I like him. He’s done one thing that I think is very difficult for new filmmakers: creating their own style. (Of course he’s obviously influenced by other directors — who isn’t?) Whether people like his style or not is completely up to them, but even people who dislike him have to give him that much.
I only really like Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, and The Life Aquatic. I thought Darjeeling was horrible (not even worth me italicizing the title!) and Royal Tenenbaums was pretty cool, but not as great as everybody claims it is.
He’s influenced a lot of even younger filmmakers who make these really annoying Wes Anderson-lookalike movies, and I think that’s why he rubs some people the wrong way.
Wes Anderson is one of my top five directors. Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums are in my top 20 movies, and I enjoyed the other three films he’s made as well.
I love the hell out of the guy. He makes gorgeous movies.
I love Wes Anderson. unlike most of his fan though, I really dislike Rushmore. I could not careless about anyone in the film. I however LOVE the Royal Tenenbaums and the Life Aquatic. Bottle Rocket was good and Darjeeling has a few stong points and a few weak ones as well. It did not hold up to my expectations. Anything wrong with that film though I attribute to Coppola. I get what Angggelo say’s about the clones and it’s very true.
I love Wes Anderson. Rushmore, and, even even more so, The Royal Tenenbaums stand as two of the finest films released in the past decade. Very strong acheivements. He shows great promise.
I like Wes Anderson, but not as much as he likes himself. I think Rushmore is his best film and his work has taken a dive since. I’m sure I’m in the minority, there.
I used to be completely devoted to Wes Anderson and excited by his work as though he were the best American director of his generation. Obviously his first three films showed tremendous promise (even Scorsese named Bottle Rocket one of his top ten of the 1990’s). I agree with Angggelo that he came out of the gate with a very idiosyncratic style expressed not only through shot design and timing but with art direction, writing and most importantly the tone of the acting. It seems to me that since he quit writing with Owen Wilson his stories have really gone downhill in a major way. Unfortunately a bad script is near impossible to overcome and his films have suffered. I also have a theory that he has gotten too wrapped up in art direction to give his full attention to telling a good story (the art direction does continue to grow more interesting and complex with each movie). While I wait to see if he can again tell a good story I will instead hand the title of “Best American Director” (of their generation) to another Anderson who’s work only seems to improve with each successive film- Paul Thomas Anderson.
He’s a good filmmaker. I like most of his films, but I bet he’s a big douchebag. And I’m going to have to disagree with the aforementioned post. The word “Best” should not go anywhere near PT Anderson. “Good” or “I loved Boogie Nights…” seem more compatible. Just my opinion, I seem to be a douchebag myself, appy-polly-logies.
Love Wes Anderson. Hate the imitators.
“Like” I believe like is an understatement. Wes Anderson is genius.
I love Wes Anderson, and would say he’s one of the most solid filmmakers in recent history, but for god’s sake, stop doing the slo-mo shots. Only once or twice or maybe thrice has his slo-mo shots actually worked.
I don’t even notice the slow-mo shots.
I say that I DO NOT like Wes Anderson although once I’ve finished a movie of his, I somehow find myself re-visiting it mentally for weeks. I love the brilliance of Hotel Chevalier and the use of Seu Jorge’s Bowie tunes in Portuguese (actually all of the music in Life Aquatic). I hate the overuse of Owen Wilson; whom I do not enjoy as an actor. Someone please tell Owen that it is OK to (co)write something and not have a lead role in it.
Wes Anderson is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I haven’t hated his films but Rushmore ended for me 45 minutes into the film, i really like the Royal Tenebaums and stands as my favorite work from him, Darjeeling was okay and i have yet to see the rest of his filmography. He has a very distinct style and that should at least be commended that he managed to carve out something in his movies as instantly recognizable as David Lynch or Kubrick.
In the end i’m just meh about him.
i really liked his american express commerical. and yeah his movies are good.
Well it seems like a lot of people do like Wes Anderson. I think that’s great, I believe he is a very good director.
I really like him but i don’t think he’s reached his full potential yet. Also, I love watching his movies and getting that truffaut feel (the antoine doinel series) from them. Anderson is def one of the finest modern day american directors
I love Wes Anderson. I enjoy all of his movies (even The Life Aquatic)
I recently started watching movies that influenced him. And I love those too.
In short, Wes Anderson’s the movie.
He hasn’t let me down yet.
He draws from diverse and interesting sources and makes them his own.
I think he will become one of the great filmmakers before he’s done.
I never understood the Life Aquatic hatred. It is Wes at top form with his most interesting script with a great cast that will make you laugh, cry, and then laugh some more. With one of the most memorable shoot-out scenes to date and one of the most visually impressive films I’ve yet to see, Wes Anderson really showed us what he has accomplished and what he has to offer as a director.
i’m iffy on him. but i’ve only seen ""bottle rocket and “the darjeeling limited”. i liked “bottle rocket”, but not in a way like, my god, this is a brilliant film from a director who’s the best out there right now. it wasn’t much more than a cute little film to me. nothing overly memorable.
“darjeeling limited” was very average to me. but so average that it might as well have been bad. i don’t know. i’m kinda detecting a “quirky wes anderson style” from him that seems old and boring and cliche, even though i’ve only seen two of his films. he seems like a director that wont grow much. not that i fault any director for having a style and relentlessly pursuing it. but with anderson, it seems like he might start going in circles. too early to tell though.
