Asteroid City

Asteroid City (2023) is Wes Anderson's comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM. It unfolds in a sun-blasted desert town in 1955, where young astronomers from across the country have gathered.

The occasion is a Junior Stargazer convention beside an ancient meteor crater. War photographer Augie Steenbeck, played by Jason Schwartzman and recently widowed, arrives with his brainy son and three small daughters. Movie star Midge Campbell, Scarlett Johansson, checks into the cabin nearby. Then something happens over the desert that gets the whole town sealed under quarantine. Anderson wraps all of it in a black-and-white frame: this turns out to be a televised stage play, and we keep cutting away to its writer (Edward Norton) and director (Adrien Brody) backstage.

The cast runs deep: Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Jeffrey Wright, Bryan Cranston, Willem Dafoe, Steve Carell, Maya Hawke. Symmetrical frames, pastel palette, lines delivered flat and fast, everything people adore about Anderson and gently mock him for. The film cares less about plot than about the grief hiding behind the schedules and the props. Stream Asteroid City (2023) online on iFILM.