AwardsWatch Podcast #189: Reviewing 'Asteroid City' and our Top 5 Wes Anderson films

On episode 189 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, AwardsWatch Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by Editor-In-Chief Erik Anderson and AwardsWatch contributors Dan Bayer and Zach Laws to discuss Wes Anderson’s latest film, Asteroid City, and then talk about the director’s top 5 films of his career so far.

Before the group go down the Wes Anderson rabbit hole, with June coming to a close, it was time to give another update in the AW Summer Movie Draft. While Team Ryan still holds the lead over Team Erik, it is all going to come down to a busy July and August at the movies to decide the winner. What can be seen though are some interesting domestic and international trends that could benefit or fail both teams going down the wire. Should lead to an exciting finish.

Moving on to the main portion of the show, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City hit theaters wide this past weekend and has garnered critical and commercial acclaim yet again for the highly celebrated career of the talented writer-director. In our review out of Cannes from earlier this year, our writer Ben Rolph called the film “a wonderfully rousing and whimsical ride of idiosyncrasies,” and our podcast team couldn’t agree more, proclaiming one of the best films of the year so far. After talking about Asteroid City, they then broke down Anderson’s filmography by giving out their picks for their top five Wes Anderson films, which included Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Rushmore, and more. You can also read Zach's piece ranking all 11 Wes Anderson films, Everything in its right place: Ranking the films of Wes Anderson from ‘Bottle Rocket’ to ‘Asteroid City’.

You can listen to The AwardsWatch Podcast wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and more.

This podcast runs 2h14m. We will be back next week to review Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and talk about our favorite films of 2023 so far. Till then, let’s get into it.

Music: “Modern Fashion” from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).