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The Hindu
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
‘The Phoenician Scheme' movie review: Wes Anderson on autopilot
Wes Anderson has always made beautiful cinematic snow globes, immune to external messiness. Minutes into his latest (and perhaps most terminally fussy) confection, it's clear this isn't top-shelf Anderson. It might not even be bottom-shelf. It's as if he's shredded his greatest hits and glued them back together with unchecked indulgence. Set in a fictional 1950s Middle Eastern country that resembles a Suez-era Cairo, The Phoenician Scheme follows the billionaire arms dealer and infrastructure savior Anatole 'Zsa-Zsa' Korda (Benicio Del Toro) as he attempts to outmaneuver a death plot, reconcile with the nun-daughter he abandoned in a convent, and bankroll a mega-project across a desert. The plan involves dubious shoeboxes, various foreign dignitaries, and divine intervention. At one point, Bill Murray appears as God. It is not as delightful as it sounds. The Phoenician Scheme (English) Director: Wes Anderson Cast: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, and too many more of the 'Anderson Ensemble' to name Runtime: 105 minutes Storyline: A wealthy businessman appoints his only daughter as sole heir to his estate and embarks on an adventure to secure the future of his empire In theory, this angsty, Tintin-like adventure should be a riotous romp, but in practice, I found myself trapped for nearly two hours inside a ledger with fancy illustrations. There are pages upon pages of immaculately calligraphed industrial espionage and entomological trivia that's all underscored by a steady drip of aesthetic self-congratulation. Anderson's compositions have never been more elaborate, and that in itself is saying something. Each shot is like a diorama designed by an obsessive. We glimpse Renoir paintings, hand-drawn logbooks, fruit-themed grenades — everything, save for any semblance of emotional investment, is in perfect alignment. For all the ornamentation, The Phoenician Scheme is curiously barren. Del Toro's Korda is of mythic contradiction. He's a titan of industry, a crumbling patriarch, a possible murderer, and a man with nine adopted sons housed like rare collectibles in his palazzo. Del Toro plays him laconically, but it's far too taciturn a role to work. Newcomer Mia Threapleton, as Liesl, the nun-daughter dragged back into daddy's dealings, also attempts to inject vinegar into the script's saccharine rhythms, but their emotional arc falls frustratingly flat. The evergreen Michael Cera, however, is the unsurprising balm. As Bjorn, a soft-spoken Norwegian tutor-slash-secretary-slash-American spy-slash-exposition vehicle, Cera offers a twitchy earnestness and an adorable accent that cuts through the stylistic fog. The rest of the cast — Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mathieu Amalric — float in and out of the frames. What was once the charming idea of the 'Anderson Ensemble' has curdled into a parade of cameos, each trotting out banter like it's on a metronome. Pace is not the same as momentum, and quirk is not the same as character. These are truths Anderson seems increasingly unwilling, or unable, to accept. The Phoenician Scheme is not without its moments of wit, for it's hard to imagine any Anderson film entirely bereft of charm. But its pleasures are abstract and academic, the kind that encourages YouTube frame-freezing video essays and production design dissertations more than anything else. There are ghosts of better Anderson films haunting its hallways but none of them fully materialise. At its best, Anderson's cinema has always conjured the eccentricities and nostalgia of childhood recollected in tranquility. But The Phoenician Scheme feels nothing more than a proud auteur rifling through his own legacy in search of novelty. It's a 'monumental' work by Anderson, in the sense that it's a very, very boring edifice of lavish masonry. Its craftsmanship may impress on a second viewing, assuming you survive the first. Myself, I feel very safe. The Phoenician Scheme is currently running in theatres
Mint
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
What to watch this week: ‘28 Years Later', ‘The Phoenician Scheme' and more
With 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel, 28 Weeks Later (2007), director Danny Boyle introduced a simple but telling innovation: fast zombies. The cast of the new film includes Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer, and Jack O'Connell. (In theatres) A still from 'Elio'. Pixar will be hoping to make a splash with Elio, the story of a young boy who's beamed up into space and become Earth's emissary to other worlds. Directed by Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi and Adrian Molina. (In theatres) A still from 'The Phoenician Scheme'. Wes Anderson's latest is set in the 1950s and revolves around arms dealer Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), who's trying to get in the good graces of his estranged daughter, Sister Liesl (Mia Threapleton). The cast is eclectic: Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch. (In theatres) A still from 'Twin Peaks'.
