Second Take is an occasional series that looks at movies currently playing in theaters.
Director Wes Anderson is the man who convinces his audience that he's making independent cinema, when in reality, his movies come with the budgets and casts of a standard Hollywood production.
The untrained eye may accuse him of making the same movie over and over, but a more nuanced approach reveals ... he's just a man dedicated to his own style, so much so, that he makes his own clichés. And those clichés result in one of two reactions for most moviegoers. They either love Anderson's work. Or they can't stand it. A middle ground is hard to come by with his filmography.
His latest work still in theaters is "Asteroid City." It's set during the 1950s in a rural desert town on the California/Nevada border. The town consists of a gas station, a diner, a motel, and a small military research base.
Anderson tells this story as a three-act play, and the point of view bounces back and forth between a stage production of the play "Asteroid City" with the characters being actual actors putting on the production, and a more traditional movie where the actors are their characters.
Think of it as if "Star Wars" jumped back and forth from Luke, Han and Leia doing their usual outer space adventures in some scenes and Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher performing these roles in a stage production in other scenes.
Bryan Cranston serves as the narrator for "Asteroid City" and navigates transitions between several scenes. Despite boasting a large cast, the main focus is placed on a grieving widower and photographer named Augie (Jason Schwartzman). He's traveling with his genius son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and three adorable, inventive daughters.
They get towed into Asteroid City and dropped off at the gas station after their car breaks down. Woodrow is signed up to attend a junior space cadet program and will receive an award for an invention he submitted.
Augie calls his father-in-law (Tom Hanks) to get them and then breaks the news to his children that their mother is dead. Meanwhile, a famous actress named Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) also takes her daughter to the junior space cadet program.
A few other parents drive their genius children to the event, a group of cowboys miss their bus, and it's not long before everyone is stuck in town via a quarantine, following a visit from an alien.
Those who have watched Anderson's films before will find the typical tropes that make up his style. Characters dealing with grief, sons who don't see eye-to-eye with their fathers, repeat actors like Tilda Swinton and Edward Norton, and more.
Some directors are vilified for repeating themselves from project to project, and while Anderson certainly has his critics, he has also garnered a cult following. And it's a challenge for some to grow exasperated with his tropes because he does manage to keep the illusion of charming independent cinema intact from movie to movie. He's quirky. His camera work seems unorthodox. The way Anderson has his characters talk is so matter-of-fact that it can't be anything other than an intentional choice.
But perhaps what endears Anderson to so many of his fans, critics, and typical audiences alike is that in a time when Hollywood seems to be taking fewer risks and investing almost all of its resources in tentpole productions and established franchises, he's still unapologetically committed to his own offbeat movies.
Maybe it's difficult for Anderson's style to become stale when cinema is populated with so many reboots, callbacks and sequels.
Even more impressive, Anderson manages to keep his signature style intact, whether he's working in animation or live-action cinema. Viewers will find just as many Andersonisms in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "Isle of Dogs" as they will in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" or "Asteroid City."
And speaking of "Asteroid City," the movie doesn't waste a single character. Schwartzman, Hanks and Johansson all bring varying forms of grief to the stage and collide in this little observational bubble that Anderson built for everyone to look through for a couple of days.
Even the actors with background roles (and only a couple of scenes) manage to bring something interesting to the table, whether audiences are watching Steve Carrell play a motel clerk or Willem Dafoe play an acting coach. Every scene feels handstitched by a man who clings so tightly to his own vision that he has become a household name in the same vein as Christopher Nolan or Tim Burton.
While the film navigates grief, it also manages to sneak in a few honest laughs to break up the heavier moments, often courtesy of the movie's quirkiness that the actors lend themselves to fully.
Fans who love the director's work will certainly enjoy "Asteroid City" as it's another chapter in his ongoing book of Andersonisms. And people who think he's overrated or a one-trick pony will likely continue to think that after they finish this latest film.
Count this critic among the former.