From ‘Bottle Rocket’ to ‘Moonrise Kingdom’: Ranking the Films of Wes Anderson

I was talking to one person while at the Cannes Film Festival this year who loves Rushmore and hates Bottle Rocket. Personally I’m happy I can appreciate both, though I certainly do love Bottle Rocket and as much as I feel my tempered opinion of Rushmore has to do with my friend and others that love it and built it up so much, I think part of my love for Bottle Rocket comes as a result of expectations based on my opinion of Rushmore.

After seeing Bottle Rocket in 2008 I wrote up an article headlined “I reviewed the Criterion Blu-ray and I found both to be interesting reads considering how my opinion has changed over the years.

That said, here are a couple of my favorite quotes from this film that I can’t help laughing at every time I see it:

“Bob’s gone! He stole his car!” and, my favorite, “God, this is great, sitting here in the laundry room. You working on your vocabulary and we’re sharing these tamales.”

I never imagined I would love a stop motion animated film as much as I loved The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Forget about calling it a stop motion film, or even an animated film, it is quite plainly a film wherein the presentation is part of the charm and an imaginative way to bring the story to life. Outside of a few scenes, Anderson and his crew of animators and cinematographer Tristan Oliver capture the same essence of storytelling used in Life Aquatic. The two films, in fact are the first installments in what I consider a triptych of films with very much the same mood and charm along with Moonrise Kingdom.

From Fox’s signature snap and whistle to the straight-forward presentation of the film’s narrative, which deals with family, responsibility, growing up and being a parent just as much as it is an amazingly inventive heist comedy. The scene with the wolf, the bandit hats, the dancing, the waterfall, the smoke made from cotton, Whackbat and more. This film cussing has it all… “Hot box!”

And here it is, #1. It feels wrong to place the most recent film in the #1 slot having just seen it and not allowing it time to settle, but Moonrise Kingdom seems to be the embodiment of everything I love about Anderson’s films. It’s a perfect storm of everything great his films have to offer.

Watching it play out I saw so much of Fantastic Mr. Fox I felt this too could have been presented in stop-motion animation. Obviously, if I saw Fantastic Fox in it, I also saw Life Aquatic as the three films seem eternally linked. There’s heart at the center of the story, cynicism is rampant and the good, bad and ugly of everyday life is presented in such a way that it makes for perfect entertainment while also remaining entirely dramatic.

Moonrise Kingdom is a film that could be loved by people of all ages, everyone taking something different out of it. In that way it is easily the best Anderson has to offer us so far, but the other six are all worth something in their own right and I’m excited to see what he has in store in the future.