Movie Review Asteroid City

Asteroid City (2023) 

Directed by Wes Anderson 

Written by Wes Anderson 

Starring Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Jeffrey Wright

Release Date June 23rd, 2023 

Published June 23rd, 2023 

I adore the work of writer-director Wes Anderson. As a film critic with more than 20 years of experience writing about movies, Anderson's work has an unusual appeal for me. I see so many movies that look the same, go for the same goals, demonstrate the same filmmaking technique, and though they can be quite good or not good, the sameness of most of what I see becomes monotonous. Then, along comes a Wes Anderson movie like an alien from another planet. Instead of striving to place his characters in a place we can recognize and identify with them in a typical fashion, Anderson's style creates a surreal reality all its own. 

In his first feature film, Bottle Rocket, the characters were colorful and odd amid a realistic landscape. Since then, The Royal Tenenbaums began a turn for Anderson that led to more and more of a surrealist perspective. Anderson is a fan of artifice, and he brings artifice forward in his cinematography and production design. In his newest, remarkably ingenious work, called Asteroid, the surrealist production design is intended to logically marry the stage and film. It's as if Wes Anderson wanted to adapt a play into a movie but wanted to bring both the play and the movie forward at once. It's an exceptionally silly, funny, brilliant move. 

Trying to describe the plot of Asteroid City is rather pointless. Wes Anderson isn't so much interested in his plot. Rather, it's a Wes Anderson style of comedy, a series of odd, awkward, and often various funny scenes that may or may not be moving forward a plot. On the surface, we are following photographer and family man, Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), as he takes his kids across the country and their car breaks down in the oddball small town of Asteroid City. Luckily, they were on their way here anyway as Augie's oldest son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), is to compete for a science scholarship. 

Asteroid City is the real star of Asteroid City. At the center of the town, which is made up of, perhaps four locations, is a giant crater where an asteroid landed in 3200 B.C. The town grew up around the asteroid as scientists and military men seek to understand the asteroid. Tilda Swinton is the top scientist and Jeffrey Wright is the military man. Things get crazy when an alien comes to Earth and takes the asteroid. The arrival of an alien causes the town, and all of its visitors, including Augie and his four kids, celebrity actress, Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johannson) and her genius daughter, Dina (Grace Edwards). 

Augie begins a tentative flirtation with Midge, their tiny cabins are right next door to each other, and Woodrow starts a budding relationship with Dinah as they work with their fellow genius kids, played by Sophia Lillis and Ethan Josh Lee to study the alien while also making sure the rest of the world knows that the alien exists, much to the chagrin of the military and their parents. The genius kids also work with Tilda Swinton's scientist to try and determine where the alien went and whether or not the alien is dangerous or not. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: The Royal Tenenbaums

Rushmore (2001) 

Directed by Wes Anderson

Written by Wes Anderson

Starring Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Owen Wilson

Release Date December 14th, 2001 

Published December 24th, 2001 

In Rushmore, Wes Anderson took two very unique characters and used them to establish an unusual comic tone of irony and pathos that, for all it's quirks, seemed grounded in a weird sort of realty. In The Royal Tenenbaums, he applies that same unusual tone to an awesome ensemble cast to an even greater effect.

The Royal Tenenbaums is the story of a family of geniuses and the father who was the catalyst for their self destruction. Gene Hackman plays the father, the aptly named Royal Tenenbaum, a disgraced and disbarred lawyer whose luck and money have run out, and who now seeks to reconcile with the family he destroyed years earlier; not out of any emotional need for forgiveness, but rather because he just needs a place to crash.

Angelica Huston is Royal's soon-to-be-ex-wife, Etheline, a genius in her own right who is about to marry a man named Henry, played by Danny Glover. Luke Wilson is Richie Tenenbaum, a tennis prodigy washed up after a breakdown in the middle of a major match. Gwyneth Paltrow is Margot Tenenbaum (whom Royal makes a point of noting is adopted,) a genius playwright who wrote her first play at age 11 and has written nothing since. Ben Stiller is Chas, a widower who was a financial whiz at age 9, whose resentment of Royal is just one of the family's many dysfunctional aspects.

Bill Murray and Owen Wilson round out the cast in truly funny supporting roles. The whole cast is sensational, and though Stiller seems a little off key at times, everyone maintains this wondrous magical tone that makes the movie hum; never too loud, never too soft. Combine that brilliant tone with Mark Mothersbaugh's inspired score and the soundtrack of 60's tunes like the Beatles' "Hey Jude," and you have what amounts to a comedic symphony. The New York setting is as strange and wonderful as the rest of the film and when combined with the soundtrack give the film a feeling of timelessness. 

I don't know if there is a director I have higher hopes for than I do for Wes Anderson. I cannot wait to see what he does next. 

Movie Review The Darjeeling Limited

The Darjeeling Limited (2007) 

Directed by Wes Anderson 

Written by Wes Anderson 

Starring Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Angelica Huston, Natalie Portman 

Release Date October 26th, 2007 

Published October 25th, 2007 

Director Wes Anderson is spinning his wheels. Seemingly unable to make a movie with a point after the funny, insightful Rushmore and the quirky Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson's The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and now The Darjeeling Limited are masturbatory exercises in style and precociousness. Their saving grace is good natured humor but that doesn't make them any less shallow.

