ACCEPT THIS MISSION!: a review of "Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part One"

"MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-DEAD RECKONING PART ONE"
Based upon the television series "Mission: Impossible" created by Bruce Gellar
Screenplay Written by Christopher McQuarrie & Erik Jendressen
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
**** (four stars)
RATED PG 13

Under normal circumstances, I would say that there is not one reason in the world that the seventh entry in an ongoing film series should only continue in top tier excellence.  But, in the case of the "Mission: Impossible" series, that one reason undeniably, unquestionably, and absolutely is...Tom Cruise.

For nearly 30 years, the "Mission: Impossible" series, starring Tom Cruise as the intrepid Impossible Mission Force (IMF) secret agent Ethan Hunt, has exceedingly defied...well...impossible odds, at least as far as continuing film series tend to progress. After two strong opening films, Brian DePalma's "Mission: Impossible" (1996) and John Woo's "Mission: Impossible 2" (2000), it was J.J. Abrams' "Mission: Impossible III" (2006) that truly began the series' rocket ride into becoming a cinematic beast often eclipsing features starring James Bond and/or Jason Bourne. 

Brad Bird's "Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol" (2011) and the previous two chapters, "Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation" (2015) and "Mission: Impossible-Fallout" (2018), each directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who is now shepherding the enterprise alongside Cruise, who produces the series, all worked furiously to ensure that the adventures of Ethan Hunt and his team would not only refuse to grow tired but would only ascend to new heights with every new installment. And if Tom Cruise needed to perform his increasingly eye popping and death defying stunts himself, then so be it. 

Christopher McQuarrie's "Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One," the seventh chapter once again is an absolute triumph. Just as he achieved miraculously with Joseph Kosinski's skyrocketing "Top Gun: Maverick" (2022), it is as if Tom Cruise is ensuring every movie mission featuring Ethan Hunt is accomplished through sheer force of will as again, the end result is a master class display of the modern day action adventure thriller. 

After saving the world from the nearly cataclysmic events of the previous film, "Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One," finds Ethen Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his teammates Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) as well as the disavowed MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who now has a bounty placed upon her head by the IMF, faced with an even greater threat than before. 

An experimental AI known as "The Entity" has achieved sentience and has gone rogue, forcing the world's nations to all go in pursuit in order to establish sole control of the artificial intelligence. Ethan Hunt and his team, however, wish to find the two halves of the cruciform key, which allows the user to harness The Entity. as a means to destroy the AI. Complicating matters further is the arrival of Gabriel (Esai Morales), a pre-IMF ally of Ethen's, now turned terrorist and Grace (Hayley Atwell), a professional thief, each of whom are also racing for the key.

With that, you have the basic plot of "Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One," and as with the other six films, this is essentially all you need as the straightforwardness of the plot allows Christopher McQuarrie to invent all manner of conundrums, obstacles, sleights of hand, pitfalls, cliffhangers and so much more in the execution. While I will give "Mission: Impossible-Fallout" the sleight edge as being the best film of the series to date, this seventh chapter is unquestionably sensational and only continues the exceedingly high  quality control that has been established. Despite the "Part One" that exists within the title, McQuarrie has ensured that we receive as complete of a film as possible, while also leaving us wanting more.in the already filming Part Two (which has, at this time of writing, been placed on hold due to the Writers and Screen Actors Guild dual strikes).

Tom Cruise, as always, more than delivers the cinematic bang for our buck, literally risking life and limb to gift us with soaring, spectacular entertainment and doing so, his cast mates are all equally up to the task with their commitment to the enterprise as a whole. I love how after all of this time, Cruise has made Ethan Hunt a hero that we would follow upon any adventure, anywhere while also being largely a man of mystery as we still do not know terribly much about the man behind the secret agent, only learning tidbits about him (and his teammates) here and there with each film. This speaks volumes to the magnetism and intense commitment delivered by Tom Crise, an actor--despite one's feelings about him and his celebrity--is not an actor who cold ever be accused of "phoning it in." Tom Cruise, once again, is ALL IN!!

Back to the film at hand, in essence, "Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One" gives us a glimpse into the man Ethan Hunt quite possibly was before his time in the IMF, yet cleverly not through his character necessarily, but largely through the character of Grace and her character's arc throughout this film and Hayley Atwell is more than up to the challenge as her portrayal is as breezy as it is complex, always allowing us to lean in closer to garner her intentions as her motivations truly depend upon the situations she finds herself entangled. I like that even now,  am still wondering if "Grace" is even her character's real name and that gives her the precise sense of intrigue that makes her a perfect addition to this series. 

