Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

My feelings about Wes Anderson Films, it turns out, have been pretty consistent over the years. I have reviewed every feature film he has directed since 2004, of which there are now eight, and of those I have given five B-pluses (Fantastic Mr. Fox; Moonrise Kingdom, probably still my favorite; The Grand Budapest Hotel, his biggest commercial success; Isle of Dogs; and—spoiler alert!—Asteroid City) and three solid Bs (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; The Darjeeling Limited; The French Dispatch). I can barely remember his first three films that came before I began posting reviews (Bottle Rocket; Rushmore; perennial favorite The Royal Tenenbaums) but could probably stand to go back and revisit them.

It would seem, then, that my feelings about Wes Anderson rarely wavers, except that in my mind, a difference between a B-plus movie and a solid-B movie is a difference between one I would recommend to others and one I would not (but which I was still happy to have seen myself). One could argue, that’s a crucial difference. And by that standard, his last film, The French Dispatch, was a bit of a dip for him, for the first time since five movies (and fourteen years) earlier.

Furthermore, the ones I enjoy the most, I enjoy for different reasons—in spite of the increasingly rigid “diorama” visual style Anderson adopts. Over time, his movies have gotten more visually dazzling, somewhat at the expense of substance; I found Moonrise Kingdom to be exceptional by that measure—and I feel the same about Asteroid City, which is, thematically, very different from anything else he’s ever done. And while the visual style is absolutely recognizable, it’s a tad more self-referential, and has a visual motif unlike any other, being set in a tiny town (the namesake of the film, as well as the play being staged in the film) in the middle of the desert. You might not expect the two-dimensional backdrops of cacti and mountains to work within the duration of the story, but it really does.

More importantly, Asteroid City is like an artisan ice cream sundae, with layered delights. I have to admit, with its Russian nesting doll-like structure, a movie of a TV program presenting a stage play with occasional interludes featuring the director and the actors both in and out of character, all of it dealing with subtle thematic nuances never made straightforward, some of this movie went over my head. I didn’t seem to care, as I was utterly charmed by it. I almost always enjoy Wes Anderson films, but this may be the first one I finished by immediately thinking: I’d really like to watch this again. I’m convinced I would get even more out of it.

There’s another unique quality to Asteroid City that seems tailor-made for me: its quite literally otherworldly elements. I would never known to have expected this, but it turns out Wes Anderson and an extra-terrestrial make for a perfect marriage, at least in tone. There’s even a needle-drop reference to the 1996 Tim Burton classic Mars Attacks!, with Slim Whitman’s 1952 yodeling “Indian Love Song,” and I naively wondered if I was the only one who clocked it (I wasn’t). Mars Attacks! is far wilder than Asteroid City, although by some measures Asteroid City is far wilder than any other Wes Anderson film, and it occurs to me that these two movies would make a truly great double feature.

And by the way, Asteroid City skates on a fairly even path of mild comic amusement, while also moving between genuine poignancy and a good number of laugh-out-loud moments. It isn’t just charming, and it isn’t just surprisingly moving at times, as this tiny desert town, famous for its ancient asteroid in the sand of a giant crater, is locked down under quarantine after an alien visit. If you look deep enough, in its own way, Asteroid City is Wes Anderson’s answer to other directors’ late-career cinema contemplations like The Irishman or Roma or Belfast or The Fabelmans. It’s just that with Anderson, who is 54, it is maybe more of a mid-career contemplation, and also far less straightforward of one. He’s got time to expand on his existential questions, but for now, Asteroid City is the perfect fit for them.

It’s almost beside the point that, as usual, Wes Anderson’s new film is so stacked with stars it almost defies the imagination. The ones most worth mentioning are Anderson stalwart Jason Schwartzman, the protagonist as both a recently widowed father of three finally breaking the news of his wife’s death to his children and the actor who plays him; Scarlett Johansson as a movie star (and the actor who plays her) passing through town; and Tom Hanks, new to the Anderson-verse but well cast and well integrated, as Schwartzman’s emotionally distant father-in-law.

Also worth mentioning are Jake Ryan (previously seen in the phenomenal Eighth Grade and Anderson’s own Moonrise Kingdom) as Schwartzman’s eldest child, and especially real-life triplets Ella Faris, Gracie Faris, and Willan Faris who play his three little girls, their characters with fantastic names I won’t spoil here. I will tell you that in the movie they provide some welcome chaotic unpredictability, and are insistent that they are witches and vampires. These girls alone may have been my favorite part of the movie, and this is a movie with countless things to love.

I can’t mention everyone else in this movie as there are just too many to name, but I want to shout out Tilda Swinton, furthering her long line of unrecognizability in film roles; and Bryan Cranston, who serves as on-screen narrator and occasionally delightful meta-commentator on the transition between “TV show” and “play.”

As always, though, the real star of any Wes Anderson film is the production design, which nearly makes whoever plays the parts immaterial. There is an appropriately otherworldly quality to the visuals here, even as it’s all set on desert land: there are real, working cars on actual roads, but with old-school painted landscape backdrops and artificial landscape props, creating a slight dissonance with the idea that we are supposedly watching a live broadcast of a play, as it blends real-world elements with the artificial, including the most Wes Anderson rendering of a mushroom cloud that could ever be rendered.

And yet, through all of this, even with the pointedly deadpan delivery across every single one of the countless actors (except those truly delightful, energetic little witch girls), Anderson somehow makes you feel a sense of human connection, breaking through the emotional inertness. It’s the contextualization that matters, and even when Asteroid City gets bonkers, it’s all contextualization. This is the reason I expect the experience to deepen in richness with multiple viewings.

*Jason Schwartzman and Tom Hanks, making the kinds of connections only Wes Anderson can make.*

Overall: B+