Every year, when the air turns crisp and the days shrink by a few minutes at a time, I find myself returning to “Fantastic Mr. Fox”. 

Some movies belong to certain seasons, and this one belongs to autumn—like the way “Call Me by Your Name” belongs to summer and “Little Women” belongs to winter. 

Maybe it’s the palette: the burnt oranges, honeyed yellows and soft browns that look like they’ve been toasted by sunlight. Or maybe it’s the feeling—the soft ache that comes with change, with knowing things can’t stay golden forever. 

Wes Anderson’s 2009 stop-motion film is an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s story, but it feels more like a grown-up fable about the passage of time. Mr. Fox, voiced by George Clooney, is a former thief who’s trying to live a quiet, respectable life as a husband and father. But the pull of adventure—the need to prove he’s still clever, still wild—lures him back into danger. 

It’s a film about trying to be content with what you have, even as the world keeps reminding you of what you’ve lost. That tension—the longing for excitement and the ache of nostalgia—is what makes it the perfect movie for fall. 

Visually, it’s autumn everywhere you look. The world is steeped in the colors of cornfields and cider, corduroy jackets and fox fur. Every frame seems to radiate warmth. Watching it feels like being wrapped in a quilt while the leaves fall outside the window.  

But beneath all the coziness, there’s melancholy. 

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” is, at its heart, a story about change and insecurity—the realization that you can’t be reckless forever, that adventure carries consequences, that even cleverness has its limits. 

Mr. Fox’s world is full of losses: relationships strained, fallen trees, promises broken. And yet, the film refuses despair. It’s tender toward imperfection. It says: yes, you will make mistakes, you will grow older, you will sometimes ruin things—and you will still be loved. 

There’s something distinctly autumnal about that idea: that change and decay don’t have to mean sadness, only transformation. 

Anderson’s meticulous style—every frame arranged just so, every color carefully chosen—echoes the way memory works. We remember selectively, beautifully, the same way autumn edits the world down to what’s essential. The leaves fall, the sky clears, and only what matters remains. 

There’s a bittersweet order to it, an acceptance that not everything can be kept. 

So every year, when the days start to cool and the trees turn the color of fox fur, I return to this film. I watch it for its humor, its music, its carefully crafted world—but mostly for the feeling it leaves behind. The same feeling I get standing outside in November, hands in my pockets, breath in the air. 

A reminder that everything changes, that nothing lasts and that there’s still beauty in the in-between.