By Alex McPherson

As ornately-stylized and star-studded as ever but emotionally out of reach, director Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” provides a rich visual tapestry of idiosyncratic characters and sincere, albeit unwieldy, meditations on greed, goodness, and the personal search for life’s meaning.

Set during the 1950s, Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (a pitch-perfect Benicio del Toro) is a sharply-dressed, casually vain international financier and industrialist who has amassed boatloads of wealth, shady business dealings, and people who wish him dead.

The opening sequence sees Korda barely surviving an assassination attempt – one of six – aboard his personal plane adorned with his name. The explosion makes short work of his newest administrative assistant, and Korda sends the plane’s pilot (just fired post-blast) soaring skyward via a handy-dandy ejector seat. 

Everyone besides the assistant winds up in one piece, but this latest brush with death has prompted Korda to contemplate his mortality. While he’s unconscious, we shift to a black-and-white tribunal at the gates of Heaven, which we return to periodically throughout the film, sometimes featuring Bill Murray as bushy-bearded God, where Korda is being judged for his sins. He starts looking, however tepidly, inwards, and thus begins considering the legacy he wants to leave behind once he shuffles from this mortal coil.

Korda reaches out to his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a devoted novitiate nun whom he hasn’t seen or spoken to in six years. He plans to name her heir to his fortune and business investments (“on a trial basis”), and he wants to finalize his elaborate development within the fictional Middle-Eastern-inspired country of Phoenicia: the titular Phoenician Scheme.

Liesl is resolutely against Korda’s exploitative and destructive practices — Korda almost  beams when discussing plans to use slave labor — and she makes clear her refusal to accept his vast sums of wealth. 

Liesl does, however, believe that she can help Korda see the error in his ways within the Scheme, and possibly help to mend the rift between him and Korda’s nine neglected sons, who live across the street from his lavishly hollow estate. She also wants to know the cause of her mother’s death — rumors have it that Korda killed her, or that it was his brother, Nubar (a menacing, impressively-mustached Benedict Cumberbatch). The stage is set for conflict and inevitable reconciliation between Liesl and Korda.

Thanks to the efforts of an American consortium to thwart his power and influence, however, Korda must now attempt to cover the Scheme’s funding deficit (“The Gap”). Thus begins an episodic journey to various investors across Greater New Phoenicia to wrangle the necessary money out of various quirky investors, deploying his characteristic blend of haughtiness and sincerity.

Korda and Liesl are accompanied by Bjørn (Michael Cera, with a wild accent), an entomologist-turned-Korda’s-newest-administrative assistant, who takes a liking to Liesl and who might be more than meets the eye. Oh, and people are still periodically trying to kill Korda.

“The Phoenician Scheme” maintains all the hallmarks of an Anderson film — gorgeously detailed sets, precisely-composed framing, deadpan dialogue, and a smorgasbord of returning faces in roles both big and small. It’s also exhausting, multilayered, and not as streamlined as his best work.

It sacrifices thematic heft for a satirical plot that never quite coalesces into something truly special. But that doesn’t mean “The Phoenician Scheme” doesn’t have its charms, even if the story’s hurried, unconventional structure muddles the profundity of its most heartfelt moments.

Del Toro, making his second appearance in an Anderson production (the first was in “The French Dispatch”), slots in perfectly to Anderson’s particular style, imbuing a character that should be detestable into someone who, despite his haughtiness, is genuinely reckoning with his immoral past and the kind of person he wants to become.

It’s amusing to see Korda’s ostensibly sentimental arc unfold side-by-side with him offering colorful hand grenades, for example, to every investor he meets with. Del Toro delivers Anderson’s signature dryly comedic dialogue with pitch-perfect calibration, while more subtly showing the magnate’s thawing identity brought on by the re-introduction of Liesl into his life. 

