Wes Anderson Toys with the Action Movie in The Phoenician Scheme

Matthew d'Ancona's culture: The Phoenician Scheme, a gem of a film

Wes Anderson's latest project immerses us, once again, in his surreal but sincere emotional universe

Wes Anderson’s new film shows the director at his best

The danger with a Wes Anderson film is it chooses style over substance. But solid performances from Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton make The Phoenician Scheme one of the director’s stronger offerings.

'The French Dispatch' is Wes Anderson as his most Wes Anderson-y

'The French Dispatch' often feels like the filmmaker in concentrate form, both his best and worst instincts on extravagant display.

The Phoenician Scheme stars on Wes Anderson's latest: "The funnest summer camp ever"

With each new film release, the world of Wes Anderson has become increasingly rich. His intricate, pastel-hued sets, quirky – often morally ambiguous – characters and playful, deadpan sense of humour have seen the Texas-born auteur create an aesthetic more distinct than just about any other living filmmaker, a style and look that has been aped and parodied countless times but never equalled and certainly never bettered.But arguably every bit as …

See Benicio del Toro in trailer for Wes Anderson’s ‘The Phoenician Scheme’

Focus Features released a trailer for Wes Anderson’s upcoming film The Phoenician Scheme, starring Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton and Michael Cera.  The film marks Anderson’s first feature film since Asteroid City, released in 2023. The Phoenician Scheme stars del Toro as Zsa-zsa Korda, one of the richest men in Europe, who survives his sixth recorded airplane crash. The trailer shows Korda, a father of 10, decide to make his daughter, Liesl …

Wes Anderson’s sense of an ending

Wes Anderson’s films either entrance or fail. I am a devotee of earlier work, up to The Grand Budapest Hotel of 2014, but The French Dispatch (2021) was intolerably twee, without any of the emotional depth that his best films have, that intuition of pain under the capering, that connection with childhood. Asteroid City (2023) was even more mannered, lapsing into self-parody. The Phoenician Scheme, let’s say straight away, is a treat. Unlike its …