Not counting today, I’ve posted 26 Barenaked Ladies songs on the blog, a combination of Random Weekend selections and my own picks. And yet only one of those tracks is from the band’s most popular album, 1998’s Stunt.
In addition to being their top-selling album (quadruple platinum in both the United States and their native Canada), Stunt is one of their best. It blends their signature whimsy with several lovely ballads and ties it all together with their best production quality to that point.
I’m wrapping up my two-week deep dive into the films of Wes Anderson with a few summarizing thoughts and a look at my newly revised rankings.
The average shift from my old Wes list to the revised one was 1.4 slots per movie, with four of the nine not moving at all. The only films to move more than one position were Moonrise Kingdom and Bottle Rocket, which basically swapped their spots. Generally, my reactions were reinforced rather than changed by this rewatch.
Wes Anderson’s most recent film, as of late September 2021, is the 2018 animated film Isle of Dogs. This movie marked his return to the stop-motion animation style he used for Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Isle of Dogs is rated PG-13 for “thematic elements and violent images,” which seems a bit of a stretch. Most of Anderson’s movies are rated R, which seems unusual given his twee sensibility, until you start to catalog the foul language, frank sexuality and bursts of violence. The two animated films, however, are certainly appropriate for kids.
In early 2020, I counted down my top 20 films of the previous decade, and Wes Anderson’s 2014 The Grand Budapest Hotel showed up at #17. In that post, I mentioned that I owed Moonrise Kingdom another viewing, but hadn’t gotten around to it in time.
If I were redoing that list today, Moonrise Kingdom would definitely be on it, and pretty high up. But The Grand Budapest Hotel wouldn’t lose any ground. In fact, I’d likely move it higher as well. Subsequent viewings have only cemented it as one of Anderson’s most accomplished and enjoyable films.
Revisiting all of Wes Anderson’s films in order didn’t result in shuffling my ranking very much. I’ve seen most of these movies many times, even if some of those viewings were years ago, so my opinions are pretty baked in.
The one major exception is 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom. Pre-pandemic, I hadn’t revisited this one since it first came out in theaters, and it sat near the bottom of my Anderson ranking. Well, now I’ve seen it three times in the past 18 months (including twice in the past week), and it’s moving close to the top.
Meet Me In Montauk 