Does ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ Have What We’re Looking For?

May 27, 2025

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A couple of schemeers (Credit: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.)

Starring: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Bill Murray, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham

Director: Wes Anderson

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Gunshots, Plane Crashes, and Mid-century Tobacco

Release Date: May 30, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: It’s 1950, and businessman Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) is at an impasse. He’s trying to complete a major infrastructure project, but he finds himself the victim of several assassination attempts and a consortium of rival tycoons trying to box him out from all of his moneymaking endeavors. Sensing that his demise may be imminent, he summons his nun-in-training daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) from the convent to inform her that he’s making her his sole heir. Then the two of them journey off along with his sons’ tutor Bjørn (Michael Cera) to close the funding gap for his project and maybe also discover who killed Liesl’s mother years ago.

What Made an Impression?: Is Redemption Possible?: Zsa-zsa is introduced as a ruthless capitalist who pretty much deserves to be assassinated. He might have even also killed Liesl’s mom! But does this rapscallion have the capacity for change? I must say, it’s hard not to notice some softening. Maybe it’s the visions of pearly gates, maybe it’s Liesl’s pious but nonjudgmental influence, but somehow someway he’s inching towards respectability. By the end, there are still plenty of grievous missteps on his ledger that he must accept responsibility for, but I mostly bought the redemption.
They Shoot, They Score!: My favorite scene in The Phoenician Scheme features Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as a pair of brothers playing basketball against Zsa-zsa and Riz Ahmed’s prince character. They call it 2-on-2, first-to-5, but it’s really a round of H-O-R-S-E. But who cares about technicalities when H&C relish tossing the rock this much? They might be AARP-eligible, but they’re looking more athletic than they ever have.
Silly Voices and Such: I’m not a super-fan of Wes Anderson, but I enjoy him well enough to consistently appreciate his fastidious eye for detail and ability to ground over-the-top fashion and quirky architecture. That works best in this feature in terms of the ridiculous accents that are occasionally revealed as put-ons for outlandishly simple disguises.* I chuckled heartily. (*Richard Ayoade, in contrast, deploys what I believe is his adorably natural voice as a communist revolutionary.)
A Star Takes Her Vows: Del Toro may be Number 1 on the call sheet, but I suspect that Threapleton will be enjoying the majority of the buzz. She’s the daughter of Kate Winslet and Jim Threapleton, so gird yourself if you have an aversion to nepo babies. But regardless of her heritage, she sets herself apart as a unique screen presence as she pulls off the neat trick of making us fall in love with a bride of Christ. Or maybe that’s actually the easiest task in the world, because of the taboo aspect of it all. Either way, she nails it.

The Phoenician Scheme is Recommended If You: Have an Endless Wes Andersonian Appetite, Forever and Ever, Amen

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Hand Grenades

Movie Review: In ‘The Hidden World,’ The ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Franchise is Not Particularly Fresh, But the Animation is as Beautiful as Ever

February 20, 2019

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CREDIT: DreamWorks Animation

Starring: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, F. Murray Abraham, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kristen Wiig, Kit Harington, David Tennant

Director: Dean DeBlois

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rating: PG for High-Flying Fantasy Danger

Release Date: February 22, 2019

I do not remember a whole lot about the first two How to Train Your Dragon films other than the fact that I generally enjoyed them. The first one was among the initial wave of expansive 3D animated blockbusters. But nine years later, studios hardly ever bother to even screen their films in 3D, and I almost never seek the extra dimension out myself. But the CG animation is still of the utmost quality. Hair blows delightfully in the wind, and from what I have heard from the trenches of animation, realistic hair movement has been one of the biggest bugaboos in this medium. And this is a franchise about dragons, which don’t have a lot of hair! So the fact that the HTTYD team cares that much about rendering its human characters as well as its fantastical creatures should tell you all you need to know about the level of craft at play.