Ving Rhames (the only actor besides Cruise to have appeared in every film in the series) and Simon Pegg continue to be solid anchors to the film as well as Hunt's IMF team, functioning as the soul and the heart, respectively. Rebecca Ferguson remains as formidable as her previous two appearances. And I really loved how this film essentially circles back to, while also updating, the first film of the series with the return of Hunt's nemesis, IMF Director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), now the head of the CIA.

Honoring the past while pressing headlong into the future is a paramount theme for Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise's intentions and journey for the series, and for this film in particular. Certainly the past in regards to this series but most importantly, the past within the history of the action film itself. 

As with so many elements and full genres that have fallen by the wayside in current era of modern cinema, the art of the action sequence almost feels like something from a bygone period. Increasingly since the end of the 1990's and throughout the 00's, audiences have been subjected to have varied between Michael Bay mega excess and CGI bombast, where either a series of cameras are present to film the action from all manner of angles gathering information only to be "fixed" within editing without rhyme or reason, making for an experience where audiences are bludgeoned rather than exhilarated, and left with no real understanding of what makes an action sequence really pop. Yet, when the good ones come along, audiences just know the difference. 

Earlier this year, Chad Stahelski's "John Wick: Chapter 4," raised the bar so tremendously high for his own series as the action film genre itself so exceedingly high that he not only helmed the finest entry in the series by a wide mile, as well as one of the best films of 2023, this film is in a rarefied league of recent movie experiences where it can sit more than comfortably with the likes of George Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015), Edgar Wright's "Baby Driver" (2017) and it is definitely a cloze cousin with Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill Volume 1" (2003).  

Christopher McQuarrie's "Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One" exists in the exact same rarefied cinematic air as McQuarrie understands how to imagine and then stage, choreograph and execute his action sequences to ensure that we in the audience understand exactly why and where everything and everyone is in relation to each other in a physical space, while also dazzling us with the sheer physicality presented and how people and objects move through the frame. What we know about the characters and what is at stake regarding the story infuses the action sequences with purpose and not just noise and that, at its best, congeals into a visceral, white knuckle experience which McQuarrie delivers in spades! 

In doing so, I loved how McQuarrie and Cruise clearly looked backwards in film history for inspiration as the set pieces are clearly modern 21st century updates of what the likes of Buster Keaton originated. A ticking time bomb needs to be diffused through the series of agonizing riddles and psychological tests. A car chase in which two principals are oddly hand cuffed to each other. Spectacular fist fights and foot chases--again, no one in the film business runs like Tom Cruise! And then, there's the film's electrifying climax, which echoes the first film's ending set piece, is set aboard a speeding train, and that entire gravity defying section is worth the price of admission!!!

Christopher McQuarrie's "Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One" is a veritable master class in the action film/spy thriller genre and I deeply applaud is and Tom Cruise's unwavering commitment to delivering the absolute BEST that they could conceive of, especially in this time of over extended franchises, sequels, prequels, reboots and re-imaginings. The sheer effort is all over the screen and we respond in kind and should they continue to try and therefore, produce at this level, there is no reason for them to cease.

But then...Mr. Cruise, it's ok to call in a stunt man! 

ONE LAST TIME: a review of "Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny"

"INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY"
Based upon characters created by George Lucas
Screenplay Written by Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp and James Mangold
Executive Producers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas
Directed by James Mangold
*** (three stars)
RATED PG 13

I have always loved how George Lucas played with the concept of time within his stories. 

From the groundbreaking and now commonplace fractured multi-narrative, which took place over one night in his seminal "American Graffiti" (1973), to beginning his "Star Wars" saga with the middle trilogy of Episodes 4, 5, and 6 (1977/1980/1983), to even the "Indiana Jones" series, in which the first three films--all directed by Steven Spielberg-- performed their own bit of time hopping.

If you recall, the first film, "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" (1981) took place in 1936, while the second film "Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom" (1984) took place one year earlier in 1935, while the third film, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989), served as a direct sequel to the first, setting its story in 1938. To that end, this series jumped backwards to Indiana Jones' origins through George Lucas' television series "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" (1992-1993), in which we followed our hero via a dual narrative as a child and as a teenager. 

With this hopscotch narrative, Lucas, Spielberg and their collaborators were able to allow each adventure to inform what we had already learned and foreshadow what was to come without the constraints of a linear structure, which only added to the overall fun and deliberate mystery of piecing together the life of our favorite fictional swashbuckling archeologist.

