Asteroid City      4 stars

Viewers of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City will immediately recognize the picturesque style and rapid storytelling techniques of the acclaimed director. This is apparently the eleventh film of Anderson’s going back to Bottle Rocket in the nineties. This one may be the most imaginative one yet. Here we get a story within a story as the film starts with a TV host in a 1950’s Actors’ Studio show telling us about the writing efforts of a famed playwright working on his play, Asteroid City. This part of the movie is in black and white, but when we travel to the play, set in a 1950’s southwestern town in the desert the screen switches to bright pastel colors so typical of Anderson’s movies. The town is the location of the annual Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention because it is the site of a crater created by an asteroid many centuries before. There, we see a large collection of interesting characters portrayed by many well-known Hollywood actors, including some regulars that Wes Anderson works with. They include Jason Schwartzman as a war photographer traveling with his Brainiac son, Scarlet Johansson as a Hollywood film star and Tom Hanks as a rich grandfather. Some of the actors have double roles portraying their Asteroid City characters and the actors in the play when they interact with the play’s director (Adrien Brody). There are too many notable characters for me to list here. You will have to see the movie to get the full experience. Eventually, there is a life changing event in the small town that brings the attention of the US military. We do get a fascinating story told with rapid fire dialogue and narration that’s familiar as was done in movies of the forties and fifties. You may experience some confusion about what’s going on as expressed by Schwartzman’s Jones Hall does when talking to the director, Schubert Green (Brody). His advice: “Don’t worry about it, just keep telling the story.” Wes Anderson’s movies aren’t always cohesive. They are more about being something to experience and Asteroid City is all about the experience.