Hit or miss for me, too. I really liked Grand Budapest Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom. I disliked The Royal Tennenbaums and Rushmore, mainly because I didn’t find the characters very appealing. (Eccentric to be sure, but not appealing.) I loved the visuals in The Life Aquatic, but again the characters were off-putting. The Fantastic Mr. Fox had its moments but too many acts.
I do like stylized movies, but sometimes he just becomes too twee. I find it interesting that although many people here like some of his movies, few like them all, and there is wild disagreement about which ones are the best. One person’s favorite is another’s worst.
I saw that H&M video playing on a billboard in Times Square. The combination of Adrienne Brody, stylized set design and deadpan immediately mark it as a Wes Andersen creation.
Never seen Bottle Rocket or Mr Fox, but I liked all the other films. If nothing else, Wes Anderson has this ability to create immersive worlds of eccentric self-absorbed loafers, plays within plays, silly deadpan dialogue and nostalgic whimsy using nothing but extremely detailed diorama set pieces, eclectic soundtracks and the aforementioned stable of actors including the likes of Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Ed Norton, Jason Schwartzman and various Wilson brothers.
The Royal Tennenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Grand Budapest Hotel are all crappy movies. That last one in particular. I really have no idea how it got any award attention at all. Still angry about how I got fooled by the reviews for it. Makes me very wary of ever watching another one of his films.
Bottle Rocket, The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom are okayish, tolerable, films.
I’ve seen and love all his movies. His filming style serves a purpose that I enjoy seeing over and over again. He uses shots that capture a lot of visual details in the background that add depth to the character in the shot.
Take the quick shots of the passengers in the H&M commercial. We not only get a glimpse of the passenger, but we see their entire room, with the presents and pictures of their families that they are not with. Each character is also uniquely dressed in a way that tells you something about their personality.
In all his movies, he doesn’t introduce characters with dialogue or action scenes, but with these shots that show the person and everything around them. He uses every detail in the shot to tell us something about the character visually.
In about one second the character gets an enormous level of depth. It give you a clear picture about who a character is using just images.
His movies are often about unhappy rich people. His characters are unhappy and unemotional. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of this movies, but they usually end with a lethargic person doing something emotional.
The H&M commercial has all his themes in a neat four minute video. The main character and his sadness are established by seeing the character and the room around him. The rest of the characters and their sadness are established in a few seconds with brief shots moving from train car to train car. A bunch of sad people are then suddenly spurred into action and decide celebrate Christmas. The ending feels more satisfying because the passengers gained a lot of depth and personality from the way Wes Anderson chose to introduce them.
Not everyone likes his style, but I enjoy seeing a director who can build characters with just a few quick images.
I am a fan. Just rewatched Moonrise Kingdom, and I was utterly enchanted. His singular vision, odd, stilted and stylized to the extreme, appeals to me in a way that is difficult to explain. Someone upthread stated something about how he seeks to explain character visually and I thought that a great observation. I even liked Darjeeling Limited.
The other Anderson auteur (Paul Thomas) I can take or leave. His stuff leaves me flat. Go figure.
The first time I tried to watch The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, I promptly fell asleep.
The second time, I stayed awake long enough to think, “good grief, this is supposed to be interesting?” Then I went to sleep again.
The third time(*), I said, “Oh, wait. FINALLY I GET IT!” And I have loved that movie ever since. In fact it is one of my all-time favorites.
Moonrise Kingdom was also great. The Royal Tannenbaums was okay - I liked it better when I went back and watched it again, having seen MoonRise Kingdom and Life Aquatic so I was better primed appreciate the Wes Anderson style. But it’s my least favorite of the three.
I haven’t seen the others, but this thread reminds me that I should watch them.
(*) No idea why I gave it a third try. I think I was running on the treadmill and it was the only thing I could find that I hadn’t watched already.
I have mixed reactions to the Wes Anderson films that I have watched*. While I like the artistic filmography with some great visual scene shots, I dislike the boring plots usually focused on familial squables.
NOTE: *I have only seen these:
The Royal Tennenbaums
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
The Darjeeling Limited
Grand Budapest Hotel
I withhold judgment on the other films until I watch them.
I essentially rank Wes Anderson movies in the same order in which they were made.
Bottle Rocket is one of my all-time favorites. I’ve watched it dozens and dozens of times and love everything about it. Rushmore is a very close second, and I enjoy The Royal Tennenbaums…but after that, my interest level drops off, to the point where I don’t even get excited about new Wes Anderson movies anymore.
I would highly recommend Bottle Rocket even to those who don’t enjoy the very “Wes Anderson” Wes Anderson stuff.
I think Wes Anderson works best when you view his work through a hazy storybook lens. His characters aren’t real in the way The Wire’s characters are real - they’re stylized creations, but with their own stylized sort of soul.
Coming from this angle, I love his stuff, with the exception of having fell asleep at the Life Aquatic 20 minutes in. But if CairoCarol is to be believed, I just need to watch it twice more to “get it”!
Fantastic Mr Fox and Grand Budapest Hotel were very similar films - i.e. an extended chase scene done with interesting effects and characters who were interesting precisely because of their superficial emotionality and other traits.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t love them. I would like to see more.
I love his visual style. My favorites among his movies are, I think, Grand Budapest Hotel and perhaps Life Aquatic.
Except I couldn’t get through Fantastic Mr. Fox. Something about the animation really felt off to me. Foxes should be graceful, fluid-moving creatures. All the animals in FMF looked and moved like very stiff humans with animal heads.
Anyway, I’d like to share this nice WA/Star Wars pastiche:
