Asteroid City
I thought French Dispatch* looked cool, but it was a little too experimental for me. I understood the premise, but it felt very chopped up and emotionally distant. Asteroid City* felt like something Wes had been building toward for years. It felt like, at least from a style perspective, he found the perfect container for everything he had been messing with since Moonrise Kingdom** and carries into The Phoenician Scheme**. It was still stacked with his usual symmetry and dollhouse-type visuals, but this time it felt warmer and more lived-in.
Not to mention there’s just something comforting about the way this movie looks. It feels like it was shot inside a toybox left out in the desert. The pastel colors, the painted skies, and the model-train aesthetic that we’ve become familiar with.
Wes was just at home and in his bag creatively. The whole “play within a play within a memory within a breakdown” thing should’ve collapsed under its own weight, but it doesn’t. Somehow, all those narrative nesting dolls actually make the story easier to follow and make the emotions hit harder instead of getting lost.
The movie is about performance, about control, about the things we do to not fall apart, and then it sneaks up on you with this very real exploration of grief. The grief in this movie isn’t loud. It’s dry, awkward, and understated. But it’s constant.
Jason Schwartzman might give his best performance in a Wes movie here. Usually he’s playing characters that are a little delusional or cocky, but here he’s just tired, grieving, and confused. Trying to hold it together for his kids while not knowing what he’s even supposed to feel.
And the movie’s got its fun too. Some great cameos throughout, with a big emotional one at the end. I can’t believe that Steve Carrell had never been in one of these before. That felt like a Michael Cera-level no-brainer. [](https://boxd.it/EQJ5)Maya Hawke[](https://boxd.it/1uSr) was really fun to see in this universe too. Also, the kid singing “Dear Alien” is hilarious and I can already tell that song and scene is gonna be in my head for days.
Asteroid City isn’t Wes trying to be cool. It’s Wes using all his quirks to actually say something about loss and control and what it means to keep going when you don’t understand what’s happening anymore.
Wes Anderson: Ranked