This tug-of-war seemingly exists within Anderson’s filmmaking itself, continuing his streak of self-reflection as an artist. The film’s environments are rich with detail but lack warmth, and, particularly in its final third, “The Phoenician Scheme” breaks some of Anderson’s “rules” to reflect Korda’s changing values. It becomes less artificial and more organic in its formal elements, stripping away the unnecessary to get to what really matters.

Threapleton — the MVP — embodies her character’s tension between Liesl’s pious life as a nun with her undeniable draw to material wealth, and to Korda,: a person who seems antithetical to her values. It’s an excellent performance both consistently funny and always operating on a deeper level, marking Threapleton as an actor with a bright future and hopefully becoming a recurring player in Anderson’s troupe of actors.

The remaining characters in “The Phoenician Scheme,” with varying degrees of importance to the plot, are mostly Anderson stalwarts who display expected quirkiness and wry wit. Cera gets most of the film’s laugh-out-loud moments as Bjørn — how is this Cera’s first appearance in an Anderson movie?.

Korda’s cadre of investors — including rail barons Leland (Tom Hanks) and Reagan (Bryan Cranston), the Phoenician prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed), nightclub owner Marseille Bob (Mathieu Almaric), ship-building businessman Marty (Jeffrey Wright), and ,hydroelectric engineer and Korda’s second cousin Hilda (an underused Scarlett Johansson)— are agreeable to watch, but the film’s episodic structure renders them more as amusing asides than memorable, fleshed-out characters. The star power behind them does most of the heavy lifting.

Indeed, amid all the labyrinthine happenings of The Scheme and Anderson’s continued love of nonstop exposition, “The Phoenician Scheme” quickly becomes overwhelming, as the far more engaging story of Korda and Liesl’s connection is nearly swallowed by the mess of everything surrounding it.

It’s not that viewers shouldn’t expect this from late-game Anderson, but when compared to the more-focused successes of “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” this latest project doesn’t approach its themes with the attention they merit. It’s all too willing to whisk us away to a new locale or character introduction without allowing much time for reflection.

If viewers go into “The Phoenician Scheme” without expecting anything close to the heights of those aforementioned films, it remains an easy recommendation. Anderson is still crafting experiences more experimental and defiantly strange than most mainstream directors working today, and that’s always to be celebrated.

The Phoenician Scheme” is a 2025 comedy directed by Wes Anderson and starring Benecio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, and Benedict Cumberbatch. It is rated PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, some sexual material, nude images, and smoking throughout and the runtime is 1 hour, 41 minutes. It opened in theaters June 6. Alex’s Grade: B.

Venue: Hi-Pointe Theatre, 1005 McCausland Ave. 63117

Tickets: Tickets are $12 for general admission; $10 for students and Cinema St. Louis members. Advance tickets can be purchased through the Cinema St. Louis website.

More Info: 314-200-5684, cinemastlouis.org

Cinema St. Louis celebrates American film auteur Wes Anderson with a six film retrospective in advance of the release of Anderson’s newest film, Asteroid City on June 16th. Before the director’s 11th feature is released, Cinema St. Louis will screen Anderson’s first six live action films over the first two weekends in June. The series will kick off with Anderson’s 1996 debut, Bottle Rocket, and culminate with 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom. The full lineup can be found on the Cinema St. Louis website.

“Wes Anderson has a unique voice and vision among American directors and it’s exciting to share these six films that have truly become iconic,” says Brian Spath, operations supervisor for Cinema St. Louis, “you know to expect certain hallmarks from an Anderson film, but his visual style, production design, and sly wit make each film different from the last.”

Anderson has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, including three times for Best Original Screenplay.

Films on Fridays and Saturdays will screen at 7:00 PM, while films on Sundays will screen at 5:00 PM.

