Ranking All Of Director Wim Wenders’s Movies
“What are Wim Wenders’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Wenders’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!
We took all of the movies directed by Wim Wenders and looked at their Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, Metacritic, Metacritic User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 6 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.
The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.
Happy Viewing!
The Top Film’s Of Wim Wenders
41 ) BAP – Viel Passiert (2002)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 37
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 37
- Letterboxd User Score: 40
Documentary about the rock group BAP from Cologne in Germany.
40 ) The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez (2016)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 21
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 36
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 41
- Letterboxd User Score: 39
A man and a woman share their musings on love and freedom one summer night. The couple’s conversation meanders through memories, unspoken desires and passion through poetic dialogue.
39 ) Every Thing Will Be Fine (2015)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 37
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 37
- Letterboxd User Score: 37
One day, driving aimlessly around the outskirts of town after a trivial domestic quarrel, a writer named Tomas accidentally hits and kills a child. Will he be able to move on?
38 ) Submergence (2017)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 24
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 33
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 39
- Letterboxd User Score: 38
While James More is held captive by terrorists in Somalia, thousands of miles away on the Greenland Sea, his lover Danny Flinders prepares to dive herself in a submersible into the deep bottom of the ocean, tormented by the memories of their brief encounter in France and her inability to know his whereabouts.
37 ) The Scarlet Letter (1973)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 37
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 32
- Letterboxd User Score: 34
In 17th-century Salem, Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A because she is an adulteress, with a child out of wedlock. For seven years, she has refused to name the father. A vigorous older stranger arrives, recognized by Hester but unknown to others as her missing husband. He poses as Chillingworth, a doctor, watching Hester and searching out the identity of her lover. His eye soon rests on Dimmesdale, a young overwrought pastor. Enmity grows between the two men; Chillingworth applies psychological pressure, and the pastor begins to crack. A ship stops in Salem, and Hester sees it as a providential refuge for her daughter, herself, and her lover. But will Dimmesdale flee with her?
36 ) 8 (2008)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 35
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 40
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
8 shorts centered around 8 themes directed by 8 famous film directors involved and sharing their opinion on progress, on the set-backs and the challenges our planet faces today.
35 ) The End of Violence (1997)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 22
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 32
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 36
- Letterboxd User Score: 34
Mike Max is a Hollywood producer who became powerful and rich thanks to brutal and bloody action films. His ignored wife Paige is close to leaving him. Suddenly Mike is kidnapped by two bandits, but escapes and hides out with his Mexican gardener’s family for a while. At the same time, surveillance expert Ray Bering is looking for what happens in the city, but it is not clear what he wants. The police investigation for Max’s disappearance is led by detective Doc Block, who falls in love with actress Cat who is playing in ongoing Max’s production.
34 ) Invisible World (2011)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 37
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 33
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
An anthology film following different stories around the theme of invisibility in the modern world.
33 ) Palermo Shooting (2008)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 25
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 30
- Letterboxd User Score: 32
After the wild lifestyle of a famous young German photographer almost gets him killed, he goes to Palermo, Sicily to take a break. Can the beautiful city and a beautiful local woman calm him down?
32 ) Summer in the City (1971)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 34
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 31
- Letterboxd User Score: 16
Released from prison a man wanders through a new reality
31 ) Room 666 (1982)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 30
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 25
- Letterboxd User Score: 24
During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wenders asks a number of film directors from around the world to get, each one at a time, into a hotel room, turn on the camera and sound recorder, and, in solitude, answer a simple question: “What is the future of cinema?”.
30 ) The Million Dollar Hotel (2000)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 23
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 23
- Metacritc Critic Score: 6
- Metacritic User Score: 3
- IMDB User Review Score: 33
- Letterboxd User Score: 34
The Million Dollar Hotel starts with a jump from a roof top that clears up a death in a hotel that was burning to the ground where a lot of strange people had been living.
29 ) To Each His Own Cinema (2007)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 37
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 18
- Letterboxd User Score: 16
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
28 ) Land of Plenty (2004)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 17
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 25
- Metacritc Critic Score: 10
- Metacritic User Score: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 32
After living abroad, Lana returns to the United States, and finds that her uncle is a reclusive vagabond with psychic wounds from the Vietnam War.