Bobby, you’ve seen his two worst, and even those aren’t that bad. You absolutely must see Rushmore, and then try The Royal Tenenbaums afterwards.
Wes Anderson is a great director who got a little too self-indulgent with his last two films. Bottle Rocket was good, Rushmore was excellent, The Royal Tenenbaums was pretty great. I actually liked The Life Aquatic a lot more than most people do. People say it’s Anderson’s most pretentious and quirky movie yet, but, to me, that would be The Darjeeling Limited. The shots are great and all, but the story is hollow, and the camera is interesting to the point of being distracting. Camerawork should be noticeable, but it all but dominated The Darjeeling Limited. And the story was rather subpar, with some interesting character layouts being more or less ignored once they were established. My way of putting it is that Wes Anderson was paying tribute to Satyajit Ray…and Wes Anderson. I’m glad he brought Ray to the attention of the public, and the Indian setting was nice, but he spent a little too much time imitating Ray and making a caricature of himself that the movie was nowhere near as good as it should have been. That said, I still barely liked it, but if he made one more broken family character study after that, I probably would have begun to lose hope. I’d actually rather watch Anderson fail than most modern directors succeed, but still, he’s too talented to waste his time rehashing The Royal Tenenbaums over and over again. Fortunately, the family dynamic in general will probably be absent from The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It sounds like nothing Anderson’s ever done before, and it sounds great. I’d like to think Wes Anderson learned from his Darjeeling Limited experiment, and knew it was time to pull himself out of the rut he dug himself.
As for Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights was very good, and There Will Be Blood was quite good. Magnolia was a pretentious but well-acted version of an Altman ensemble drama, and Punch-Drunk Love was a fractured but well-acted character study that never reached any of the potential it showed at the beginning. Haven’t seen Hard Eight, but people who like Paul Thomas Anderson much more than I do think it’s his worst movie, so if even they don’t like it, I doubt I will. Paul Thomas Anderson is an interesting guy with more originality than most directors these day, but just because he’s a cut above the rest, doesn’t mean he’s a genius. Boogie Nights is his best work so far, but it had all of the flaws that have plagued him since. I give Boogie Nights a pass because he was still learning and it turned out pretty good despite that, but the rest of his subsequent films have gotten worse. Paul Thomas doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes like Wes does, although There Will Be Blood was at least a step in the right direction. Still, I’m skeptical of him, and he needs to break out of his formula like Wes recently has. When I hear that Paul Thomas Anderson is making a movie, I think “self-consciously quirky fairly pretentious badly written overlong underdeveloped character study”. Until he can prove to me that he can do better than that (and There Will Be Blood was attempting to do that, which is good), I will hesitate to call myself a fan of him.
I’m still wondering if we shall ever see ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ released from its proper home, the folks at Criterion. (I know a lot of people didn’t like this movie, but I loved it. I personally think he’s still on a winning streak; he hasn’t made a bad film yet.)
I love the American Express commercial.
Yes, I like Wes Anderson. I have seen all of his films. After watching The Darjeeling Limited, I got bored with the filmmaker. All of his films have the same feel and same themes, etc. I’m waiting for him to make something like Boogie Nights or Reservoir Dogs.
Don’t get me wrong though, this guy is talented.
I love Rushmore, hands-down his best I think. I love The Life Aquatic as well.
I don’t care for The Royal Tenebaums and Bottle Rocket so much.
The Darjeeling Limited is a good film though, despite the feeling that I had already seen it before.
I really want Wes Anderson to step out of his “dysfunctional family relationships” movies and make something truly GROUNDBREAKING, because I know he can.
yes, firmly pro-Wes. Rushmore, Life Aquatic, and Darjeeling Ltd. most of all. i find the dry, skewed sense of humor funny. and even when storylines tread familiar ground, he gets points for just being different. a consistent visual style across films and having an actual point of view to his filmmaking is more than can be said for 90% of the hacks making studio junk year in and year out.
bottle rocket is stoopid. it doesnt have that flare for design. i swear wes anderson is gay. all that attention to detail on the outfits and set design. rushmore is where his flat as cardboard style started. i like that one. its so precise its adorable. his other films dont do anything for me.
I think Nate hit the problem on the head. Anderson seems stuck in a bit of a rut with these “dysfunctional family” films. Keep mining the same material and things will start to dry up sooner or later, and if Darjeeling is any evidence, the law of diminishing returns has already started taking effect.
Still, I love Rushmore, so I follow what Anderson does, even if I come away vaguely disappointed each time. He’s definitely one of the most accomplished stylists in America these days, which means there’s always some sort of pleasure to be had in an Anderson film, even if the material is thin. But since Rushmore, his stories seem to withdraw further and further into his hermetic private world. What made Rushmore so appealing to me was the way it pushed his whimsical, fantastic world up against a more mundane reality filled with disappointments and compromises. Since then, reality has been on the wane in his films; instead, we get stories populated with eccentric and exceptional people wandering through a fantasy land. In the end, everyone walks away happy in slo-mo while a sixties pop song plays, but what has really been gained? He needs to start opening up this world and letting some air in.
And letting people walk at normal pace to a score composed by a member of Radiohead.
how could you not. honestly.
Ryan
It seems to me that a lot of people either like Wes Anderson, or they don’t. He’s one of my favorite directors, and Bottle Rocket is one of my favorite films, what do you guys think of him?