Asteroid CityMovies like Asteroid City
- Key Features:
- Science fiction, 1950s setting, Small town, Existentialism, Alien encounter, Play within a movie, Grief, Family dynamics, Coming-of-age, Nostalgia, Space exploration, Cerebral, Director-driven
- Tone:
- whimsical, poetic, stylized
- Target Audience:
- Art house cinema enthusiasts, Fans of Wes Anderson, Viewers interested in science fiction, Those who appreciate stylized films
- Emotional Arc:
- Curiosity → Confusion → Reflection
Asteroid City

In an American desert town circa 1955, the itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.
Asteroid City
As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.

A stranger stumbles into the desert town of Absolution with no memory of his past and a futuristic shackle around his wrist. With the help of mysterious beauty Ella and the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde, he finds himself leading an unlikely posse of cowboys, outlaws, and Apache warriors against a common enemy from beyond this world in an epic showdown for survival.

A radio astronomer receives the first extraterrestrial radio signal ever picked up on Earth. As the world powers scramble to decipher the message and decide upon a course of action, she must make some difficult decisions between her beliefs, the truth, and reality.

A flying saucer lands in the backyard of an elderly suburbanite with memory problems, who forms a bond with the scared alien inside.

A young boy whose parents just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic, war veteran who lives next door.

After the death of his father, a boy growing up on a lunar mining colony takes a trip to explore a legendary crater, along with his four best friends, prior to being permanently relocated to another planet.

On one random day in the San Fernando Valley, a dying father, a young wife, a male caretaker, a famous lost son, a police officer in love, a boy genius, an ex-boy genius, a game show host and an estranged daughter will each become part of a dazzling multiplicity of plots, but one story.

When an alien takes the form of a young widow's husband and asks her to drive him from Wisconsin to Arizona, the government tries to stop them.

In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.

In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.

After escaping unscathed from a car accident, photo model Simone decides that having a baby is the only way to give her vacant life some meaning. She asks her best friend Philippe to get her pregnant, and he reluctantly agrees, on the condition that they conceive somewhere in a desert, so they leave Montréal on a 24-hour round-trip to Salt Lake City to find a suitable spot.

A young filmmaker in 1960s Paris juggles directing a cheesy sci-fi debacle, directing his own personal art film, coping with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, and a new-found infatuation with the sci-fi film's starlet.

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.

The story of a young man who arrives in Hollywood during the 1930s hoping to work in the film industry, falls in love, and finds himself swept up in the vibrant café society that defined the spirit of the age.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

A crew of miniature aliens operate a spaceship that has a human form. While trying to save their planet, the aliens encounter a new problem, as their ship becomes smitten with an Earth woman.

The staff of an American magazine based in France puts out its last issue, with stories featuring an artist sentenced to life imprisonment, student riots, and a kidnapping resolved by a chef.

Six months into a solo mission, a lonely astronaut confronts the cracks in his marriage with help from a mysterious creature he discovers on his ship.

An alien narrates the story of his dying planet, his and his people's visitations to Earth and Earth's self-made demise, while human astronauts in space are attempting to find an alternate planet for surviving humans to live on.

When the host of a failing children’s science show tries to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut by building a rocket ship in his garage, a series of bizarre events occur that cause him to question his own reality.

When Earth astronaut Capt. Chuck Baker arrives on Planet 51 -- a world reminiscent of American suburbia circa 1950 -- he tries to avoid capture, recover his spaceship and make it home safely, all with the help of an empathetic little green being.

When single mom Callie and her two kids Trevor and Phoebe arrive in a small Oklahoma town, they begin to discover their connection to the original Ghostbusters and the secret legacy their grandfather left behind.

A global scientific summit debates and fails on a plan to stop a massive asteroid heading straight for Earth, with all countries blaming each other for the impeding disaster. With communications tense, the daughter of a tech billionaire assembles her own team of specialists to try to destroy the asteroid before it is too late.

The prospects for continuing life on Earth in the year 2058 are grim. So the Robinsons are launched into space to colonize Alpha Prime, the only other inhabitable planet in the galaxy. But when a stowaway sabotages the mission, the Robinsons find themselves hurtling through uncharted space.