The Hidden World, the third in the series, finds Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his trusty dragon Toothless realizing that they are running out of room on their little island for all the humans and dragons to fruitfully co-exist. Meanwhile, an infamous dragon hunter named Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham) has declared he has his sights set on Toothless and all the other domesticated fire-breathers. There are admirable messages here about looking past surface differences and treating nature with respect, but there is also a bit of a sense of same-old, same-old. At this point, shouldn’t everyone know that these dragons are as loyal and affectionate as dogs? But while the story may be a little pedestrian, the animation continues to stun. Toothless develops himself a bit of a crush, and let’s just say, the dragon seduction dance is a (family-friendly) sight to behold.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is Recommended If You Like: The Most Thorough Animation in the Business

Grade: 3 out of 5 Night Furies

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Isle of Dogs’ is an Adorable Allegorical Adventure About the Dangers of Fascism

March 20, 2018

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CREDIT: Fox Searchlight Pictures

This review was originally published on News Cult in March 2018.

Starring: Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Kunichi Nomura, Akira Takayama, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Akira Ito, Scarlett Johansson, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Yoko Ono, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe, Mari Natsuki, Fisher Stevens, Nijiro Murakami, Liev Schreiber, Courtney B. Vance

Director: Wes Anderson

Running Time: 101 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Dog-on-Dog Violence and Dictatorial Tendencies

Release Date: March 23, 2018 (Limited)

“Whatever happened to man’s best friend?” Nothing, right? We human beings still love dogs, and that cannot possibly ever change! But what if something so terrible happened that it could make us turn on them? One of the functions of fiction is training ourselves to handle horrible hypotheticals. Thus, with the stop-motion animated Isle of Dogs, Wes Anderson has delivered an invaluable how-to guide for if the world should ever turn so severely on our furry companions.

Twenty years in the future, Japan has banished its entire canine population to the bluntly literally named Trash Island, due to a widespread outbreak of snout fever and dog flu. The two conditions appear to be connected as how HIV can lead to AIDS. In this dystopia, the fear from those in charge that the disease could spread to humans is enough to override any bounty of puppy love, despite promising progress for a cure. So intrepid folks must step up on their own to save the dogs, like the young boy Atari (Koyu Rankin), an orphaned ward of the state adopted by his distant uncle, Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura). Atari ventures to Trash Island to save his canine protector Spots (Liev Schreiber), who also happens to be the outbreak’s Dog Zero. Joining up with him in his quest are a group of other cast-off dogs with variations on the same sort of name – Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Boss (Bill Murray), and Duke (Jeff Goldblum) – as well as Chief (Bryan Cranston), the fiercely independent stray who has always lived on his own.

An island entirely populated by dogs might sound like the pinnacle of Wes Anderson giving into his most indulgent instincts, but the darkness of the premise is enough to assuage any of those concerns. Plus, the animation does not hold back from the more aesthetically displeasing elements. These pups are mangy, with fur falling off and distorted pupils. They are also fairly irritable; one early standoff results in an ear getting bit off. Isle of Dogs works as an adventure film as well as it does because it does not back away from the danger, while still bringing plenty of fun to that peril. Fight scenes are portrayed in cartoon chaos clouds, while an accidental trip through a trash incinerator is met with droll acceptance. The set pieces are whimsical, but the stakes are life-or-death.

Isle of Dogs could easily be appreciated just for its surface level sensations, but like so many talking animal flicks, there is an allegory lurking not too far below. And considering current worldwide political trends, Wes Anderson’s anti-fascist storytelling is profoundly welcome. Quarantining a contagious population is an understandable disease control tactic, but what happens to these dogs is more banishment than quarantine. And when a solution appears to be possible, Mayor Kobayashi hides that development for the sake of retaining power, trotting out clearly fraudulent election results in the process. BoJack Horseman-style anthropomorphic dogspeak (“my brother from another litter”) helps it go down easy, but these are heavy ideas that deserve and are granted careful consideration.

A few more items worth noting: even though the setting is Japan, the dogs just about exclusively speak English, even when communicating with humans speaking Japanese. In fact, there is a good deal of American and Japanese cultural mixing. All the political machinations are translated by an interpreter (Frances McDormand), apparently for American and other English-speaking audiences, and an American exchange student (Greta Gerwig) leads a revolt against Kobayashi. The bilingual setup feels woven together mostly seamlessly, though I do wonder if Asian audiences might have a different take on the matter than I do. And I would be terribly remiss if I did not mention Alexandre Desplat’s excellent score, pounded along by unrelenting taiko drums, keeping the tension both constantly uneasy and delicious.

Isle of Dogs is Recommended If You Like: Wes Anderson Symmetry, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Animal Farm, Zootopia, The Goonies, BoJack Horseman

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 Puppy Snaps