By the arrival of Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (2008), we, and the good Dr. Jones, made a time jump to the late 1950's, affording all of us a chance to begin a time of reflection over all of the adventures and escapades once had and how those adventures shaped us while we wonder just how many more remain. 

With "Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny," we have essentially reached the end as this fifth and final entry in the series has arrived, with our hero nearing the age of 80! As directed by James Mangold, taking over for Spielberg, he brings the series to a robust close, filled with much the whiplash excitement that is the trademark, But, even better, Mangold brings a more than appropriate gravitas to the proceedings as Indiana Jones is indeed facing down his mortality, certainly and also his sense of relevance in the advancing age of world history, often leaving him feeling displaced in time. That being said, Mangold takes some huge conceptual swings that are not quite successful as they do feel to fly in the face of what the series has always been to a degree. In that respect, we have a finale that is strong but alas, not strong enough or the kind of triumphant ending a hero like Indiana Jones so richly deserves.

As with all of the previous entries, James Mangold's "Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny" begins at the climax of yet another perilous episode. Beginning in 1944 at the end of World War II, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is again battling the Nazis as he comes across one half of the Archimedes' Dial, an Antikythera mechanism believed to have been created by the ancient Syracusan mathematician Archimedes, which is further believed to locate fissures in time itself. Also in pursuit of the Dial is Nazi astrophysicist Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who believes that if he obtains the archeological treasure, that he will be able to manipulate time and alter the course of history. 

The chase continues as the story moves to 1969 and we find Dr. Jones upon his retirement from academia as well as caught within a state of despondency and alcoholism. He is surprisingly visited by his estranged goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), also an archeologist and in pursuit of the Dial, who enlists Jones into helping her find the artifact. Soon, they run afoul of Nazi turned NASA scientist Voller, now under the alias of "Dr. Schmidt," who is determined to find the Dial in order to alter history and change the outcome of World War II!!

Remembering back to the point when I saw "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull," and the unbridled anticipation I felt with being able to see a new Indiana Jones adventure 19 years after the previous installment, let alone one which I never figured would ever happen, I knew that I needed to slow down, breathe and lower any sense of expectations. For there was no way that any new film would perfectly echo the out of body sensation that was indeed "Raiders Of The Lost Ark." And for that matter, nothing would match the ferocious intensity of "Indiana Jones and the Temple Of  Doom" Essentially, whatever elements were at work that very first time were not in existence in the exact same way anymore. Anything made would be different, so just sit back and try to enjoy it for what it is...which I did, despite the vitriol surrounding the fourth installment since its release. 

I bring attention to this memory and self advice because entering James Mangold's "Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny," I had to temper any sense of expectations considerably. Truth be told, I was skeptical about the entire enterprise as this is the first Indiana Jones film to not be directed by Steven Spielberg or conceived by George Lucas (even though they both retain the Executive Producer screen credit). It, frankly, didn't seem to feel right to have anew film without either of the creators, in addition to knowing that whomever directed the film cold never make anything exactly like the first film again.

All of that being mulled over, James Mangold had indeed delivered a strong film overall, with an especially terrific first third, which finds a tonality the closest we have seen to the original film rather than the lighter, sillier third and fourth episodes. 

"Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny" has a grittier, more grounded cinematic footing, especially in that first third. Yes, the cliffhangers and escapes are as wild as ever but there feels to be truly something at stake rather than an experience that slides more to the cartoonish. There is a visceral force and speed to the action sequences, that also feel tangible towards Indy's advanced age and in doing so, Mangold has wisely made a film that is often as much about closing chapters and individual mortality as his excellent and brutally elegiac "Logan" (2017), which ended the saga of The Uncanny X-Men's Wolverine (that is until next year's "Deadpool 3"...but I digress).

Harrison Ford, who has obviously spent a portion within this late period of his career, revisiting his signature characters and seeing them to their conclusions, utilizes his specialized gravitas to tremendous effect. As always, there is no other individual who could ever don the fedora and the whip as masterfully as Ford and once again, he delivers the goods and then some, making for a character would follow to the ends of the earth as long as Ford portrayed him. It is a rich, fully realized performance that showcases the melancholy of aging and knowing explicitly that there is more life behind you than in front of you. I thoroughly loved the references given to all four previous films, some just momentary, others more seismic but each one places a spotlight on the amount and depth of life the character has experienced thus far as he engages in one more globetrotting escapade and Harrison Ford meets every moment beautifully, especially in the film's lovely final scenes. 

