A Method for Ranking Wes Anderson Films, or What's with the Low Tomatometer for 'Life Aquatic'?

I was inspired by a recent ad for the new Wes Anderson film, "Isle of Dogs." Have you seen this ad? I love it! (Isle of It.)



ScreenJunkies: Every Wes Anderson Movie--er, Film/

The ad suggests we revisit all eight of Wes Anderson’s feature films before we head to the theaters to see his latest. The ad then goes on to cleverly describe Wes Anderson’s uniquely meticulous and quirky approach to filmmaking by illustrating the recurring themes, colors, camera shots, and actors that have inhabited Wes’s World.

I shared the video among friends with this question: “How many have you seen?” A few of my fellow Wesophiles responded. And in the comments, I shared the following links:

• Wes Anderson bio on IMDb http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0027572/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
• Filmography and awards on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Anderson
• Rotten Tomatoes for all of Wes Anderson's films (what's with the low tomatometer for 'Life Aquatic'?). https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/wes_anderson/

Shocked by Rotten Tomatoes' low tomatometer for one of my favorite Wes Anderson films, I began to wonder: If people like Wes but don’t like 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou', just how good are the films I haven’t seen? What am I missing?  My favorite is 'The Grand Budapest Hotel,' but I also love Royal Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic. Darjeeling Limited was a bit over-the-top for my tastes.  How would my preferences align with those of the broader public?

I bundled all these lines of inquiry and cooked them down into a single research question: Which is the consensus best Wes Anderson film? 

I Googled "Top Ten Wes Anderson films" and began taking notes in Excel as I am wont to do. The results are shown below for your inspection and review. 

The consensus best Wes Anderson film is The Royal Tenenbaums, released in 2001 when the director was 31 years old. The film earned $52.4 M at the box office, garnered 10 award nominations and won Best Screenplay at the 2001 New York Film Critics Circle Award.

The Grand Budapest Hotel also did quite well, as expected. The Darjeeling Limited is understandably near the bottom of the list. To my dismay, Life Aquatic is in 8th place when the rankings from 10 independent sources are averaged. I guess there is no accounting for taste.

Table 1. Wes Anderson films ranked using scores from 10 independent rating sources

Methodology

I posed my research question to Uncle Google and obtained an index of websites.  I followed the Google Index to each site in sequence. I noted the source, URL, date, and rankings from 1 to n. Some sites rated short films and commercials in addition to feature films, so n ranged from 8 to 24. A total of 27 items in the Wes Anderson oeuvre were identified. The sites and the numbers of items ranked are shown.

Table 2. Index to sources used

Interestingly, the sites ranked different numbers of films. Some ranked 8, some ranked 13, some included short films and commercials in addition to feature films. To control for this and allow me to calculate average scores, I normalized the rankings. A film that was ranked 1 of 8 got 0.125 points. A film that was ranked 1 of 9 got 0.111 points, and so on.

Table 3. Scores for rankings on each of the ten sources

When you look at Table 3, a couple of observations jump out.

1. Four of the ten sites (40%) chose 'The Royal Tenenbaums' as the best Wes Anderson film

2. Five different films received at least one vote for best film, indicating the lack of a clear favorite 

3. Four feature films listed in either Rotten Tomatoes or Wikipedia are not shown here. None of the ten ranking sites I used listed them, and not including them did not change the Top 3. They placed 4, 11, 12, and 13.

Figure 1. Box office and award nomination performance of Wes Anderson films over time

We'll see how well "Isle of Dogs" does in the court of Public Opinion and in the minds of the voting members of various academies. And if I am so inclined, I'll update the tables and figures. Meanwhile, enjoy the Wonderful Worlds of Wes, and feel free to leave a suggestion or question in the comments.

Links to sources cited

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2017/all-8-wes-anderson-movies-ranked-from-worst-to-best/

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/05/wes-anderson-movies-ranked-rushmore-royal-tenenbaums-fantastic-mr-fox-1201811293/

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/pictures/rushmore-rush-less-wes-andersons-films-from-worst-to-best-20140307

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/03/wes-anderson-movies-ranked-best.html

https://www.ranker.com/list/movies-and-films-directed-by-wes-anderson/reference?var=8&utm_expid=16418821-388.8yjUEguUSkGHvlaagyulMg.2&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

http://collider.com/wes-anderson-movies-ranked/

http://www.startribune.com/the-wrap-wes-anderson-s-films-ranked/478333703/

http://www.vulture.com/2018/03/every-wes-anderson-film-ranked-from-worst-to-best.html

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/mar/23/the-best-wes-anderson-movies-ranked

https://nerdist.com/directors-cuts-ranking-the-films-of-wes-anderson/

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/wes_anderson/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Anderson

The AP Top 100 College Football Programs Over 80 Years

The Associated Press (AP) has been ranking the best teams in college football since 1936. Over 80 years and in 1,103 polls, a total of 165 schools have been ranked in the Top 25 on any given week.  Additionally, 44 of those schools have been ranked No. 1 at least once (Minnesota was the first).

