Asteroid City (#443)


I know that director and writer and producer Wes Anderson is considered a new genius in filmdom, but the movie I saw today, ASTEROID CITY, may have hastened my retirement from movie reviewing.  This is an eccentric, strange, weird, off beat comedic movie that left me totally in the dark, but the way it looked on screen (white on white) was distressing and almost impossible to view with  these old eyes.  The only actor I was able to recognize, Bryan Cranston, opened the film explaining that it was the filming of a play and that the filming would be in the desert.  This is a film advertising a cast of seemingly dozens of top rated stars — Hanks, Johansson, Schwartzman, Swinton, Norton, Brody, Robie and on and on, and I was unable to recognize any of them.  After the opening, it seemed to be an ongoing series of vignettes with a variety of characters. family and otherwise, and I got lost in the shuffle.  I suspect I am intellectually incapable of recognizing great film making, and I left before the conclusion of this endless 1 hour and 44 minute movie which felt like a week.  I did some research and learned I had seen a previous Anderson film, The Grand Bucharest Hotel, and remembering I found it funny and liked it.  I was probably younger and could see then. Critics and audiences gave it a thumbs up (76 and 61 per cent respectively).

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