Admit it Wes fans; we were expecting something more here.

The Darjeeling Limited is the name of a fictional train route through a few small villages in India. On this train three American brothers, Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrian Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman), have gathered for a spiritual journey. Peter and Jack are under the impression that Francis, the oldest of the three, has brought them together to reconnect as brothers. In reality, Francis is leading them to a remote convent where their mother (Angelica Huston) has taken up residence.

The trip to see mom is the framing device for a series of revelatory moments for each of the brothers who slowly reveal their secrets to each other and come to terms with why they haven't spent much time together since their fathers death and an incident on the day of his funeral that sent them in different directions.

Director Wes Anderson seems to be stuck in a rut. After Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums he seemed destined for great things. In two consecutive features since; Anderson is caught up being overly precious and even cute in the way he toys with dialogue and with visuals. Some could fairly describe him as dicking around hoping to stumble on something insightful. He rarely finds anything in The Darjeeling Limited.

Arguably the most notable aspect of The Darjeeling Limited are the disturbing real life imitates art scenes with Owen Wilson. Just before Darjeeling was leaving the station, Wilson attempted to take his own life. The same thing happens to his character in the film who survived his own attempt at suicide. It's not Wes Anderson or the film's fault that such a coincidence happened but it does cast a pall over the otherwise good natured proceedings.

The true subject of The Darjeeling Limited may be a distinct sense of ennui. These characters are bored and so is Wes Anderson. In fact, so are we in the audience. Jason Schwartzman's Jack is plagued with ennui as evidenced in the short feature, Hotel Chevalier, that precedes The Darjeeling Limited. In this brief backstory we see Jack with, presumably, his girlfriend played by Natalie Portman. The two go through the motions of familiar interaction but the sense that they bother each other in order to stave off boredom is quite clear.

Adrien Brody's Peter deals with ennui by stealing or 'borrowing' his brother's and late father's things. His boredom isn't as plagung as Jack's and is also far less interesting. On the bright side, oldest brother Francis may have dealt with his ennui by attempting suicide, so the stealing is at least somewhat healthy by comparison. It's all very European and arty to make movies about characters who are disaffected, bored and longing but often in Europe those feelings are the run up to some kind of breakthrough or revelation.

In The Darjeeling Limited we get a cheap homage to revelation. The ending features the kind of ironic distance that was very much in style in the late nineties when hipsters had an allergic reaction to anything remotely earnest. This is not to say that The Darjeeling Limited isn't well crafted and oddly fascinating. It's just, for me personally, watching an artist drown in his own self satisfying disaffection is kind of boring.

Movie Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) 

Directed by Wes Anderson

Written by Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach

Starring George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Wallace Wolodarsky, 

Release Date November 25th, 2009 

Published November 24th, 2009 

Is the Wes Anderson genius wearing thin? After loving Rushmore and, the even more brilliant The Royal Tenenbaums, I seem to have lost my taste for Mr. Anderson's low key, off-kilter charm. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was strong on production design and short on story. Darjeeling Limited was a patience testing observation of exceedingly low key, mannered behavior. Now, for Mr. Anderson's latest overly precious, affectedly quiet effort he has turned to stop motion animation. The result is elegant in production, eye popping even, but yet again a test of the patience of those tiring of Wes Anderson's brand of twee storytelling.

Based on the Children's book by the legendary Roald Dahl, The Fantastic Mr. Fox tells the story of Mr Fox (Voice of George Clooney), a chicken thief turned newspaper man. Mr. Fox gave up his animal nature, stealing chickens, to focus on raising a family with Mrs. Fox (voice of Meryl Streep). Together they have a son (Voice of Jason Schwartzman) who is quite odd and for a time the family is joined by a cousin named Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson). 

The story hinges on Mr. Fox's covert move back into the stealing biz, against Mrs. Fox's wishes. Enlisting the help of his pal Kylie, an opossum voiced by Wallace Wolodarsky, Mr. Fox intends to steal from the three meanest, nastiest farmers in the land; Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. He's quite successful at first, but it doesn't take long for the evil farmers to find about the thieving Mr. Fox and when they do, it's war.

The old fashioned, stop motion animated style of Fantastic Mr. Fox is warm and inviting and at the same time a technical marvel. These creatures have astonishing life in their exaggerated features, right down to the shine on Mr. and Mrs. Fox's coats. The production design is flawless and really steals the show from director Anderson's exceptionally low key storytelling.

With his characters modulated to just over a whisper, Wes Anderson turns Fantastic Mr. Fox from a child's adventure story into one of his monotone, pretentious character observations. In the past I have enjoyed observing the behavior of Mr. Anderson's just left of center characters but as his style has aged, it hasn't evolved. Fantastic Mr. Fox is the same blend of absurd quietude and quirky characters as was his Rushmore only without the charm of being something new.

Where Rushmore had an indie, hipster edge and Royal Tenenbaums had airy refinement bordering on arrogance, Mr. Anderson's three succeeding features have become cute and overly precious. His style has become an affectation, an artificial exercise in style. It's an eye catching, often well produced style but with each picture there is less and less substance to back it up. Though the production design is first rate in Fantatic Mr. Fox, the movie as a whole comes up short as little more than an exercise in style. Wes Anderson's ever more affected filmmaking is taking his career in the wrong direction.