Straits Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
In Wes Anderson's film The Phoenician Scheme, real masterpieces get a starring role
NEW YORK – At the end of Wes Anderson's new caper The Phoenician Scheme, there are some unusual credits. In addition to the cast and crew, the artworks featured in the film are listed, complete with ownership details. That is because the pieces on-screen are not reproductions. They are, in fact, the actual masterpieces from Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rene Magritte and other well-known artists. In the past, the 56-year-old American film-maker has faked a Kandinsky and a Klimt. Here, he went for the real thing. 'We have a character who's a collector, who's a possessor; he wants to own things. And we thought because it's sort of art and commerce mixed together this time, we should try to have the real thing,' Anderson said via a voice note. What he ended up with was impressive. The fictional collection of businessperson Zsa-zsa Korda (played by Benicio del Toro) includes Renoir's Enfant Assis En Robe Bleue, which was once owned by Hollywood icon and screen legend Greta Garbo, and Magritte's The Equator. There is also a selection of works from the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany that includes pieces from the 17th century. Getting a collector or an art institution to hand over a painting worth millions of dollars to a film production is not an easy task. The negotiations fell mostly to Mr Jasper Sharp, a curator who had worked with Anderson and his wife, Juman Malouf, on their 2018 exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria, where Mr Sharp is based. 'A film set has vast amounts of light, heat, no climate control, very lax security and people running everywhere with booms, lights and props,' Mr Sharp said in a video interview. 'The walls that (the paintings) will be hung on are made of plywood sometimes. There are less desirable places to hang art, but this was certainly a challenging environment in terms of me trying to persuade (people) that they maybe want to lend an object.' To offset concerns, the production hired a conservator and a registrar to be on set overseeing the paintings. There, in a darkened, fenced-off corner, a security guard watched over the pieces and made sure they would not be exposed to more light than necessary. 'I felt, to have any real conviction in being able to ask somebody to lend an object, we needed to have that sort of support network to assure them that the works would be handled exactly as if they were lending them to a museum,' said Mr Sharp, who explained that this network included insurers, art handlers and shipping services. Still, even with his connections, some of his initial outreach was met with 'howls' of laughter and hang-ups. His search was both creative and practical. After discussing with Anderson what would make sense for Zsa-zsa, a domineering man who prides himself on owning masterpieces, Mr Sharp contacted museums and collectors in the vicinity of the set at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, Germany. Mr Sharp considers the Old Master selections from the Kunsthalle more in the 'best supporting actor' category of the art in Zsa-zsa's abode compared with the Renoir or the Magritte, which draw your eye. Anderson said he thought Juriaen Jacobsz's 1678 painting of dogs fighting over meat was 'an encapsulation of part of what our story is about'. (The film is very much Anderson's exploration of capitalism.) But Zsa-zsa does not just collect classical still-life works and paintings of animals. Mr Sharp said he suggested to Anderson that perhaps the character owned some impressive art from the film's period setting – to show his keen sense of taste, specifically a work of surrealism. Mr Sharp reached out to collector Ulla Pietzsch, who had never heard of Anderson but was interested in the project. 'I wasn't surprised when Wes settled on Magritte,' Mr Sharp said. 'If you think about where Wes grew up in Houston, The Menil Collection has, if not the greatest collection of Magrittes in the US, very close to that. So, he has been looking at Magritte for a long time.' Mr Sharp noted that The Equator is not the most recognisable of Magrittes – there is no bowler hat – but it is enigmatic. Anderson, meanwhile, envisioned that a Renoir would hang in the bedroom of Zsa-zsa's daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton). Mr Sharp found one in the collection of Mr David Nahmad. 'I think it was maybe even in the script,' he said. Knowing that the elder Renoir painted his son Jean as a small child, 'somehow I thought Renoir might have painted somebody in this family, maybe Zsa-zsa'. The loans from Hamburger Kunsthalle remained on set for about a month, but the Magritte was in and out in a day, and the Renoir stayed just a night. Production designer Adam Stockhausen said in an e-mail that he and set decorator Anna Pinnock had full-sized mock-up prints made to roughly place the art and try multiple positions. 'Once Wes finalised the placements, the conservators brought in the art and we swopped with the mock-ups,' he said. Mr Sharp visited the set only once – the day the Renoir was present – but he said he felt the stars of the film were deferential to a portrait of Renoir's nephew that they were able to acquire on loan. This revealed itself in a conversation with Puerto Rican actor del Toro. 'He confessed it made him and everybody quite nervous to have this here, in a good way,' Mr Sharp said. Observing the dynamic between the stars and the star artwork gave Mr Sharp insight into the reasons Anderson had pursued the actual paintings. 'It changed the energy and atmosphere on set as it would do if you lived with an object like that,' he said. As soon as The Phoenician Scheme wrapped, Mr Sharp started to suspect that it would not be the last time he and Anderson embarked on a project of this nature. The film-maker, he said, agreed. 'It's really hard once you've done this for the first time to put it back in the bottle,' Mr Sharp said. NYTIMES The Phoenician Scheme is showing in Singapore cinemas. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Scarlett Johansson's Bold Red Carpet Choice Has Fans Exclaiming 'My God'
