Once upon a time, there was a boy named Wes Anderson, who grew up amongst the cowboys and oilmen in the hot and arid world of Houston, Texas. Despite this rough-and-tumble environment, studious Wes made silent films as a boy, and dreamed of the French New Wave, of the New Yorker magazine, of writing and drawing and exploring his creative powers with close friends to make movies like no one had ever seen before. And that's just what he did, fashioning a cinematic kingdom uniquely his own. But like the captain of Zissou's submarine, Anderson has a loyal crew, happily collaborating from film to film, and it is in this spirit of communal expression that his films shine. The Heights celebrates America's most eccentric auteur with five of his most notable films, already classics in their own right.
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Distractible teenager Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman in his film debut) is having a hard time at Rushmore, an exclusive private school in Houston. Bad grades are threatening his scholarship, but when he meets wealthy industrialist Herman Blume (Bill Murray) who likes his mettle, and falls for a widowed first grade teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), Max wonders if his fortunes have changed. Until Herman falls for Rosemary, too, setting up an epic battle of wits, involving bees, broken bicycles and attempted murder. Despite being his second film, Rushmore launched the career of Wes Anderson and turned Bill Murray into an indie film legend.
DCP courtesy Swank Motion Pictures
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Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) is on the skids. Kicked out of his hotel, lonely, and wanting to reconcile with his wife (Angelica Huston) and three kids (Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow), Royal tells the family he has terminal cancer to convince them to open their hearts to the old man. Influenced by the novels of J. D. Salinger, Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, the singer Nico and countless other films, books, New Yorker cartoons and the like, The Royal Tenenbaums has the look and feel of a magical New York City that could only exist in the mind of a boy from Texas, and is a film of exquisite emotional resonance.
DCP courtesy Swank Motion Pictures.
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Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), a famous oceanographer, has lost his best friend and lead diver, Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel) to the vicious jaguar shark, and vows revenge. From this very Moby Dick-like premise, Anderson concocts a magical undersea journey that explores the mysteries of the human heart as poignantly as it does the ocean itself. A flop in its day, The Life Aquatic has since gone on to achieve cult status, resulting in Zissou cosplay and is the film that launched a thousand ukulele covers...
DCP courtesy Swank Motion Pictures.
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1965, on an East Coast island called New Penzance, 12-year-old Sam Shakusky is trying desperately to get through summer camp; 12-year-old Suzy Bishop can't get along with her folks, and the two pen pals plot an escape that has the whole island in an uproar. With Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson veered his cinematic ship straight into childhood, crafting a film of misunderstood kids whose heartbreak and yearning leaves viewers enthralled. Voted one of the 100 greatest films of the 21st Century by the BBC.
DCP courtesy Universal Pictures.