Splices: ‘Asteroid City,’ Camp Belcourt and a Jennifer Lawrence Sex Comedy

This week, Wes Anderson’s 11th feature, Asteroid City, opens at the Belcourt and AMC and Regal locations. With a script penned by Anderson and his frequent collaborator Roman Coppola, Asteroid is set in a fictitious desert town in 1955 and features a stacked ensemble cast, naturally — Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Steve Carell, Jeffrey Wright, and on and on. While we weren’t able to review that one in time for print, keep your eyes on nashvillescene.com for our thoughts. 

Meanwhile, Nashville’s beloved arthouse theater continues with its summertime Camp Belcourt series, which kicked off last week with Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. Still to come there are ’90s comedy romp Heavyweights (June 24-25), absolutely bonkers cult-classic ’80s slasher Sleepaway Camp (June 27), the wondrous Tennessee-shot Jim Varney vehicle Ernest Goes to Camp (July 1-2) and eminently quotable satirical comedy Wet Hot American Summer (July 4), itself largely inspired by Sleepaway Camp.

Coming-of-age sex comedy No Hard Feelings drops in the megaplexes Friday. That features Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence as a financially unstable Uber driver who gives a 19-year-old the girlfriend experience at the behest of his parents, agreeing to “date his brains out” (their words, not mine) in exchange for a Buick Regal. Not your speed? Also landing Friday is God Is a Bullet from writer-director Nick Cassavetes (yes, son of John). That action thriller features Jamie Foxx, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, January Jones and Andrew “Dice” Clay.

Still in theaters this week are a pair of superhero flicks — the surprisingly well-received The Flash and the unsurprisingly well-received Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the latter of which made $390 million globally in its opening weekend alone — as well as horror-comedy The Blackening. The Belcourt continues its run of the “achingly romantic” Past Lives, with documentary Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis — about iconic album-art designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell — showing twice on June 26.

Aside from the Camp Belcourt series, the Belcourt has a number of other repertory screenings lined up in the coming weeks, including Tron and Hackers as this weekend’s Midnight Movies (more on that in our Critics’ Picks), Jaws July 2-4 (also showing at Full Moon Cineplex in Hermitage June 30-July 1), and the always-excellent Queer Qlassics series — featuring To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, among other bangers — dropping in July. We at the Scene will wrap up our free annual Movies in the Park series with Lightyear on Thursday, and thanks to Fathom Events, fans of the worst films in history can look forward to a one-night-only showing of The Room June 27 at Regal locations.