Jason Schwartzman, “Rushmore”

FILM SCHEDULE

For film synopses, see the CSL website

Friday, June 2, 7:00 PM

Bottle Rocket

Wes Anderson, 1996, 92 min., color, DCP

Saturday, June 3, 7:00 PM

Rushmore

Wes Anderson, 1998, 92 min., color, DCP

The Royal Tenenbaums cast

Sunday, June 4, 5:00 PM

The Royal Tenenbaums

Wes Anderson, 2001, 92 min., color, DCP

Friday, June 9, 7:00 PM

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Wes Anderson, 2004, 92 min., color, DCP

Moonrise Kingdom

Saturday, June 10, 7:00 PM

The Darjeeling Limited

Wes Anderson, 2007, 92 min., color, DCP

Sunday, June 11, 5:00 PM

Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson, 2012, 92 min., color, DCP

Go to https://www.cinemastlouis.org/hi-pointe for more information, showtimes, and online ticket sales.

“Asteroid City” will open on June 16.

Cinema St. Louis

For more than 30 years, Cinema St. Louis (CSL) has served as the region’s go-to arts nonprofit for educating and inspiring audiences of all ages through film. Annually, the organization hosts the St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) —  included among USA Today’s 10 Best “Film Festivals Worth Traveling To” — as well as the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, QFest St. Louis, Classic French Film Festival, and Golden Anniversaries. In addition, Cinema St. Louis seeks to engage younger audiences, exposing them to the possibilities of becoming filmmakers, through free hands-on filmmaking camps and screenings through Cinema for Students.

By Lynn Venhaus
Think New Yorker meets Highlights for the literary geek chic. As a paean to print, “The French Dispatch” is a glorious reminder of how turning pages, enraptured in an article, can take us away to other worlds.

Set in an outpost of an American newspaper – the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun — in a fictional 20th century French city. It brings to life a collection of stories published in the final edition of the newspaper empire’s Sunday magazine, following the death of the editor (Bill Murray).

Experiencing a Wes Anderson film is like being transported into an illustrated picture book with stunning artistically complex worlds both familiar and of wonder – feeling new and nostalgic at the same time.

It is always a unique event that I look forward to with great anticipation, having listed “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” among my favorite movies of the 21st Century. And his whimsical stop-animation features “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “The Isle of Dogs” (his last movie in 2018) are genius.

No matter if they connect or not, all his films of the past 30 years are painstakingly detailed works of art that offer something different – and feature wit, eccentric characters, superb music accompaniment, and striking composed visuals as common threads.

Therefore, it pains me to say that while “The French Dispatch” is a love letter to journalists and has considerable quirky charms, with dizzying fanciful techniques and the director’s distinctive symmetrical style, color palette and designs, it is at once too much and not enough.

‘THE FRENCH DISPATCH.’ (Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2020 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved)

Set in the truly inspired metropolis Ennui-sur-Blasé (which translated, means “Boredom-on-Apathy,” with a wink), this sophisticated exercise is an overstuffed toy box that melds too many concepts to be as satisfying as his top three. And despite its splendid cast, there isn’t a single character that emotionally resonates.

This anthology, running 1 hour 48 minutes, is crowded with enough content for 10 movies. Anderson’s offbeat screenplay, with a story conceived with Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, and Hugo Guinness, is divided to fit the magazine’s sections: arts and artists, politics/poetry and tastes and smells, but starts and ends with the life and death of diligent editor Arthur Horowitz Jr. – played by Anderson all-star Bill Murray, just as droll as ever.

In “The Concrete Masterpiece” by J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton), which goes off the rails two-thirds in, Benicio del Toro plays Moses Rosenthaler, a psychopathic artist who paints critically acclaimed abstracts in prison, uses Simone (Lea Seydoux), a female prison guard as a nude model, and attracts the attention of Cadazio, an imperious, impatient art exhibitor played by Adrien Brody, backed by his two businessmen uncles (brief appearance by Henry Winkler and Bob Balaban).

“Revisions to a Manifesto” has student radicals protest, which leads to “The Chessboard Revolution,” with rebel leader Zeffirelli (Timothee Chalamet), who gets the attention of no-nonsense scribe Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand). This meanders and should have ended midway.