27 ) Don’t Come Knocking (2005)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 20
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 29
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 22
- Letterboxd User Score: 31
Howard Spence has seen better days. Once a big Western movie star, he now drowns his disgust for his selfish and failed life with alcohol, drugs and young women. If he were to die now, nobody would shed a tear over him, that’s the sad truth. Until one day Howard learns that he might have a child somewhere out there…
26 ) The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 28
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 22
- Letterboxd User Score: 16
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a 1972 German language drama film directed by Wim Wenders. It was adapted from a novella by Wenders’ long-time collaborator Peter Handke. A goalkeeper is sent off during a game for committing a foul. He spends the night with a cinema cashier, whom he afterwards kills. Although a type of detective film, it is more slow moving and contemplative than other films of the genre. It explores the monotony of the murderer’s existence and, like many of Wenders’ films, the overwhelming cultural influence of America in post-war West Germany.
24 ) A Trick of the Light (1995)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 31
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 18
- Letterboxd User Score: 16
A rare gem of cinematic storytelling that weaves docudrama, fictional reenactment, and experimental photography into a powerful, reflective work on the early days of German cinema. The film tells the story of the Skladanowsky Brothers, the German-born duo responsible for inventing the “bioskop”, an early version of the film projector.
24 ) Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 20
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 29
- Letterboxd User Score: 16
Wim Wenders talks with Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto about the creative process and ponders the relationship between cities, identity and the cinema in the digital age.
23 ) Hammett (1982)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 13
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 25
- Metacritc Critic Score: 11
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
“This is an entirely imaginary story about the writer Dashiell Hammett, who… in the words of one of his most gifted contemporaries… helped get murder out of the vicar’s rose garden and back to the people who are really good at it. The detective story has not been the same since.” So begins Hammett, the atmospheric and exciting tale of a young mystery writer who really lives the hard-boiled life he writes about — and learns to dig beneath the surface of his characters to reveal their deeper, darker motivations.
21 ) Invisibles (2007)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 18
- Letterboxd User Score: 40
A series of short films examining the world’s overlooked problems and the people who suffer from them.
21 ) Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 12
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 18
- Metacritc Critic Score: 9
- Metacritic User Score: 7
- IMDB User Review Score: 35
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
Pope Francis responds to questions from around the world, discussing topics including ecology, immigration, consumerism and social justice.
20 ) Cathedrals of Culture (2014)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 19
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 16
- Letterboxd User Score: 25
“If buildings could talk, what would they say about us?” CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE offers six startling responses. This 3D film project about the soul of buildings allows six iconic and very different buildings to speak for themselves, examining human life from the unblinking perspective of a manmade structure. Six acclaimed filmmakers bring their own visual style and artistic approach to the project. Buildings, they show us, are material manifestations of human thought and action: the Berlin Philharmonic, an icon of modernity; the National Library of Russia, a kingdom of thoughts; Halden Prison, the world’s most humane prison; the Salk Institute, an institute for breakthrough science; the Oslo Opera House, a futuristic symbiosis of art and life; and the Centre Pompidou, a modern culture machine. CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE explores how each of these landmarks reflects our culture and guards our collective memory.
19 ) Beyond the Clouds (1995)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 14
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 23
- Metacritc Critic Score: 7
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
Made of four short tales, linked by a story filmed by Wim Wenders. Taking place in Ferrara, Portofino, Aix en Provence and Paris, each story, which always a woman as the crux of the story, invites to an inner travel, as Antonioni says “towards the true image of that absolute and mysterious reality that nobody will ever see”.
18 ) Lightning Over Water (1980)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 16
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 20
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 22
- Letterboxd User Score: 11
Director ‘Nicholas Ray’ is eager to complete a final film before his imminent death from cancer. Wim Wenders is working on his own film Hammett (1983) in Hollywood, but flies to New York to help Ray realize his final wish. Ray’s original intent is to make a fiction film about a dying painter who sails to China to find a cure for his disease. He and Wenders discuss this idea, but it is obviously unrealistic given Ray’s state of health.
16 ) The State of Things (1982)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 12
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 14
- Letterboxd User Score: 10
On location in Portugal, a film crew runs out of film while making their own version of Roger Corman’s The Day the World Ended (1956) . The producer is nowhere to be found and director Munro attempts to find him in hopes of being able to finish the film.
16 ) Wrong Move (1975)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 14
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 22
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 14
- Letterboxd User Score: 11
Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She’s an acrobat in market squares for spare change.
15 ) Lisbon Story (1994)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 11
Lisbon Story is Wim Wender’s homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterous postcard of a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.
