If we peel back all of the layers of Asteroid City we discover the paradox of the director – specifically, how one can truthfully portray the chaos of the world while still working within film, a medium that itself calls for tight control and planning at every step.

Practically all of the jokes in The French Dispatch exist on a sort of intellectually tickling plane that are amusing when you think about them after the fact but not exactly hilarious to behold. It’s Wes Anderson’s at his most irreverent without ever being laugh-out-loud funny. You know, just like a New Yorker cartoon.