In a soon to be demolished block of apartments, the residents resist the criminal methods used to force them to leave so a greedy tycoon can build his new skyscraper. When tiny mechanical aliens land for a recharge, they decide to stay and help out.

Mere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher penning a new edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

A business mogul runs into his old small town girlfriend while she is visiting the big city only to find out that they had a child together that he was unaware of.

Middle schooler Ben spends his free time watching sci-fi films, playing video games and reading comic books. Surprisingly, his affinity for all things fantastical yields a real result – when he has a vivid dream about technology, his prodigy best friend Wolfgang manages to create a working spacecraft. Joined by their buddy Darren, the boys take off into outer space and encounter some very odd extraterrestrial life.

An interstellar teleportation device, found in Egypt, leads to a planet with humans resembling ancient Egyptians who worship the god Ra.

Al McCord is hanging out at his favourite restaurant when he meets an attractive young woman (Ellie) who is looking for a ride from the city out into the Mojave Desert, where her mother lives. Little does he know that while Ellie is falling in love with him, he is falling for her mother (Julie), despite the nearby presence of Julie's boyfriend who seems likely to go berzerk at any moment. Even more strange, hilarious events follow and it's up to Al to find some explanation. His life may never again be the same.

Tragedy strikes a married couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert, which jumpstarts an interlocking story involving four different families.

Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.

When carefree Nyles and reluctant maid of honor Sarah have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, things get complicated when they find themselves unable to escape the venue, themselves, or each other.

A young humanoid alien who gets stranded on earth hooks up with a grizzled old sheriff in a western town and tries to help him solve a tough case, but the sheriff doesn't want any help from a "kid."

A space-obsessed man gets the opportunity of a lifetime thanks to a Mars colonization program but finds his plans compromised by his feelings for a woman who brings him down to Earth.

When strange lights descend on the city of Los Angeles, people are drawn outside like moths to a flame where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population off the face of the Earth. Now the band of survivors must fight for their lives as the world unravels around them.

Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.

Four everyday suburban guys come together as an excuse to escape their humdrum lives one night a week. But when they accidentally discover that their town has become overrun with aliens posing as ordinary suburbanites, they have no choice but to save their neighborhood – and the world – from total extermination.

Follows the journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters that inhabit his off-the-map desert town. He finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration.

Bonded in their youth and separated by tragedy, an astronaut and a free diver bend the laws of space and time in their efforts to be together again.

Carnivorous aliens arrive unannounced at a Kansas family farm; two intergalactic bounty hunters soon follow, determined to blow them off the planet.

While planet Earth poises on the brink of nuclear self-destruction, a team of Russian and American scientists aboard the Leonov hurtles to a rendezvous with the still-orbiting Discovery spacecraft and its sole known survivor, the homicidal computer HAL.

An elite trio of astronauts aboard a years-long, possibly compromised mission to Saturn's moon Titan, gears up for a highly dangerous slingshot manoeuvre that will either catapult them to Titan or into deep space.

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

A group of families on a tropical holiday discover that the secluded beach where they are staying is somehow causing them to age rapidly – reducing their entire lives into a single day.

Life for a happy couple is turned upside down after their young son dies in an accident.

Various citizens of Toronto anxiously await the end of the world, which is occurring at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day.

Set in the futuristic Metro City, Astro Boy (Atom) is a young robot with incredible powers created by a brilliant scientist in the image of the son he had lost. Unable to fulfill his creator's expectations, Astro embarks on a journey in search of acceptance, experiencing betrayal and a netherworld of robot gladiators, before returning to save Metro City and reconcile with the father who rejected him.

The near future, a time when both hope and hardships drive humanity to look to the stars and beyond. While a mysterious phenomenon menaces to destroy life on planet Earth, astronaut Roy McBride undertakes a mission across the immensity of space and its many perils to uncover the truth about a lost expedition that decades before boldly faced emptiness and silence in search of the unknown.

The fate of the galaxy rests in the hands of bitter rivals. One, James Kirk, is a delinquent, thrill-seeking Iowa farm boy. The other, Spock, a Vulcan, was raised in a logic-based society that rejects all emotion. As fiery instinct clashes with calm reason, their unlikely but powerful partnership is the only thing capable of leading their crew through unimaginable danger, boldly going where no one has gone before. The human adventure has begun again.

When her archaeologist father disappears on an expedition, Wanda sets out to look for him. What she finds is a secret underground world, where no one believes in life on the surface and where she and her father are taken for spies.

The relationship between Ed, a married astronomer and Amy, his lover, who spend their years apart, is based only on phone calls and texts. One day Amy begins noticing something strange in Ed's messages.

When architect-turned-recluse Bernadette Fox goes missing prior to a family trip to Antarctica, her 15-year-old daughter, Bee, goes on a quest with Bernadette's husband to find her.

Reclusive author Loretta Sage writes about exotic places in her popular adventure novels that feature a handsome cover model named Alan. While on tour promoting her new book with Alan, Loretta gets kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire who hopes she can lead him to the ancient city's lost treasure that featured in her latest story. Alan, determined to prove he can be a hero in real life and not just on the pages of her books, sets off to rescue her.

A father and his daughter struggle to survive in deep space where they live in isolation.

Author and amateur astronomer John Putnam and schoolteacher Ellen Fields witness an enormous meteorite come down near a small town in Arizona. Putnam becomes a local object of scorn when, after examining the object up close, he announces that it is a spacecraft, and that it is inhabited...

Two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love.

Following an accident, an Engineer of an asteroid mining company endures the extreme limits – both physical and psychological – of human survival, trapped inside an escape pod as he helplessly idles towards the Sun.

A suicidal artist goes into the desert, where he finds his doppelgänger, a homicidal drifter.

During a Space Shuttle mission a satellite rams a unidentified flying object. The UFO afterwards performs an emergency landing in the deserts of Arizona. However the White House denies its existence because of the near presidential elections. The UFO is brought to the secret Hangar 18 and the accident is blamed on the incompetence of the astronauts Bancroff and Price. But the two fight against this and try to hunt down the UFO.

A divorced writer from the Midwest returns to her hometown to reconnect with an old flame, who's now married with a family.

Following a bomb scare in the 1960s that locked the Webers into their bomb shelter for 35 years, Adam now ventures forth into Los Angeles to obtain food and supplies for his family, and a non-mutant wife for himself.

Writer Paul Benjamin is nearly hit by a bus when he leaves Auggie Wren's smoke shop. Stranger Rashid Cole saves his life, and soon middle-aged Paul tells homeless Rashid that he wouldn't mind a short-term housemate. Still grieving over his wife's murder, Paul is moved by both Rashid's quest to reconnect with his father and Auggie's discovery that a woman who might be his daughter is about to give birth.

Women enter and exit a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years after the author loses the woman he considers his one true love.

A lone scientist in the Arctic races to contact a crew of astronauts returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe.

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a patient named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

A mind-bending love story following Greg who, after recently being divorced and then fired, meets the mysterious Isabel, a woman living on the streets and convinced that the polluted, broken world around them is just a computer simulation. Doubtful at first, Greg eventually discovers there may be some truth to Isabel’s wild conspiracy.

A widowed mother and her son change when a mysterious stranger enters their lives.

Set in 1959, Diner shows how five young men resist their adulthood and seek refuge in their beloved Diner. The mundane, childish, and titillating details of their lives are shared. But the golden moments pass, and the men shoulder their responsibilities, leaving the Diner behind.

Over the course of several years beginning in the 1950s, a man and his oddball family run hotels in New England and Vienna, as unexpected events change their lives forever.

A young man turns from drug addiction and petty crime to a life redeemed by a discovery of compassion.

Ed Hemsler spends his life preparing for a disaster that may never come. Ronnie Meisner spends her life shopping for things she may never use. In a small town somewhere in America, these two people will try to find love while trying not to get lost in each other’s stuff.

Dispatched from his basement room on an errand for his mother, slacker Jeff might discover his destiny (finally) when he spends the day with his brother as he tracks his possibly adulterous wife.

When a rare phenomenon gives police officer John Sullivan the chance to speak to his father, 30 years in the past, he takes the opportunity to prevent his dad's tragic death. After his actions inadvertently give rise to a series of brutal murders he and his father must find a way to fix the consequences of altering time.

