Wes Anderson is one of the most consistent directors of his generation — you know what to expect from each of his pictures, and they are all more or less pretty good. But he knocked it out of the park with Asteroid City, a loopy, Looney Tunes-inspired comedy that sneakily transforms into a moving meditation on art and the universal human need to tell stories. 

At a young astronomers’ convention in the titular desert city, a UFO suddenly appears and takes a meteorite from a crater in the town’s center. This amazing extraterrestrial first contact makes national news, resulting in a cadre of assorted reporters, scientists and religious groups to visit the city to see if the UFO will return. In the middle of all this chaos, a recently widowed father, Woodrow (Jason Schwartzman), struggles to reconcile his still lingering grief with a blossoming romance with famous film actress Midge (Scarlett Johansson). 

That’s the basic plot of Asteroid City, but there’s so much more going on, like a framing device that makes everything you’re watching an elaborate play that’s also being filmed as a television documentary. Confused? Well, that’s only natural, but it’s also what makes Asteroid City so effective, moving — and strikingly different from the director’s previous works. With a cast that includes Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody and Margot Robbie, the movie is packed with enough starpower to keep you engaged, even when you get a little lost in its surreal story.