The Royal Tenenbaums is Wes Anderon’s best film. It’s as close to perfect as he ever got: stylised, warmly colourful, with every shot carefully composed, and a great soundtrack that isn’t on Apple Music in its entirety. It manages to be very ‘Andersonian’ without being too Andersonian as many of his later films are.

Biblioklept has a great post with 20 frames from the film – each of them stunning and showing just how much care and thought went into making it. The one accompanying this post is my favourite: funny, slightly incongruous, with a richly packed background, the frame bisected by the light’s pull-cord.

I saw it in the cinema twice during its original run. £3.25 for a student ticket,¹ back then, and it was so totally, unexpectedly good that I went back and gave the Vue another £3.25 to watch it again – something I’ve done less than a handful of times in my life.

The first time, by chance and on a whim. I was so taken with the film that I can’t now remember who I saw it with. (I’m certain there was someone with me.) The second with a friend who said afterwards, “Mike really must have liked that; he hasn’t criticised it at all” – an astute observation.

It’s my favourite partly beause it was the first Wes Anderson film I saw, and partly because, even amongst a knockout cast, Gene Hackman steals the film as Royal Tenenbaum. The film is, as my friend said at the time, so good I couldn’t criticise it at all: I could simply enjoy it.

The same goes for Hackman’s performance in this and in nearly everything else I’ve seen him in. With all the uncertainty around his death, I think it’s time I stopped reading the news and rewatched The Royal Tenenbaums. While Hackman might be gone, this film isn’t – it remains as good as it as rthe first time I sat in those plump, velvet seats a quarter century ago.