The third is “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner,” as recounted by urbane food writer Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) in a television interview with talk show host (Liev Schreiber). This is a complex crime caper involving multiple characters, many locations, and quite a roster of talent.

At times, these short stories seem indulgent, rambling, and tedious. Sharper pacing would have helped with the storytelling, which does benefit from the gifted performers who find their rhythm and deliver crisp dialogue in the earnest manner one expects in these idiosyncratic tableaus.

Owen Wilson, who has been in eight Anderson movies, second only to Murray, is good-natured staff writer Herbsaint Sazerac, who takes us on an amusing tour of the city. Anjelica Huston, aka Mrs. Tenenbaum, capably handles narration duty this time –a lovely addition.

One of the pleasures of this film is to see such a star-studded array of repertory players, and more – among them, Saoirse Ronan, Tony Revolori, Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Steve Park, Lois Wilson, Fisher Stevens, and Griffin Dunne.

The pandemic delayed this film’s release by a year, which heightened expectations and allowed a clever literary marketing campaign to enchant with graphics and snippets, modeled after venerable periodicals from days gone by. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in July, where it received a nine-minute standing ovation.

Having spent nearly a half-century working at publications, the editorial office setting was the most intriguing yet the least focus — an aperitif instead of an entrée. With every bon mot that Murray tossed off as the veteran editor corralled correspondents, I wanted more of that colorful staff.

The sight of Murray taking a pencil to hard copy, as ink-stained editors once did in non-cubical newsrooms, should make journalists yearn for a grizzled authority figure to cut their long-winded prose and hand the typed papers back with gruff remarks and certain expectations. Writers may weep at the sight of a proofreader and a layout guy trying to fit linotype into a grid, for it’s part of a cherished past.

As a film, tightening those long-winded vignettes would have made a difference.

Nevertheless, the production elements are exceptional, especially from frequent Anderson cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman, flipping between black-and-white and color, and other collaborators Oscar-winning production designer Adam Stockhausen (for “Grand Budapest Hotel”) and costume designer Milena Canonero, four-time Oscar winner including “Grand Budapest Hotel,” and composer Alexander Desplat’s score.

Still, a Wes Anderson movie is like hanging out with erudite English Literature majors, some of whom are raconteurs and iconoclasts, who motivate you to add books and adventures to your to-do lists.

The French Dispatch” is a 2021 comedy-drama directed by Wes Anderson and starring Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Lea Seydoux, Timothee Chalamet, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Owen Wilson and Elisabeth Moss. It’s run time is 1 hour, 48 minutes and is rated R for graphic nudity, some sexual references and language. In theaters Oct. 29. Lynn’s Grade: B.
Portions of this review were published in the Webster-Kirkwood Times and discussed on KTRS Radio.

By Alex McPherson

Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” is an experience as eye-popping as it is utterly overwhelming.

“The French Dispatch,” largely inspired by writers at The New Yorker magazine, including James Thurber, James Baldwin, Mavis Gallant, and others this Gen Z critic has never heard of, recounts the experiences of four writers at the French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas, Evening Sun newspaper based in a fictional French town. These writings take place within “Ennui-sur-Blasé” (Boredom-on-Blasé), which proves to be far from boring. The editor-in-chief, a strict yet sentimental chap named Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), has just died, leaving behind one final issue of the paper filled with eccentric happenings and colorful characters. 

Anderson’s film is structured like an anthology narrated by the author of each “article,” opening with a biography of Howitzer and ending with his obituary. We get a scene-setter from a beret-wearing cyclist, Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson). Sazerac sets the scene, showcasing a French town packed with people of all sorts, as well as hundreds of rats and cats. We then delve into an arts report by JKL Berenson (Tilda Swinton) as she gives a PowerPoint presentation on an (in)famous incarcerated painter named Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio Del Toro), his muse/prison guard Simone (Léa Seydoux), and a greedy art collector named Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody) wanting to capitalize on Moses’ works.

