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Asteroid City is Wes Anderson's biggest, boldest film to date. After sojourns in Zubrowka, Japan and France, the filmmaker returns to the US, assembling one of the year's most sparkling ensemble casts to deliver his own idiosyncratic take on science-fiction staples. These are wrapped up in his distinctive cinematic style – characterised by pronounced symmetry and bold colour palettes – and shot through with his unique sense of humour.

Forced by the Covid pandemic to build his new vision from scratch in the middle of the desert, Anderson's Asteroid City is his most beautifully constructed film yet, a gorgeous, immersive, indelible world that is easy to get lost in. In short, it's pure Wes but in epic mode. 

Stumbling into this momentous event in the history of space exploration is Augie Steenbeck, a newly widowed father played by Anderson fave Jason Schwartzman, and his children, whose car breaks down en route to visiting his father-in-law, played by Tom Hanks in his Anderson- verse debut.

They serve as a double layering of Anderson's well-trodden "bad dads" theme, with Augie yet to inform his children that their mother has died. And in the director's typical zero-degree black humour, they bury a Tupperware containing her ashes in a hole in the desert floor. 

Also stumbling into Asteroid City is Hollywood star Midge Campbell, marking the first time Scarlett Johansson's face has appeared in an Anderson film, following her vocal turn as Nutmeg in his stop-motion feature Isle Of Dogs. Augie and Midge bond as mutual outsiders, giving an external eye to the extra-terrestrial phenomena as they ponder matters of life, the universe and everything.

Their conversations are staged between the windows of their respective lodgings, immaculately framed in the style of iconic 1950s painters like Alex Colville and Edward Hopper. 

Asteroid City is shot on Kodak film with colour grading by Company 3, proudly displayed in the trailer to draw attention to the sunny aesthetic of the film crafted by Anderson's cinematographer Robert Yeoman.

These techniques create a sumptuous hue of azure sky and sandy landscape harking back to Anderson's last American picture, Moonrise Kingdom. The images look like retro postcards of the post-war era, announcing it as a perfect summer treat that demands to be seen on the big screen. 

Few directors have Anderson's masterful ability to coordinate such a galaxy of stars, and Asteroid City features the director's biggest, most stellar ensemble to date.

Alongside Schwartzman and Johansson, the eclectic cast ranges from regular players like Edward Norton, Adrien Brody and Tilda Swinton, to new famous faces like Margot Robbie, Hong Chau and Maya Hawke. It's a set of actors completely in sync with the director's unique comedic sensibility, meaning Asteroid City is as funny as it is visually striking. 

Then there's question of the cosmos itself. What appears the surface to be a light-hearted science-fiction comedy will no doubt probe more challenging questions about humanity's place in the universe, and American militarism in the era of the space race. It will also be a film about connection, echoing Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, in the post-pandemic world. As such, Asteroid City is Anderson working on his biggest canvas to date and the prospect is mouthwatering.    Lillian Crawford

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Asteroid City is in cinemas from 23 June — Book Now