Can Wes Anderson do no wrong? Yet again, with a cast to die for—Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jake Ryan, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Hong Chau, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Grace Edwards, Aristou Meehan, Sophia Lillis, Jeff Goldblum—he has fashioned a singularly entertaining, instantly identifiable piece of ‘auteur’ cinema, this one set in the mid-1950s, space-obsessed desert town of Asteroid City. Home to a US government observatory, the town is also the host for an annual high school science convention honouring the best science projects of the year (and, boy, there are some hilarious doozies on display). Then an emergency leads to the president declaring a lockdown—no one can leave or enter Asteroid City for the foreseeable future—forcing a wildly divergent group to just get along together…
‘A terrifically entertaining and lightly sophisticated new comedy from Wes Anderson, in his signature rectilinear, deadpan style, with primary-pastel colours and his all-star repertory ensemble cast… “Asteroid City” ’s eccentricity, its elegance, its gaiety, and its sheer profusion of detail within the tableau frame make it such a pleasure.’—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian