Stylish Americana: Wes Anderson's 'Asteroid City'

Wes Anderson's latest film, Asteroid City, delivers stunning visuals and philosophical concepts but falls short on cohesive storytelling. The film features a play-within-a-TV-special-within-a-movie framework, with an ensemble cast led by Jason Schwartzman and Scarlett Johansson. Anderson's deliberate contrivance of the world of the play feels more akin to the filmmaking of the era he is probing than other recent projects that aim for naturalistic verisimilitude to the time. The film seems to be philosophizing about the gap between the truth we seek in storytelling and the lush, bravura craftsmanship required to tell it.