Afterwards, viewers are launched into a rather intimate profile, written by Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand), of a young, insecure revolutionary named Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet), who amid the student uprising in 1968 engages in high-stakes chess matches with authority figures. “The French Dispatch” saves the best for last, however, as food columnist Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) — a gay Black man — discusses on a talk show a profile he wrote of Lt. Nescafier (Stephen Park), an esteemed chef of a local police chief The Commissaire (Mathieu Amalric). Both Wright and Nescafier are dragged into a life-or-death situation. 

Timothee Chalamet as Zefferelli

If this sounds like a lot to digest, you’d be correct. There’s so much movie here that it’s hard not to be mentally swamped. This lessens the impact of individual vignettes that are, by themselves, quite profound. Nevertheless, “The French Dispatch” provides a nonstop barrage of aesthetically pleasing eye candy that holds attention even as the overstuffed whole threatens to undermine the compelling characters on display.

Ennui-sur-Blasé is a meticulously crafted setting, a cinematic dollhouse that refuses to be categorized in simple terms. In typical Andersonian fashion, everything moves like a clockwork machine coming to life. A quiet neighborhood suddenly fills with activity upon the rising sun, sets transition between one another as characters walk from room to room, and elegantly symmetrical shot compositions are once again used in full force. Interestingly, “The French Dispatch” also alternates between black-and-white and color photography shot-to-shot — perhaps representing timeless bursts of humanity that transcend the written word. 

Each section utilizes Anderson’s style in different ways, paying homage to French filmmakers like Jacques Tati and François Truffaut, as well as cartoonists from The New Yorker. That being said, “The French Dispatch” knows when to subvert its rules to emphasize the darker elements of this charming, albeit troubled dreamworld, particularly concerning the existential threats that tinge Wright’s perspective with sadness and dread. For brief moments, the madcap fades away to zoom in on true, deeply felt emotions. Alexandre Desplat’s score perfectly accompanies the action, eliciting joy and melancholy.

Of course, there’s an outstanding amount of acting talent here (including some cameos I won’t spoil), and everyone brings their A-game, even if we only spend a few minutes with them. Murray, Del Toro, and Wright are standouts — lending their characters a sense of three-dimensionality that’s all the more meaningful in such cartoonish locations. Although some performances are more effective than others — Chalamet is somewhat one-note, for example — they’re perfect vessels to deliver Anderson’s signature playful, occasionally irreverent dialogue that seems even more obsessive than usual.

Although some might say “The French Dispatch” is style over substance, Anderson’s film grows more meaningful the more I think about it, stretching my Film Studies muscles to approach coherent conclusions. We see a literal tortured artist being exploited for profit, an aging journalist mourning her youth, childish revolutionaries blinded by idealism, and outsiders seeking comfort in an alienating world. While the second portion featuring McDormand and Chalamet comes across as a bit precious and rushed in places, there’s rarely a dull moment. Despite the sections’ differences, they’re thematically bonded through exploring concepts of belonging, passion, storytelling, and the creation of art itself with a whimsical edge that likely benefits from repeat viewings. 

Additionally, the notion of this newspaper traveling all the way back to corn-covered Kansas holds its own significance. Stories should be universal, after all, and “The French Dispatch” underlines how this form of humanistic journalism shouldn’t be discarded amid the changing media climate. As a tribute to artists of all kinds and a wistful thesis on the future of print, this is a film that deserves to be mulled over, and I’m eager to research the people who influenced it. Tighter pacing and more focus could have made it one of Anderson’s best, but “The French Dispatch” is most assuredly worth opening up.

Jeffrey Wright and Liev Shreiber

The French Dispatch” is a 2021 comedy-drama directed by Wes Anderson and starring Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Lea Seydoux, Timothee Chalamet, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Owen Wilson and Elisabeth Moss. It’s run time is 1 hour, 48 minutes and is rated R for graphic nudity, some sexual references and language. In theaters Oct. 29. Alex’s Grade: B+.

Benicio del Toro, Lea Seydoux