Another element I appreciated that makes "Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny" relevant rather than a relic is again having the Nazi party remain as antagonists. If our real world were any different than it is today in 2023, perhaps I would feel that the filmmakers were resting on their laurels with providing Indiana Jones with a worthy adversary but we are living in our increasingly uncertain times in which 21st century Nazis are openly marching, White supremacists are topical political figures and we are indeed still haggling with a sector of society unwilling to accept the empirical true outcome of the last Presidential election. This makes Jurgen Voller an up to the minute villain as his disciplined fury and relentless diligence with obtaining the Dial to rewrite history itself speaks to current threat merged with national anxiety. 

Even so, "Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny" is far from a home run. For the praise of the Jurgen Voller character as well as Mads Mikkelsen's performance, it does arrive with the caveat that it is also a decidedly underwritten character that places poor Mikkelsen within a film in which he has very little to actually do. Mads Mikkelsen is an intense figure who exudes screen presence and yet, over and again, I feel that he is shuffled off to the fringes rather than be allowed to take center stage. I just imagine what a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino would provide with this character as well as an actor, for you know Tarantino would jump at the chance to get Mikkelsen to be an adversary that we would actually worry if Indy would come out alive against.

Additionally, and while he definitely tries, James Mangold is not quite the master of pacing that Steven Spielberg is. It felt as if Mangold front loaded his film without thinking of how to spread the energy around and find spots to deliver that crucial ebb and flow that allows the film as a whole to ascend rather than tread water. While not bloated, the pacing just begins to feel sluggish just when it should be accelerating, and that did temper the film as a whole.

And then, there's the climax...

Now, I do not think that after over 30 years, it would necessarily be a spoiler to announce that I was actually not a fan of the climax contained within "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" in which Indy comes face to face with an over 700 year old flesh and blood King Richard. To me, that was more than too much for me to suspend my sense of disbelief. It just felt too over the line into the fantastical when the Ark of The Covenant and mystical voodoo felt to tread that tenuous line between archeological truths and the supernatural exceedingly well. To that end, even the interstellar reveals in the fourth film felt to be more tangible to me. 

While the titular object in "Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny" is a compelling one, it was the whole execution that just left me shaking my head. Trust me, I appreciate the huge swing for the fences and that Mangold and his team were unafraid to take their ideas to the wall. But, believe me, the climax is absolutely bonkers and felt to edge everything into something more akin to Taika Waititi's' "Thor: Ragnarok" (2017) than anything witnessed before in an Indiana Jones adventure. 

Still, I was entertained and often quite touched with witnessing the end of a cinematic journey that began when I was 12 years old in 1981. Time truly is an illusion as I remember that feeling of seeing Indiana Jones for the very first time so vividly and viscerally. Yet, maybe James Mangold's "Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny" is precisely what it needed to be because time marches on and none of us are getting any younger. 

DARE TO DREAM: a review of "Asteroid City"

"ASTEROID CITY"
Story by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
Screenplay Written by Wes Anderson
Directed by Wes Anderson
**** (four stars)
RATED PG 13

I have often expressed upon this blogsite that the actual creation of a motion picture of any quality  amounts to existing as a minor miracle. But, to truly create a movie that represents one's personal, singular vision over and again, and to such a repeatedly high standard and individualistic aesthetic, it is a feat that more then deserves to be cherished...whether it happens to be one's cinematic cup of tea or not.  

In the case of Writer/Director Wes Anderson, it is extremely rare to find a filmmaker of his longevity and status who has amassed a cinematic body of work whose overall quality remains uncommonly high. For nearly 30 years and now 11 films, Anderson's filmography contains not one clunker in the entire bunch. Certainly, there may be entries that I an enraptured by more than others but in totality, and like his cinematic contemporary Writer/Director Quentin Tarantino, who has amassed 9 films in roughly the same amount of time, Wes Anderson has created a true cinematic universe fueled by an uncompromising vision that is proudly idiosyncratic and wholly unique to any other filmmaker. His signature style of artificial environments that are unquestionably emotionally true to the human experience have kept me enthralled since "Rushmore" (1999), making every new film an event for me.

With our increasingly precarious film landscape, it remains a miracle even still that a filmmaker like Wes Anderson is a figure and artist able to continue to be able to create films on his own terms but to also have them released in theaters, no less and to critical and box office acclaim. With movies succumbing to homogenous franchises, Anderson's confections always arrive as the perfect blast of fresh cinematic air at the right time, and I am thrilled to announce that "Asteroid City," his latest, is not only no exception in the least, it is possibly his furthest reaching film to date.   

