Asteroid City

The final work by acclaimed playwright Conrad Earp is the subject of a documentary and we see reconstructions of its writing, production and in the main, a mind's eye view of the story imagined in the play itself.

Wes Anderson assembles an enormous ensemble cast to do layered meta fiction mostly filmed in a kind of moving diorama format.

Close to the end one of the characters pronounces "I still don't understand the play" and my immediate thought was "yeah me too" even though it seems likely you're not really supposed to.

There's a mix of people being listlessly lonely, theatrically witty and just straight Anderson-signature quirky across the different layers, occasionally breaking from one to another until suddenly it's over. Did he just run out of quirk at 100 minutes or something?

Any trailer you've seen probably implies there's an actual narrative but don't be fooled: this exists purely in the universes of tone and style with every hint of narrative just a clotheshorse to hang these on.

This doesn't make it bad per se, its actually enormously successful at what I think the intention was and I was caught up in it throughout. However it just wasn't for me, or probably for you either unless you are absolutely a fan of Anderson's filmmaking. 8/10 because I always rate things in the context they exist in and this is so very Wes Anderson that you should avoid it unless you know what you're in for.