Scarlett Johansson's Bold Red Carpet Choice Has Fans Exclaiming 'My God' originally appeared on Parade. is turning heads with her latest bold and colorful red carpet appearance. At the New York City premiere of her latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, held at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Wednesday, May 28, the actress captivated attendees and fans with her striking fashion choice. For the event, the Black Widow star donned a bright, strapless tangerine/coral-colored gown designed by Saint Laurent, pulled together by her longtime stylist, Kate Young. Complimenting the vibrant pick, she accessorized with dazzling Tafin jewelry, adding a touch of elegance to the ultra-classy look. On social media, fans raved over the stunning display, taking to X (formerly Twitter) with their reactions. "Scarlett johansson, my god," one captioned a video clip of the Lucy actress. "Her beauty is intricately crafted," another responded in the comment thread of the post. Other enamored supporters called her a "goddess" and a "queen," with a separate person celebrated her by writing, "the woman that you are." Johansson, 40, was spotted at the function posing for photos alongside her film costars, Mia Threapleton, Benicio del Toro, Tom Hanks, Michael Cera, and Bryan Cranston, as well as director, Wes Anderson. The two-time Oscar nominee has just a small role as a character known only as "la cousine" (the cousin) in the espionage black comedy. As for the overall plot, the flick follows industrialist Anatoly "Zsa-Zsa" Korda (del Toro) as he navigates a series of assassination attempts and complex family dynamics, including appointing his daughter, Sister Liesel (Threapleton), as his successor, according to its synopsis. The Phoenician Scheme is set to release in limited theaters on May 30, 2025, before a wider release on June 6. Scarlett Johansson's Bold Red Carpet Choice Has Fans Exclaiming 'My God' first appeared on Parade on May 29, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on May 29, 2025, where it first appeared.
The Onion
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Onion
You Sure You're In The Mood For Another Wes Anderson Film With Everything That's Going On?
Hey, guys. It's me, acclaimed filmmaker Wes Anderson. I just finished my latest movie, The Phoenician Scheme, and it's going to be great. It's got everything—an ensemble cast of A-listers, set designs to die for, and a mid-century setting in exotic locales. But real quick, before I go ahead and release it, I wanted to ask, are you sure you're still in the mood for one of my movies? You know, with everything that's been going on lately? I just thought that maybe I should check in first. Because I would hate to release The Phoenician Scheme, my charming and absurdist black comedy caper, only for everyone to feel too weird to go see it—which, by the way, would totally make sense. I would feel weird if I were you. There's a lot on your plates at the moment. It's okay. You can be honest with me. If Benicio del Toro wearing a fez is too much for you to handle right now, you can tell me. But, I mean, hey, no judgment if you are in the mood to see it. Be my guest! If you're ready to show up to the theater May 30—given the state of the world—and say, 'One for The Phoenician Scheme, please,' all the more power to you. Maybe this 101-minute fanciful romp featuring Michael Cera as a private tutor who speaks in a Norwegian accent is exactly what you're looking for. It won't preserve habeas corpus or the First Amendment or civil rights. But it will make you think, 'Huh, is that an oud I'm hearing in this Kinks cover?' Oof. Things sure are bad. Thank God I moved to Paris 20 years ago! Just as a gut check, how about I list off some of the things you might see in my movie and you tell me if they're dealbreakers? Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston rattling off my signature droll dialogue—enticing or not? What about meticulously framed scenes that blend nostalgia and melancholy with just a dash of whimsy? And do you like the idea of Benedict Cumberbatch as a character with elaborate facial hair named Uncle Nubar? Or is that kind of a red flag? If you aren't really feeling another one of my films, just let me know. All I'm trying to do here is make sure this is what you genuinely want. Don't go just to make me happy. I'd have no problem sitting on the movie for a few years, if that's what you need. Maybe I could release The Phoenician Scheme in 2028, or 2030. But then again, who knows— maybe things will be much, much worse by then. Maybe this is your last chance to see my work before total economic and democratic collapse. Do you think there will be film festivals in the camps? Shoot. Now I wish I'd made a movie about a film festival in the camps. Don't freak out. I'm not saying things will get worse. I'm just saying they could. I'm trying to be empathetic, as an expat. Of course, here in France, there are plenty of problems too. Not sure what they are, though. I get my news from literary magazines. So, I don't know, what do you think? You want it? You want The Phoenician Scheme? Tilda Swinton isn't in this one, if that sways your mind one way or the other. But Jeffrey Wright is back. He wears a sea captain's hat and suspenders. Anyway, I have to go now. I'm riding my bicycle to the bakery. Just let me know by the end of Cannes. Au revoir.
