150 Word Review: 'The Phoenician Scheme' (2025)
Help yourself to a hand grenade.
My favorite Wes Anderson movies feature melancholic endings that deepen his sometimes cartoonish, but always human, farces, such as The Grand Budapest Hotel or Asteroid City.
The final moments of The Phoenician Scheme were surprisingly touching, but I'm a sucker for people forced to change and change for the better. In this, his 13th feature, Anderson is in an adventurous mood and creates another distant, damaged father: Zsa-zsa Korda, a battering-ram of a businessman with enemies galore. The title scheme sees Korda zipping around a fictitious Middle-Eastern-esque country, demanding and/or cajoling investments from an assortment of rivals and allies, all played by Anderson favorites like Jeffrey Wright and Scarlett Johansson.
Korda's real mission, though, is patching things up with his estranged daughter, an aspiring nun. Mia Threapleton is the nun, and she's wonderfully stoic. This is Michael Cera's first film with Wes Anderson, and here's hoping for many more.
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Fine list. There are no wrong answers on something like this, although my list would look somewhat different (Rushmore higher). One correction: unless I'm misremembering, I don't believe Jeff Goldblum was in The Royal Tenenbaums.
Cannot wait to see it! Great review—I had felt very lonely in my love for Asteroid City!