The best movies of the 2020s, so far: ASTEROID CITY

   I don't typically enjoy Wes Anderson's work (except The Fantastic Mr. Fox) but ASTEROID CITY has been such a hyperfixation that it makes me wanna reassess his entire filmography. I haven't gotten to The Phoenician Scheme or The French Dispatch [yet] but if they're anything like this then I might just become a convert.

  First off: the cinematography is fucking insane. Like, look at this shot! It looks like a painting but it's just a frame I plucked out of the movie.

So much of his work is plagued by Tumblrcore One-Perfect-Shot fetishism (locked down, overly symmetrical and twee) but here Anderson and his cinematographer opt for sun-bleached Norman Rockwell that has both fluidity and tension. The depth in every frame has so much to pay attention to, which is emblematic of the script's dense ensemble.

  It's so compulsively rewatchable because it's the least straightforward comedy I've seen from him. For a filmmaker who has cultivated a reputation as a snooty perfectionist, it's refreshing to see something so deliberately messy and full of contradictions; dude lets loose and it's incredibly liberating to experience. He almost seems to be interrogating his own whimsy at times, too (especially with a kid who thrives on Dares whose arc comes to a fantastic finish).

  There's so much to reflect upon with the way it persistently breaks and repairs its layered fourth wall: a meta Russian nesting-doll about confronting pain (which is, itself, a comedy burying a tragedy). All of it is written with a non-linear approach best described as Jeopardy-esque (What is "Payoff then Set-up," Alex?) that's oddly rewarding. There's a point where the entire thesis of the movie is literally shouted at us by multiple cast members but, even then, it feels too easy. The wrinkle is how so much of the script suggests ideas and existential questions with no clear answers, not just externally but for the characters themselves.

 A Every character (all 296 of them) is so unique, including three little girls who inexplicably get into witchcraft and a teacher* who's gradually losing faith in what she's teaching. Scarlett Johansson, someone who, like Anderson, I don't typically like, is given a note-perfect role to play and she lands the goddamn plane. Everyone here is weaving in and out of their respective characters in each narrative switch-up but Margot Robbie and Jason Schwartzman share an incrementally emotional two-hander that's as intense as any match in Challengers. This is what kind of unlocked the movie for me and, hopefully, the rest of Anderson's filmography.

  *The 'Dear, Alien' musical number is fucking superb; fun, catchy, charming. I don't have much else to say about that but I wanted it mentioned because I can't stop listening to it.