Thanks for this. Here’s another take on Anderson, although I’ll say that I really enjoy nearly all his films and love more than a few.

For my taste, I increasingly adored Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and Royal Tenenbaums, with Tenenbaums being my favourite for balancing emotion with Anderson’s fastidious production design. Life Aquatic loses some of the emotional sincerity in exchange for a more ambitious world-building and Darjeeling falters significantly.

I agree that Fox succeeds by challenging Anderson, although I think it has less to do with it being animated. Rather, Anderson is obliged to put his aesthetic into the service of (1) the material of someone else – Dahl – and (2) a genre with something of its own conventions – a children’s film – thereby obliging him to organize his efforts rather than indulge in them. Moonrise doesn’t quite reach Fox levels of success but is still a very good film for the same reason – Anderson is making a 1960s/70s-styled young adult novel (read: no teenage vampire or dystopias, just kids with problems).

I’ll go out on a limb and say that I strongly appreciate Budapest without loving it, putting it in a similar category to Life Aquatic. It is an impressive and entertaining world that lacks the sincerity or emotional depth of Rushmore, Tenenbaums, or Fox.

I presently feel about Anderson much the same way I felt before Fox, that he needs to put his style in the service of something else (a genre or a specific pre-existing work) and I’ve always felt that Anderson needs to make a movie about movie-making. It would allow for a large ensemble, obsessions over sets and props, Anderson-ian anxiety, and a high degree of self-awareness and reflexivity. Basically, I want a 2-hour version of his Mastercard commercial.