To determine the all-time Top 25, the AP used the following formula:

• 1 point for each poll appearance to mark consistency, 
• 2 points for No. 1 rankings to acknowledge elite programs, and 
• 10 points for AP championships.

You can read the full article and see the Top 100 HERE. Where does your team fall in? I am a Notre Dame fan. We've not won a National Championship since 1988, but we had a great decade in the 1940s, and based on the AP formula, we came in 3rd overall.

I copied the results into Excel to look a little closer at the data. I wanted to know some relative measures instead of the straight ordinal measures. For example, Notre Dame is 3rd on the All-Time list. But how far behind Ohio State (#1) and Oklahoma (#2) are they? And how much cushion does Notre Dame have over Alabama (#4)? I added the 3rd and 4th columns to generate and explore some ratio data.

In addition, I was curious about the relative strengths of the various conferences the teams represent. Everyone talks about the powerhouse SEC. So how many SEC teams made the overall Top-25, I wondered? I added the 5th column and filled it in mostly from memory, checking a few on the NCAA website.

Here is a closer look at the Top 25 of the past 80 years with some additional information:

The all-time AP Top-25	Points	Pts Back	%	Conf
No. 1 Ohio State	1,112	0	100%	Big Ten
No. 2 Oklahoma	1,055	57	95%	Big 12
No. 3 Notre Dame	1,042	70	94%	Independents
No. 4 Alabama	993	119	89%	SEC
No. 5 Southern California	974	138	88%	Pac 12
No. 6 Nebraska	901	211	81%	Big Ten
No. 7 Michigan	894	218	80%	Big Ten
No. 8 Texas	822	290	74%	Big 12
No. 9 Florida State	714	398	64%	ACC
No. 10 Florida	674	438	61%	SEC
No. 11 LSU	655	457	59%	SEC
No. 12 Penn State	647	465	58%	Big Ten
No. 13 Miami	642	470	58%	ACC
No. 14 Tennessee	624	488	56%	SEC
No. 15 Georgia	572	540	51%	SEC
No. 16 Auburn	570	542	51%	SEC
No. 17 UCLA	535	577	48%	Pac 12
No. 18 Texas A&M	447	665	40%	SEC
No. 19 Michigan State	443	669	40%	Big Ten
No. 20 Washington	430	682	39%	Pac 12
No. 21 Arkansas	412	700	37%	SEC
No. 22 Clemson	411	701	37%	ACC
No. 23 Pittsburgh	356	756	32%	ACC
No. 24 Wisconsin	336	776	30%	Big Ten
No. 25 Iowa	329	783	30%	Big Ten

Notice that the Top 5 teams all come from a different conference. Isn't that interesting? Is that a measure of parity?

I made a table that counted the number of times any given Conference landed a team in the Top 25. Below is a recap by Conference, showing that the SEC has 8 college football programs in the all-time Top 25, more than any other Conference. But I noticed that the Big Ten has 3 teams in the Top 10 compared to the SEC's 2, so the Big Ten may have fewer teams in the Top 25 but the teams they have are higher up. Notre Dame's eventual move into the ACC from the Independents will not be enough to bump the ACC into 2nd place.

Conference	Count	Pts Back	%
SEC	8	0	100%
Big Ten	7	1	88%
ACC	4	4	50%
Pac 12	3	5	38%
Big 12	2	6	25%
Independents	1	7	13%

But of course, as many readers know, the Conferences are of different sizes, ranging from a low of 10 teams to a high of 14 teams, plus the 4 Independent teams. So that made me wonder if the SEC was performing so well as a conference because they field a lot of teams? Or, would the data show that the SEC is punching above or below its weight? To answer this, I gathered the total count of all the teams in all the NCAA Division I-A colleges and made the table below.

Conference	Teams	Top 25	%
SEC	14	8	57%
Big Ten	14	7	50%
ACC	14	4	29%
Pac 12	12	3	25%
Independents	4	1	25%
Big 12	10	2	20%
Conf USA	13	0	0%
American	12	0	0%
Mountain West	12	0	0%
Mid-American	12	0	0%
Sun Belt	11	0	0%

The SEC does have a lot of teams (14), but the bottom line is that 57% of those teams are in the all-time Top 25. That is more than any other conference in raw numbers and also tops when adjusted for the number of teams. The Big Ten has 14 teams (wait, what?) but they lag the SEC slightly in both raw and normalized numbers. Meanwhile, the ACC also has 14 teams but only half as many teams in the Top 25.

Looking over 80 years, the SEC is formidable, indeed. And of course recent years make them appear down right unstoppable.

H/T: CF