Review: Wes Anderson's gorgeous 'Asteroid City' is more starry than stellar
"Asteroid City," Wes Anderson's half-irritating, half-intoxicating desert bloom of a movie, unfolds mostly in 1955 in a small Southwest town — a postcard-perfect oasis surrounded by cactuses, red rocks and vast horizons.
Our first glimpse of it is deeply transporting: No sounds break the silence, and no actors (or tumbleweeds) disrupt the vast spaces of Robert Yeoman's impeccably framed widescreen compositions. Instead, the camera nimbly rotates nearly 360 degrees, pausing mid-pan to register the glories of Adam Stockhausen's Wild Wild Wes production design: a diner, a motel, a filling station, a highway ramp to nowhere. That last one is a symbol: of unrealized promise, yes, but also of the-sky's-the-limit possibility.
Welcome to Asteroid City, a gorgeous piece of scenery even by Anderson's standards and an open-air museum of antiquarian delights, with its 40-cent milkshakes, vintage vending machines and pastel-hued automobiles. It is also, at this early stage,
