Asteroid City is Wes Anderson operating at the peak of his abilities and making a potent argument for his use of intricate artifice as a vessel for conveying deep sincerity.

As a young immigrant family the Lumens moved to the big city of Elemental. They were awed by this new place where fire, water, land and air all live together harmoniously… or so they thought. They quickly found it less than welcoming for fire elementals with the city seemingly built to accommodate water more than others, so they found a little neighborhood with other fires and settled there to open a local shop. Time flew by as their daughter Ember grew and it was a given, both in their actions and words, that she’d take over the family business when it came time. One day, an unexpected visitor brought along with him a crisis that threatened to shut down their mom and pop store, so Ember was hellbent on fixing it. In the process she found an unexpected friend in Wade, a water elemental, and discovered the big city was much more than it seemed.

The Past Lives hype that immediately saturated Sundance Twitter following its premiere in Park City was not fucking around. Since then it wowed SIFF audiences as the opening night feature and is now opening around the country, including here in Seattle.

The main question you have to ask yourself when deciding if you’re going see this movie is “Does seeing Michael Keaton put on the ol’ Batsuit and once again speak aloud an ad-libbed catchphrase justify spending more than two hours with multiple versions of Ezra Miller and some pretty substandard CGI?” 

Hasbro’s robots in disguise get a competent reboot in the latest iteration.