Wes Anderson's Movies

About Wes Anderson

BIO, MOVIES, and CAREER

If there’s one contemporary American film director whose style betrays his directorial identity with every single frame, it’s Wes Anderson. Put simply: Just a passing glance at one of Anderson’s movies would inspire even the casual moviegoer to say something like, “Oh, is this one of those guy’s movies?” And the answer would be, unequivocally, yes.

In a league of film entirely his own, Wes Anderson is a true auteur—his use of bold, colorful imagery only one of many filmmaking aspects to which he applies a thoughtful, hands-on approach. Directing, screenwriting, casting—Anderson’s woven a wacky, loveable universe adored—and fiercely defended—by a loyal cult following.

Born in Houston, Texas, Anderson entered mainstream cinema by way of Bottle Rocket (1996), a feature-length adaptation of a short film by the same name, which he produced with college buddy and now-longtime collaborator Owen Wilson at the University of Texas in Austin. The film stars Wilson and his brother Luke as small-time thieves who go on the lam after a low-stakes heist, and it highlights Anderson’s affinity for understated—if underwhelming—scenarios backdropped and buoyed by the vast and the vivid. It’s this cocktail of melodrama-meets-modality that gives Anderson’s movies their beloved style and intoxicatingly charming characters.

Features include Rushmore (1998), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), Isle of Dogs (2018), The French Dispatch (2021), and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), which earned Anderson and Owen Wilson an Oscar nod for Best Screenplay. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) also garnered critical acclaim—winning the Academy Awards for Best Film Editing, Achievement in Costume Design, Acheivement in Makeup and Hairstyling, and Original Score. It also received nominations for Best Directing, Best Screenplay, Cinematography, and Best Picture.

You might be an Anderson fan for the style, the substance, or both. But no matter what, you’d be hard-pressed to deny the artist’s staying power in the American cinema zeitgeist: Each film, upon its debut, is an event. And whether his latest project earns widespread praise or niche zeal, Anderson will likely continue to captivate audiences long after he’s gone. After all, his work is preserved beyond the reel too: He’s been parodied in Saturday Night Live, meme-ified across social media, and immortalized in the fan-favorite coffee table book Anderson Everywhere, a photographic homage to the influence Anderson has on moviegoers’ very state of mind

Asteroid City, the youngest of Anderson’s brainchildren, is slated to open in June 2023.

 

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