Eight Wes Anderson films you need to see (and his American Express ad)

The Herald Scotland

20-05-2025

None of which should mean we write off a filmography that is teeming with beauty and emotion and humour and elan. Here are eight entries in the Wes Anderson CV that are always worth your time.
Rushmore, 1998
Rushmore (Image: free)
After making his debut with Bottle Rocket in 1996, Anderson began to get noticed with Rushmore, a high school movie that saw Brian Cox and Olivia Williams briefly become part of Anderson's rep company alongside Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. (Cox would be back for The Fantastic Mr Fox). Schwartzman plays student Max Fisher -'one of the worst students we've got,' according to Dr Guggenheim, aka Cox - who becomes obsessed with his teacher Miss Cross, played by Williams. But Murray's character, Max Blume, a self-made millionaire, is also drawn to her.
There are some who prefer Rushmore to anything that came later; it's the film in which Anderson's approach was more direct and less gilded with his own whimsy. The artifice is there - most notably in Fisher's elaborate stage shows based on Serpico and, possibly, Apocalypse Now - but it's reined in. For others, it might not be Wes Anderson enough.
The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001
The Royal Tenenbaums (Image: free) Watching this again in 2025 what hits hardest is seeing Gene Hackman here, still vital and alive bringing all the vinegar and spite required to play the title character, an absent father trying to ingratiate himself with his estranged family. Otherwise, this feels like the moment Anderson comes into focus as a film-maker in the way he creates symmetrical shots, centres his characters in the frame and uses negative space to tell us who his characters are and explains their relationship to the world. The story - like the setting - almost feels like a live-action New Yorker cartoon (Gwyneth Paltrow's Margot could have been drawn by Charles Addams). But in the midst of this arch family drama there is some real feeling. If anything, that emotion feels stronger now than it did when it first came out.
American Express Advert, 2006
Shall we talk commerce for a moment? Directors make adverts. It happens. They've all done it, from Martin Scorsese to Taika Watiti. Even Ken Loach has shot a McDonald's ad in his time. Bills have to be paid.
What's striking about Anderson's ads is how obviously Andersonian they are. The way the camera moves through space in his H&M Christmas ad is not that different from how it moves through his films.
In some ways his advertising work is a chance to pay tribute to his cinematic heroes. His Prada Candy ads with Lea Seydoux speak to the films of Francois Truffaut and the French Nouvelle Vague, whilst his ad for SoftBank seems to offer us Brad Pitt cosplaying Jacques Tati.
This Amex ad owes something to Truffaut's Day For Night, but it also plays with our idea of Anderson himself; the detail-obsessed cineaste getting everything just right on set, all played out in a single-take pan and tracking shot. Looks like he has his own black Amex card, by the way.
Castello Cavalcanti, 2013
Castello Cavalcanti (Image: unknown)
Talking of tribute movies … This short, funded by the fashion label Prada, stars Anderon regular Jason Schwarztman as a racing car driver who crashes in the town of the title, which just happens to be where his ancestors came from. The ghost of Italian director Federico Fellini is being conjured up here. It's a one-set short - though a very elaborate set of an Italian town square - that candy-colours post-war Italy. But it is typical Anderson in its energy and delight in the look of things, as captured by director of photography Darius Khondji.
Hotel Chevalier, 2007
Another short. This 13-minute film - you can watch it on YouTube - is a prologue to Anderson's long-form film Darjeeling Limited, but it works on its own and actually works better than the film it is an adjunct to.
There's not much to it, but its brevity is a strength. Jason Schwartzman is staying in the hotel in question when he is visited by an old girlfriend, played by Natalie Portman - looking like a gamine Jean Seberg tribute act with her short hair and Marc Jacobs' designer wardrobe. In short, it's a film about desire and love and the distance between them, all played out to the sound of Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go to My Lovely. There is a credit for Louis Vuitton luggage, naturellement.
The Fantastic Mr Fox, 2009
The Fantastic Mr Fox (Image: unknown)
Anderson was made for animation. His love of intricate doll's house sets, precise camera movement and antic detail works well in the hermetic universe required in animated movies. This adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's novel is funny, sharper and more brutal than you might expect. Anderson's default blue-light melancholy is here juiced up by Dahl's misanthropy. The stop-motion animation is distinctive and the voice work - from the likes of George Clooney (perfect casting for the title character), Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, Michael Gambon and Willem Dafoe - is immaculate.
In 2023 Anderson revisited Dahl with four short films based on the author's short stories for Netflix, in what one critic describes as 'dramatised audiobooks', with the characters delivering the narration into the camera.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Image: unknown)
A high point and maybe an end point. Anderson's mitteleuropean film - inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig - has a snow globe shimmer to it; a film that at first glance seems to be all icing and no cake. Or maybe there's too much cake?
But while the result is an expression of what we might call 'high Andersonian style' - the style that would subsequently take over his films - it also has a weight to it that subsequent films don't. Because amidst its shaggy dog story about an inherited painting and a murderous family in pursuit of it, we see the rise of fascism slowly seeping in at the edge of the frame. What some might see as stylistic excess is, in fact, a political statement. As the New Yorker critic Richard Brody points out, it's a film 'in which high style emerges as a crucial tool in resisting Nazi oppressors.'
Anderson's usual repertory report for duty but it is Ralph Fiennes - in one of his most beautifully orchestrated performances (which is saying something) - who stands out here. Someone who both fits into the artifice and yet compels with his honesty. Possibly Anderson's greatest movie.
Moonrise Kingdom, 2012
But not my favourite. That would be this coming-of-age movie. Set on a New England island in 1965, it's the story of two bits of kids who run away from home. A movie about maps and cats and scouts, it's full of wide-eyed childhood appetite and middle-aged ennui. From one angle - that of Bruce Willis's sad-eyed policeman, perhaps - it may be the saddest story Anderson has ever told.