through India with a distinctly colonialist vibe that is still off-putting. The entire subcontinent and its denizens are important characters, but neither the country nor its people are explored with any real depth. That aside, the three main performances are some of the best acting in all of Anderson’s films. The plot: Three brothers — played by Luke Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman — grieve the death of their father on a train trip to find their mother, who didn’t show up to the funeral. Wilson’s sensitivity is on display, his face covered in bandages, as is Brody’s fragility (there are few actors as good at conveying what it feels like to be uncomfortable in one’s skin). And Schwartzman’s performance, as always, contains multitudes. The Darjeeling Limited also showcases Anderson’s excellent taste in music, a mix of Bollywood bangers and the Kinks. Anderson loves trains — they make appearances in several of his movies. But one gets the feeling that the Darjeeling Limited is the locomotive he loves the most.

Imagine if Close Encounters of the Third Kind were combined with the work of Chuck Jones and Arthur Miller. Throw in a widower who can’t bring himself to tell his kids their mother has died, and a small army of desert eccentrics, plus a stop-action alien, and you have one of Anderson’s most heartfelt films. It’s also a movie with a clear message: Grief makes us human, and there’s no avoiding it. The widower is played with awkward grace by Jason Schwartzman, the veteran member of the Wes Anderson Repertory Players most attuned to his director’s emotional vibrations. Asteroid City is a story-within-a-story that takes place in an imaginary mid-century American Southwest and an old-fashioned TV studio. One of Anderson’s most colorful and eye-popping movies — the pastels are mesmerizing — it’s simultaneously intergalactic and earthbound. The usual players are, as usual, excellent: Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, and Jeffrey Wright. New additions to Anderson’s rotating cast include Tom Hanks and Steve Carell as an offbeat motel manager. And Scarlett Johansson exploits a vulnerability she rarely gets to showcase as a movie star.

Boys will be boys. This is one of the best movies about masculinity this century — a salty adventure starring a vinegary Bill Murray at the height of his comedic powers. He plays Steve Zissou, a tightly wound, pot-smoking mix of oceanic documentarian Jacques Cousteau and Peter Pan. Anjelica Huston is tremendous anytime she’s onscreen as Zissou’s brilliant wife. Owen Wilson, armed with a shaky Kentucky accent, may or may not be Zissou’s son. Another Anderson regular, the rubber-faced Willem Dafoe, is also memorable as a loyal crony of Zissou’s with a thick German accent. And in her first outing with Anderson, Cate Blanchett glows as a feisty pregnant journalist. The movie’s centerpiece comes early: a slow-moving shot of Zissou’s exploratory vessel, the Belafonte, cut in half to reveal the boat’s sauna, kitchen, library, and other various cabins. It’s a marvelous scene, part theater, part comic book.