Set in the 1950's, Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" centers itself within the titular location, a desert town which contains a massive crater created by a fallen meteorite years earlier, and is also on the far outskirts of an army base performing atomic bomb tests.

As our story begins, the city is welcoming a group of Scientifically inclined teenagers for the Junior Stargazers awards ceremony. We meet awards recipient Woodrow Steenbeck (Jake Ryan), his three younger sisters and his Father, Augie (Jason Schwartzman), a war photojournalist mourning the death of his wife and who has been unable to tell the news to his children. Additionally, we meet awards recipient Dinah Campbell (Grace Edwards) and her Mother, Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), a wearying and famous Hollywood actress, and throughout, both teenagers and adults will gradually fall in love. 

A local motel provides lodgings for our cast who further incudes three more teenage honorees Ricky Cho (Ethan Josh Lee), Clifford Kellogg (Aristou Meehan), Shelley Bordon (Sophia Lillis) and their families; five star General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright), astronomer Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton), a busload of school children chaperoned by their teacher, June Douglas (Maya Hawke), a country western singing group led by Montana (Rupert Friend) and Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks), Augie's Father-In-Law and Woodrow's Grandfather who arrives in town to retrieve the Steenbeck sisters after the family car breaks down.

On the night during which the teenagers are scheduled to receive awards for their Scientific inventions, events unfold that ultimately threaten to upend the everyone's individualistic world views forever. 

Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City," as with all of his films, serves itself up to all of us as a sumptuous gift to be opened and savored. For my personal cinematic sensibilities, and especially so since "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014), Anderson's films have truly become an even greater pleasure to view and to even listen to as the motion picture landscape has become more homogenized, and his latest is no exception. In fact, there were points where I felt that I had to keep up with the luxurious dialogue which is presented with a clipped alacrity that invites you to lean in so as to not miss a word. Is this what years of Marvel/DC movies and CGI bombast have done to us as film viewers? Have we been conditioned to not hearing dialogue and monologues that are so clearly and beautifully composed? To seeing films where so much of the action is decidedly and defiantly in the performances and the language? Anderson delivers a story, filled with rich characters and dialogue that feels as if it was as equally meant to exist within novel form as much as the cinematic.

Speaking of the cinematic, Wes Anderson's visual aesthetic remains as peerless s ever and no matter how many of you feel that an AI program can replicate his style, trust me, there's nothing like the real thing and the legitimate human thought and attention that went into every single visual composition that could be suspended in a freeze frame to be studied due to its meticulous, luscious detail and care.

Anderson and his team, including Cinematographer Robert Yeoman and Composer Alexandre Desplat, have concocted another multi-layered audio/visual spectacle that celebrates the playful and pathos in equal delectable doses, making a true feast for the eyes that fills us with surprise, awe and wonder in ways that, once again, the Marvel/DC movies have all but bludgeoned out of the movies and our experiences with them, through sheer ubiquity. If you truly wish to see cinematic world building at a peak form, what Wes Anderson has conceived with "Asteroid City" is a true universe to lose yourself within,    

For his admirers and detractors, Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" firmly announces itself as the most Wes Anderson-ian entry in his entire oeuvre to date. While filled end to end with his trademark blend of whimsy, laugh out loud moments combined with honest existential angst, it is also a work that finds Anderson at his most inscrutable as he delivers a series of puzzle boxes or better yet, the experience is the cinematic equivalent of a Matryoshka doll. 

For all of the action and activity set inside of the film's titular city, it is all indeed a fabrication. Building greatly upon the Anderson conceit of presenting his story within the context of either a play as in the aforementioned "Rushmore," a novel as in "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001) or a series of magazine articles as depicted in "The French Dispatch" (2021), "Asteroid City" is a movie of a fictional television production presented by a nameless host (Bryan Cranston) of a famous fictional play written by famed and fictional playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) and directed by the controversial and still fictional Schubert Green (Adrian Brody). 

Nothing is real and yet, we still feel. Isn't that what the movies are all about? Movies as an art form are all confections and constructions, pieced together with all manner of tools, from the mechanical to the actors themselves and all originated from the ephemeral reaches of inspiration and dreams, to deliver an experience for you and I to hopefully have an emotional and intellectual response--essentially the mining of truth through the act of artifice.    

