Arrange everything on your desk at precise right angles, brush the lint out of your corduroy suit, and send a conciliatory telegram to your hard-smoking estranged father figure, because there’s a new Wes Anderson movie in theaters. The Phoenician Scheme features Benicio Del Toro and a supporting cast that mixes newcomers/relative newcomers to the Anderson canon (Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera) and returning American Empirical Pictures veterans (Bill Murray, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Tom Hanks.)
In honor of it being Wes Weekend once again, we’ve revisited and updated our definitive ranked list of Wes’s repeat collaborators—those good-luck-charm actors, like Murray, Wright, et al., who Anderson can’t seem to resist writing parts for in his films. It’s the only Hollywood power list where Seymour Cassel (RIP, king) outranks Tom Hanks (no offense to Tom, an actor who had the Wes-world X-gene all along, just like Cranston and Cera.)
Also revised and updated: Our (similarly definitive) ranked list of Anderson’s thirteen films (yes, we’re counting his Netflix Roald Dahl shorts, but we’re counting them as one movie); click through for a guaranteed argument-starter at your next dysfunctional-family gathering.
And if you’re just looking for a take on Phoenician Scheme itself, we’ve got a capsule version of Jesse Hassenger’s review right here—although you’ll have to click through to the full list to find out where it ranks against the all-timers. Cue Jesse:
“Wes Anderson is about the last prestige filmmaker anyone would expect to rip anything from the headlines, at least not headlines sourced from still-extant publications. Yet The Phoenician Scheme follows a wealthy man who lives in ridiculous opulence, may actually be cash poor, operates with the reckless bravado and self-interest of a self-styled dealmaker, and uses frivolous lawsuits as a major weapon to vanquish his enemies. He spends much of the movie pursuing a labyrinthine, interconnected development project in the fictionalized Middle Eastern country of Phoenicia that entails cajoling various other parties into paying more money, with the help of the daughter he has chosen as a favored heir.
Maybe this sounds familiar—but the film’s industrialist protagonist Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) is not a misguided attempt to make a whimsically likable rascal out of Donald Trump’s moral crimes, nor is Lisel (Mia Threapleton) precisely an Ivanka stand-in. He’s a caricature of an industrialist that becomes further softened and shaded as he grapples with the stark realities of death—cleverly and ironically portrayed through a series of black-and-white tableaux visions, arranged in Anderson’s customary fantastical-yet-stagy style. The Phoenician Scheme lacks the ensemble heft of Anderson’s best work (the bit parts are even bittier than usual) as well as the layered ingenuity of his layered later-period storytelling, but its mix of reality (a rich man who sometimes feels indestructible and therefore above any particular moral code) and fantasy (a rich man who may learn how to build things other than deals and bank accounts) is as potent as ever. Unlike Trump, Anderson knows his way around strong infrastructure, and the flawed humanity it supports.”
