It seems like anyone could make a Wes Anderson movie if you believe the current TikTok trend, but there is much more to it than symmetrical shots of aesthetically pleasing color pallets and jaunty music. Over the course of 11 feature-length movies, the filmmaker has proved there is only one him.

Upon seeing his latest venture, “Asteroid City” earlier this week, I set out to rank them. The list was a bit more difficult than similar listicles I’ve made in the past. Being a fan of his storytelling techniques, I genuinely like them all.

That’s the thing: If you dig his very specific style, there is no bad Wes Anderson movie. Sure, there are some that maybe don’t click as much, but if you like Anderson’s very specific approach to filmmaking, you typically like them all.

But there are still a few that stand above the rest, and a few that fall farther from the mark when looking at his CV collectively.

So here it is, my take on the king of twee’s feature films from worst to best.

11) “The French Dispatch” (2021) — “The French Dispatch” is not Anderson’s best work. It’s a love letter to journalism centered around ex-pats who gave accounts from a changing Paris in the mid-20th century. Anderson tells his story like an issue of The New Yorker, creating vignettes based on an article featured in one issue of the fictitious periodical by different journalists of vastly varied voices. Because of this diorama type of storytelling, the audience never can fully commit to any storyline, and it feels more like a series of thematic shorts than anything cohesive.

10) “Bottle Rocket” (1996) — In Anderson’s feature directorial debut, he takes a short film script he wrote with frequent collaborator Owen Wilson and expanded it. Wilson stars alongside Luke Wilson and Robert Musgrave as three would-be criminals trying to pull off one grand heist even though they’re not very good at it. It’s Anderson’s most realistic film and feels more like a “traditional” movie than anything that has come from him since, though it is fascinating to see those touches of what would become his quintessential style wrapped in an otherwise standard movie.

9) “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007) — Basically, it’s too short. Anderson never manages to fully engage the audience in the world of these three brothers (Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson) as they cross India attempting to bond after the sudden death of their father. With the overall story of the three brothers trying to come together while dealing with their own depression, there is a lot of rich storytelling potential — but at just 90 minutes, it isn’t given the right amount of time to explore the nuance.

8) “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012) — It might be too twee. There are great elements at work in this coming-of-age story about first love set at a summer camp in 1964. This is the first Anderson film to suffer from his gigantic repertoire of actors shuffling through all his films. The film is about the kids, but we lose a lot by having an enormous cast and little development outside the two leads. Still, it manages to be achingly sweet and nostalgic.

7) “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” (2004) — Ridiculous and a little dark, with a great soundtrack featuring Portuguese covers of David Bowie songs by Seu Jorge (who also plays Pelé in the film). It takes a couple of viewings to really get a feel beyond what’s going on at the surface. Beneath its fun exterior of blue spandex and red hats is a more somber story about regret, the damage done in relationships and how we can move on and grow.

6) “Rushmore” (1998) — A more direct comedy about a precocious teenager (Jason Schwartzman) who falls for a teacher at his school (Olivia Williams), who in turn falls for his middle-aged friend (Bill Murray). Anderson co-writes with Owen Wilson again in this near-take of Twain with its allusions to an overachieving, yet still failing, kid who acts like an adult, with a side commentary on class structure.

5) and 4) “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009) and “Isle of Dogs” (2018) — Tonally different, Anderson’s forays into the world of animation are both equally fantastic (sorry). The former is the filmmaker’s adaptation of the Roald Dahl story about a mischievous fox (voiced by George Clooney) the latter is a stunning, multi-lingual original story about an island in Japan where the government has sent all dogs in an attempt to eradicate them, and one boy who risks it all to find his beloved pooch. Both use stop-motion animation in great ways to amplify the director’s style and tell compelling and heartwarming stories.

3) “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001) — In all honesty, I hated this when I first saw it (I was 12 to be fair), but since then I have grown to appreciate the hell out of it. The eccentric and dysfunctional family at its heart is compelling and it’s a great blend of Anderson’s style with more realism than his other films. The only drawback for me is the casting of Gwyneth Paltrow, the weakest link in a chain of otherwise stellar performances.

2) “Asteroid City” (2023) — I don’t believe this is recency bias. I do think we will come to mark this as one of Anderson’s finest films. It suffers slightly from having too many characters, but not nearly as badly as others do. It’s an incredibly personal film on the storytelling process mixed with themes of grief. It is also wonderfully metatheatrical and expertly done, so not too cheesy or schmaltzy.

1) “The Grand Budapest Hotel” — Perfectly told and shot from top to bottom with a brilliantly funny performance from lead Ralph Fiennes. It captures everything in Anderson’s aesthetic wonderfully, and every frame is something worthy of hanging on your wall as art. I really can’t say much more beyond that it is Anderson’s best film to date.