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.

Jenna gets into her favorites of 2023, a year of existential dread, rude awakenings, crushing loneliness, painful anxiety, and meditations on empathy.

Back Row is five years old and ready to star in its own version of Kindergarten Cop! Check out our best lists, podcasts and articles from the past year you may have missed.

For the first time in ages, Jenna found there was just so many movies to like from 2021 that she had to actively find reasons to not include some of her favorites of the year. Long live 2021! (Well, for movies only, it was kinda shitty otherwise.)

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.