'Asteroid City' Falls into Theaters This Weekend

Wes Anderson's recognizable style has been all over TikTok lately, as innumerable videos have poked fun at the director's consistent visual look, story-telling tone, and favorite actors with parodies. But now a real Wes Anderson movie is hitting theaters, and we'll find out if the viral satires have increased moviegoers' appetite for the real deal. Read on for details.

Via The Irish Times.

Jason Schwartzman’s movie career began in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, the 1998 comedy in which Schwartzman’s surly teen competed with Bill Murray’s industrialist for the affections of an elementary schoolteacher, played by Olivia Williams.

The actor has subsequently reunited with the director for Hotel Chevalier, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs, and The French Dispatch.

“I remember two things about my first audition with Wes,” recalls Schwartzman. “One: being very nervous when I went in. And two: he had these Converse sandals on which I had never seen before. I was legitimately distracted by them. And then we started talking and I instantly felt very relaxed around him. The things he was talking about and referencing were things that I was interested in. And he was the first person who was an adult and who wasn’t my brother who asked me what I thought about something. There I was at 17 being listened to by someone who was 27.”

In the hours before Asteroid City premieres at the Cannes film festival, speaking with various cast members from the 11th feature from independent high-style auteur Wes Anderson can feel like wandering into a religious cult.

“Wes creates such a magical experience,” says Adrien Brody, returning for a fifth collaboration with the Texan writer-director. The Oscar-winner later describes working on The Darjeeling Limited as “a life-changing experience.”

“He’s totally unique,” says Hope Davis, long-time friend but first-time cast member; “I have never worked with anyone who is so joyous on set.”

Asteroid City is set in a small, cartoonish desert pit stop that consists of a diner, a motel, a one-pump gas station and a meteorite crater hopefully billed as a tourist attraction. The 1950s-set film is punctuated by Bryan Cranston’s TV host, who introduces the Asteroid City playwright (Edward Norton) and the director who stages the script (Brody).

The play-within-the-play hinges on a gathering of prize-winning teen scientists arriving at the titular destination with their parents in tow. These include Augie (Schwartzman), a war photographer who can’t bring himself to tell his three young daughters and his boffin son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) that their mother has died. Augie soon encounters Midge (Scarlett Johansson), a glamorous Hollywood actress accompanying her aspiring astronomer daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards).

Signature Andersonian preoccupations abound: parental failings, coming of age, and the search for connection. The vibrant use of pinks and purples that defined The Grand Budapest Hotel makes way for a teal and orange palette.

Between the deadpan exchanges – Schwartzman admits that he practised lines while wearing one of his wife’s face masks – there’s a new self-referentiality.

Intertextual games introduce the actors who play Augie and Midge (also played by Schwartzman and Johansson), the New York Acting Studio where they trained, and a riot of cultural and historical references from cowboys to Looney Toons to alien invasions.

Cops and robbers enact a high-speed chase on a loop in the background of Asteroid City. Maya Hawke plays a modernised My Darling Clementine. In a series of staged tableaux, Johansson’s Midge flags how she is fashioned from pieces of Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits and Kim Stanley in The Goddess, and styled after Kim Novak in Vertigo and Grace Kelly in Rear Window.

Get the rest of the story at The Irish Times.