Newly single, 35, and uninspired by his job, Jesse Fisher worries that his best days are behind him. But no matter how much he buries his head in a book, life keeps pulling Jesse back. When his favorite college professor invites him to campus to speak at his retirement dinner, Jesse jumps at the chance.

2038: George Almore is working on a true human-equivalent AI, and his latest prototype is almost ready. This sensitive phase is also the riskiest as he has a goal that must be hidden at all costs—being reunited with his dead wife.

12-year-old David is accidentally knocked out in the forest near his home, but when he awakens eight years have passed. His family is overjoyed to have him back, but is just as perplexed as he is that he hasn't aged. When a NASA scientist discovers a UFO nearby, David gets the chance to unravel the mystery and recover the life he lost.

When an asteroid threatens to collide with Earth, NASA honcho Dan Truman determines the only way to stop it is to drill into its surface and detonate a nuclear bomb. This leads him to renowned driller Harry Stamper, who agrees to helm the dangerous space mission provided he can bring along his own hotshot crew. Among them is the cocksure A.J. who Harry thinks isn't good enough for his daughter, until the mission proves otherwise.

A man narrates stories of his life as a 10-year-old boy in 1969 Houston, weaving tales of nostalgia with a fantastical account of a journey to the moon.

Good-hearted teenager William always lived in hope of following in his late father’s footsteps and becoming a storm chaser. His father’s legacy has now been turned into a storm-chasing tourist business, managed by the greedy and reckless Zane Rogers, who is now using William as the main attraction to lead a group of unsuspecting adventurers deep into the eye of the most dangerous supercell ever seen.

Three magazine employees head out on an assignment to interview a guy who placed a classified ad seeking a companion for time travel.

Since losing her husband, Sophie has struggled to manage grief, a full-time job, and parenting her devastated daughter, but when a former physicist reveals a secret time-bending machine, Sophie will be faced with an impossible choice.

Set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles on July 4, 2008, as it stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Boxer Santaros is an action star who's stricken with amnesia. His life intertwines with Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project, and Ronald Taverner, a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.

A small town girl and a city boy meet on the Sunset Strip, while pursuing their Hollywood dreams.

Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.

A international science conference is held in Australia when Dr. Austin Shepard mysteriously disappears. Dr. Shepard's colleague, Christopher Richardson and other people are soon faced with the reality of an impending crisis and an attempt to keep the information from the public. While a full-blown supernova does not occur, explosions on the sun cause massive damage in Australia, and is shown often in Sydney and in various other cities and countries of the world.

After 6 years together, Mike's girlfriend leaves him, so he travels to LA to be a star. Six months on, he's still not doing very well— so a few of his friends try to reconnect him to the social scene and hopefully help him forget his failed relationship.

For the past 60 years, a space-traveling smart-ass named Paul has been locked up in a top-secret military base, advising world leaders about his kind. But when he worries he’s outlived his usefulness and the dissection table is drawing uncomfortably close, Paul escapes on the first RV that passes by his compound in Area 51. Fortunately, it contains the two earthlings who are most likely to rescue and harbor an alien on the run.

A father and daughter journey from Denmark to an unknown desert that exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilization.

A lone drifter stumbles upon a unique pair of sunglasses that reveal aliens are systematically gaining control of the Earth by masquerading as humans and lulling the public into submission.

Deep in the desert, a rural American family is forced to endure a night of inter-dimensional, extra terrestrial terror when a UFO appears over their home.

In the near future, due to a breakthrough scientific discovery by Dr. Thomas Harbor, there is now definitive proof of an afterlife. While countless people have chosen suicide to reset their existence, others try to decide what it all means. Among them is Dr. Harbor's son Will, who has arrived at his father's isolated compound with a mysterious young woman named Isla. There, they discover the strange acolytes who help Dr. Harbor with his experiments.

A single mother and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in this off-beat dramatic comedy. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school the mom starts an unusual business – a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service.

When Champion City's hero Captain Amazing is kidnapped by the recently paroled supervillain Casanova Frankenstein, a trio of average, everyday superheroes -- Mr. Furious, the Shoveler and the Blue Raja -- assemble a new super team to save him.

Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos.

Retreating from life after a tragedy, a man questions the universe by writing to Love, Time and Death. Receiving unexpected answers, he begins to see how these things interlock and how even loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty.

In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.


