Asteroid City is a Wes Anderson joint, with a truly massive ensemble cast that would also have included Bill Murray, had he not gotten Covid and been unable to enter their bubble. Many attended, but sadly, we missed out on Margot Robbie, Liev Schreiber, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, and a couple others. Per Wikipedia, early reaction to the trailer included, “Very Andersonian,” and, “looks and feels exactly how you’d think a Wes Anderson coming-of-age movie about stargazing in the desert world,” which is what you say when you’re trying to say absolutely nothing real. The reviews since the Cannes screening — standing ovation, if you’re keeping track: six minutes — have been very mixed. Indiewire loved it, Variety called it “visually dazzling and dramatically inert,” and THR called it “cloying Wes Anderson whimsy,” which is how I personally feel about lot of his professional output (not all, but… much).
Sidebar, I said this in a comment yesterday, but how do they track the standing ovations in Cannes? For example, if five minutes is considered the base length, do they have… a timer? A person standing there who sticks their arm up at 5 minutes, as if to be like, “From here on out, we consider it a gradually stronger endorsement”? I must know.