14 ) Faraway, So Close! (1993)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 19
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 16
The film opens with the angel Cassiel (Otto Sander) standing on the statue of the Angel of Victory overlooking post-Cold War Berlin. Growing ever more despondent over his fate as a mere observer of human life, rather than a vital part of it, Cassiel dreams of “crossing over” to the human world.And he does, as Karl Engel, a man who perhaps knows too much, perhaps like in many of Hitchcock’s films, some harmless citizen who gets involved in an affair to which he is not up to. In fact, there is no one as kind and harmless as this newborn citizen of the Earth.We will follow Cassiels’s adventures into a “thriller.” This story which gets mangled with his own life is about weapons, more precisely about a weapon deal where the weapons – or INSTRUMENTS of violence — are traded for IMAGES of violence.(Text from Wim Wenders site)
13 ) The Soul of a Man (2003)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 11
In “The Soul of A Man,” director Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of his favorite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir. Part history, part personal pilgrimage, the film tells the story of these lives in music through an extended fictional film sequence (recreations of ’20s and ’30s events – shot in silent-film, hand-crank style), rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians such as Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, Cassandra Wilson, Nick Cave, Los Lobos, Eagle Eye Cherry, Vernon Reid, James “Blood” Ulmer, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Ribot, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams and T-Bone Burnett.
12 ) Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 11
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 15
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 16
Ten Minutes Older is a 2002 film project consisting of two compilation feature films entitled The Trumpet and The Cello. The project was conceived by the producer Nicolas McClintock as a reflection on the theme of time at the turn of the Millennium. Fifteen celebrated film-makers were invited to create their own vision of what time means in ten minutes of film.
11 ) Lumière and Company (1995)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 17
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 16
- Letterboxd User Score: 16
40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes. The results run the gamut from Zhang Yimou’s convention-thwarting joke to David Lynch’s bizarre miniature epic.
10 ) Tokyo-Ga (1985)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 18
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 15
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
German director Wim Wenders made this documentary in which he tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu. When Wenders visits Tokyo for the first time, he finds a very different city, one with a booming fascination with technology that often clashes with the traditional elements of Japanese culture. Wenders also interviews Ozu’s cinematographer, Yuharu Atsuta, and Chishu Ryu, an actor who frequently collaborated with Ozu.
9 ) Until the End of the World (1991)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 18
- Letterboxd User Score: 11
Until The End of the World is an odyssey for the modern age. As with Homer’s Odyssey, the purpose of the journey is to restore sight — a spiritual reconciliation between an obsessed father and a deserted son. Dr. Farber, in trying to find a cure for his wife’s blindness, has created a device that allows the user to send images directly to the brain, enabling the blind to see.
8 ) The American Friend (1977)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 8
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
Tom Ripley, who deals in forged art, suggests a picture framer he knows would make a good hit man.
6 ) Kings of the Road (1976)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 8
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 5
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
Itinerant projection-equipment repairman Bruno Winter (Rüdiger Vogler) and depressed hitchhiker Robert Lander (Hanns Zischler)–a doctor who has just been through a break-up with his wife and a half-hearted suicide attempt–travel along the Western side of the East-German border in a repair truck, visiting worn-out movie theaters, learning to communicate across their differences. The film features stunning black-and-white cinematography from Robbie Muller and a pensive score from Improved Sound Limited.
6 ) Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 8
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- Metacritc Critic Score: 3
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 7
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group’s gigs in Amsterdam and New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music — but also the musicians’ life stories.
5 ) Pina (2011)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
- Metacritc Critic Score: 1
- Metacritic User Score: 4
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
Pina is a feature-length dance film in 3D with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, featuring the unique and inspiring art of the great German choreographer, who died in the summer of 2009.
4 ) Alice in the Cities (1974)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 4
- Metacritc Critic Score: 12
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 4
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer’s block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected. After returning to Europe, the innocent friendship between Winter and Alice grows as they travel together through various European cities on a quest for Alice’s grandmother.
3 ) Paris, Texas (1984)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- Metacritc Critic Score: 5
- Metacritic User Score: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 2
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.
2 ) The Salt of the Earth (2014)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- Metacritc Critic Score: 1
- Metacritic User Score: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 3
During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history ; international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes : a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet’s beauty. Sebastião’s Salgado’s life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.
1 ) Wings of Desire (1987)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 4
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- Metacritc Critic Score: 4
- Metacritic User Score: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 2
- Letterboxd User Score: 2
Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.
