The newly-released ‘Wes Anderson Archives’ is a 20-disc collection offering newly remastered editions of the filmmaker’s first ten films with extensive special features and supplementary materials.
Courtesy of The Criterion Collection
Everyone has their own signs that fall has arrived: pumpkin spice in the air (and coffee), the colorful leaves falling from the trees, a dry, cool breeze replacing the summer humidity. For home video enthusiasts, the arrival of fall and the holiday gift-giving season are often heralded by a big beautiful box set from the Criterion Collection. November 2019 saw the release of a 39-disc collection of the films of Swedish master filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, and November 2020 was 15-discs from Italian great Federico Fellini. November 2024 brought CC40, a magnificent 40-disc set celebrating the 40th anniversary of the label that I reviewed in these “pages”.
As baseball wraps up and football gets into full swing, cinephiles can rejoice once again. Fall 2025 is blessed with a new Criterion box that’s an instant contender for Best Home Video Release of the Year. The Wes Anderson Archives gives the Houston-born auteur the primo Criterion treatment with his first ten films being released on remastered 4K UHD and Blu-ray in a lavish collection. Each film is accompanied by a small hardback book containing essays by film critics like Richard Brody, Bilge Ebiri and Kent Jones and filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and James L. Brooks.
Some of Anderson’s films (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel among others) have been released by Criterion previously as individual discs, but they’ve never looked and sounded this good. Anderson is known as a detailed production designer, and this box set reflects his cinematic attention to detail. The box itself is upholstered in burlap as if these discs have arrived in a piece of luggage from a faraway land where Anderson’s prodigious imagination lives.
If ever a filmmaker benefitted from 4K UHD upgrades of his filmography, Wes Anderson would be at the top of the heap. His love of color, texture and symmetry jump off the screen in these 4K editions. Pause one of these at any moment, and it creates a perfect painting. Every set is a meticulous little diorama with eccentrically costumed characters arranged in tableau as if a moment of live theater has been paused and captured on camera. He and his crew undoubtedly spent hundreds of hours on every sequence in these films, rolling from one jaw-dropping visual to the next.
If you haven’t made the leap from Blu-ray to 4K , this box set alone is more than enough incentive to do so. To take full advantage of Criterion’s excellent restoration work, turn off any motion-smoothing on your television or projector and adjust the frame rate to 24 fps (frames per second). Many televisions have a setting labeled Movie Mode (or something similar) that makes these adjustments with the press of a button. A common criticism of 4K is that it creates a “fish bowl” effect or somehow buffs the grain and the edges out of an image. If that’s been your experience, it’s not the 4K mastering. It’s the settings on your TV or projector.
Criterion has long been the world’s home video curator, issuing definitive editions of films from across the globe. After so many box sets from foreign filmmaking luminaries, it’s nice to see a visionary American auteur receive the Criterion treatment. The Wes Anderson Archive offers not only the films in their fully restored glory, but a treasure trove of interviews, documentaries, commentary tracks, deleted scenes, audition footage and more. From whimsical live action comedies to excellent animation, the breadth and depth of Anderson’s vision is on full display in this release.
As a collector and a completist, I have one request for Criterion: please work out any rights issues to Wes Anderson’s wonderful Roald Dahl adaptations he made for Netflix and add them to your releases. I know streamers are often physical media averse, but you have released Netflix properties in the past (The Irishman, The Power of the Dog), so you’ve proven it can be done. Hopefully one day we’ll get them on Criterion. Maybe in The Wes Anderson Archive Volume II?
(Pro Tip from an avid home video collector: all Criterion releases are 50% off in November at your local Barnes & Noble and Criterion itself often has a 50% off Flash Sale in mid- to late-October.)