In essence, Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" is a story about storytelling, a movie about movies or furthermore, a Wes Anderson movie about Wes Anderson movies and why he makes his movies in the way that he chooses. In its own proudly unorthodox fashion, Wes Anderson has conceived of an experience that could be a cinematic cousin of works like Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood" (2019) or Steven Spielberg's fabulous "The Fabelmans" (2022). Yet, to me, this film felt akin to Martin Scorsese's deeply undervalued, gloriously magnificent "Hugo" (2011), a cornucopia of a fantasia that ultimately brought the viewer upon a journey into the vibrantly beating heart of hearts of Scorsese's life as a filmmaker, as far as I am concerned.  While Wes Anderson may never fully express the depth of his views and inspirations to us explicitly, "Asteroid City" gave me what I felt was the closest glimpse yet into what the movies and the creative act of movie making just may actually mean to him. 

There is a quotation from playwright/poet Bertold Brecht (1898-1956) that I have loved ever since I became acquainted with it: "Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it." Somehow, as I think of "Asteroid City," that quotation feels more than fitting. 

For all of the dollhouse designs of his films, Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" presents a catalyst in its story that sends essentially every character into some level of existential crisis, therefore, threatening to break apart the entire proceedings directly in front of our eyes. This film possesses Anderson's key themes of fractured families, precociously gifted children who become sad adults, emotional stagnation and arrested developments, loss, endings, mortality, grief and mourning, all congealing into his specialized brand of gentle yet potent melancholia. The trio of Steenbeck sisters parallel the three adult brothers of "The Darjeeling Limited" (2007). The teenage romance echoes the campground love of "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012). Every conceptual piece fits into its place perfectly within this film and therefore, this film with all of Anderson's past work. 

Furthermore, it is the film's sense of pristine order and how it is threatened that I felt revealed something about the possible purpose of Wes Anderson's films as a whole and how it is all illustrated within "Asteroid City": the theme of creating a world of such painstakingly diligent order within an unforgiving universe that by its very nature is chaotic...essentially to enact control when truthfully, none of us really possess it. And in that, there is the delicate balance and dichotomy that sits within the heart of Wes Anderson's existential comedy and crises throughout all of his films and especially within "Asteroid City."

We witness it over and again. The Scientific teenagers play intricate and endless memory games in which none of them could ever lose, thus illustrating the utter futility of the exercise. The quiet, genteel nature of the city itself juxtaposed with mushroom clouds looming with heavy menace in the background. The sense of inner tragedy with Augie capturing photographs of key moments to hold onto forever even as he mourns his wife. And then, of course, there is the film's main conceit of being a story within a story, a play within a television show, characters housed inside of actors being portrayed by real actors in a Wes Anderson movie. And like that Bertold Brecht quotation, the metaphorical hammer arrives and fully disrupts everyone's sense of purpose where the film's narrative is shaken up to an almost irreconcilable degree. 

In a sequence that doesn't feel to far removed from Writer/Director Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, N.Y.(2008), Margot Robbie appears late in the film and delivers a beautiful monologue that cuts straight through all of the mechanisms, weaving everything together w hie simultaneously breaking the word apart and the ultimate effect is stirring and undeniably moving as I felt it spoke directly to the nature of grief and loss. To that end, the characters all begin to chant the mantra of "You can't wake up if you don't go to sleep." And dear readers...what happens when we sleep?

If the movies are dreams or the product of dreams or both, then what we have with Wes Anderson is a front row seat into his idiosyncratic visions. I wrote in my review of "The Grand Budapest Hotel" that even after already having created films as wholly unique as "The Royal Tenenbaums," "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" (2004) and the stop motion animated "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009) to name a few, all of those films now feel to have been warm up exercises for what Wes Anderson could really do if he let his imagination run wild. From "The Grand Budapest Hotel" onwards, it feels as if we have been receiving Anderson's imagination completely unfiltered! 

Without Wes Anderson's ability to dream, we would not have his films at all--a sentiment that works for any artist of any type or any person of any vocation in life. His films are the result of his dream state in action. And when chaos inevitably occurs, threatening to unravel everything in its path, what to do?: Just keep placing one foot in front of the other and keep telling the story. Keep creating in order to just maybe make sense of what is ultimately impossible to make sense of. And we watch and respond for the same reasons, to try and understand what it means to be human, to be alive, to exist.

Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City," while maybe not his finest film to date, it is unquestionably a terrific one and after all of this time, I applaud him further for his unwavering desire to keep dreaming and reaching further as that train of life continues rolling along its tracks. It is a film I am excited to revisit as well as it makes me dream about what Wes Anderson could possibly create next.