The Phoenician Scheme: Wes Anderson's Smoking New Joint w/del Toro & A Cast of Thousands!

Picking Up From: pick your favorite wes anderson film!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEuMnPl2WI4

He is really gifted at presenting movies that seem (and are) whimsical and silly and self-indulgent, but at their best end up oddly moving or sometimes even profound. His consistency makes him easy to take for granted.

Saw this today, fun and impressive as always really (more than I expected actually) and a bit closer to TGBH than any of his films between that and this in terms of telling a straight story without the higher concept approaches taken in Asteroid City and French Dispatch. Probably a few too many bitparts from big names but not really to its detriment Mia Threapleton stood out even if in the expected Wes mode performance way.

I much preferred Michael Cera’s performance tbh.

He was fun although the reveal re his character was terribly obvious.

i might not watch this b/c of his horrible "accent"

I'll try, but idk if I'll have the strength for this one. Asteroid City took me two attempts to get through, and I had to bail early on Henry Sugar – I just can't handle the rapidfire robot-voice dialogue anymore.

I rewatched Royal Tenenbaums recently and its really remarkable that pretty much every element of his formal style fully-formed by that point – the whip pans, the symmetry, the insert shots, the framing, the blocking, everything. The only real exception is just that the actors are allowed to speak their dialogue in the natural rhythms and tones of human beings who live on Earth. Going back to it after all these years, that one small difference seems to change the entire DNA of the film, making it seem as loose and freewheeling as Breathless or something compared his later work.

It also really supercharges the value of the cast by allowing them to actually give different performances and play off each other – very effective in a comedy that mostly consists of actors talking in rooms! Its almost perverse at this point how the more recent movies are packed with these incredible overstuffed A-list ensemble casts, and then he just has everyone speak like identical automatons. I can handle it from Aki Kaurismaki because those movies have 1% as much dialogue, but with Anderson's late style the distancing effects are just becoming too much for me.

this got roundly booed at Cannes. That said so did Wild at Heart, so whatever. I kind of want to see this, but my wife hated Asteroid City so much I'm not sure I can ever get her to go to a Wes Anderson movie again. You're absolutely right though, Rushmore and RT have a lot more heart, or something, than his last several outings.

One Eye Open: yes, but The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel

Which means we'll never have consensus around the essential Anderson except, I guess, Rushmore, so hooray!

Asteroid City was one of his films I only got around to belatedly, after it had left theaters, and I regret it, because it made a really strong impression on me, and also made me realize that I like most of his movies. The exceptions were Life Aquatic, Darjeeling and Dogs, and I never saw French Dispatch, but given his track record, and considering how many of the films I have seen I unabashedly love, I have a feeling the ones I didn't like might improve upon re-watch.

I found French Dispatch really difficult. I thought Asteroid City was a hoot though.

I’m pretty much the opposite, found ‘Asteroid City’ hard going but loved ‘The French Dispatch’. Especially the long tracking shot in the police station.

Whatever, will still be checking this out.

Loved Asteroid City.

French Dispatch was good but I feel like I have to watch it again, I know I didn't catch everything in it. It definitely felt like his densest work. I was happy that Asteroid City wasn't so knotty.

i would have loved asteroid city if it was a funny little supernatural alien story, the whole overlaid meta aspect of it being a play started to unravel it all a bit for me

All I remember, tbh, is that by the end I felt like it was getting at something bigger or even profound, but I can't remember what it was, lol.

Well, that sure was a Wes Anderson movie.

I was really non-plussed by this one. It felt very slight, but not in a fun, light and enjoyable way. I was sadly bored, and it is not a long film at all.

I really liked Asteroid City and was surprised by how much I did so as I went in expecting pure style over substance. The various layers and meta aspects you mention J0rdan and Josh gave it depth for me.

This was... Boring? I think he might be making too many films in too short a time, a lot of this felt half baked. At times it got almost as weird as Asteroid City, but not quite. Then it turned back into an even more boring Grand Budapest Hotel.

Hmm, a cross between Asteroid City and Grand Budapest Hotel makes it sound kind of appealing.

It was alright. It wasn't until the day after that I noticed that the story was somewhat slight

Boston Globe reviewer says Anderson is Tyler Perry for white people

There’s another director Anderson deserves to be compared to: his fellow Oscar winner, Tyler Perry... Despite hiding behind thin and seemingly different plots (the story here is a half-hearted attempt to debate religion vs. capitalist greed), both of these guys keep making the same movie over and over.

Neither of them has to change their tired formats. In Perry’s case, his fans continue to flock to his repetitive, faith-based movies — with and without Madea. In Anderson’s case, film critics dance the Hucklebuck every time he puts one of these out, forgiving him his trespasses and ignoring the glaring issues his movies have.

Oscar winner, Tyler Perry.

Wait, wut?

There’s another director Anderson deserves to be compared to: his fellow honorary Oscar winner, Tyler Perry...

Fixed.

I'm fairly certain the reason Wes Anderson can make the same film over and over and over is because they consistently turn a (small) profit, not because of critics. Plenty of people get great reviews and then has to wait years and years before they get another chance.

I figured it was Odie Henderson who wrote that. His criticism usually comes off as shallow and overly simplistic.

I am so thoroughly conditioned to the Wes Anderson sensibility (exquisite art direction and Faberge-quality Easter eggs) I couldn't even tell you if I liked it or not.

Okay, I'm exaggerating. But I turned out to see this, and assume I will turn out to see Anderson's next, and thus he will have financing available to him.

Question: Has anyone ever tried to replicate Wes Anderson's films (like the Quentin Tarantino copycats in the wake of Pulp Fiction)?

both of these guys keep making the same movie over and over.

Yeah, I confuse Ozu's The End of Summer and Early Summer all the time

As I get older "range" in novelists, actors, and directors strikes me as less important. Nail a tone, a timbre, a sensibility. Let us assess its effectiveness.

I am so thoroughly conditioned to the Wes Anderson sensibility (exquisite art direction and Faberge-quality Easter eggs) I couldn't even tell you if I liked it or not.

lol this was somewhat my reaction. I liked it, I think more than the last two, though not with any great passion. It seemed almost entirely formalist to me, not particularly trying to "say" anything (beyond the normal tho in this case fairly muted tension between Bad Dad and Intelligent Offspring). He takes an inherently political setting/framing and just about denudes it of any politics. You could object to its love of late-colonial settings, but I mean, I too love Casablanca and Raiders of the Lost Ark so ...

Beautifully designed, of course.

Question: Has anyone ever tried to replicate Wes Anderson's films (like the Quentin Tarantino copycats in the wake of Pulp Fiction)?

There's was brief period in AmerIndie where you had stuff like Igby Goes Down, Rocket Science...not sure what else. Garden State, maybe?

I know this wasn't the intention, but Ghost World really felt like a "Rushmore for Girls". I imagine there was a lot of Max-Enid fanfic over on MakeOutClub back in the day.

...and speaking of Tarantino copycats, Bottle Rocket was totally part of that post-Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction wave of quirky crime capers.

Maybe more influential on advertising: https://jaded-media.com/2017/11/05/the-wes-anderson-ification-of-advertising/

Scott Pilgrim, Submarine, and maybe even Kick-Ass all felt Anderson-coded to me. All 2010, weirdly (or not so).

I forgot about Submarine, that one totally fits. Richard Ayoade was gonna be the UK Wes Anderson for a minute there.

I didn’t recognize Ayoade as the Marxist guerrilla leader until I saw the credits. Speaking of the politics, or lack of them, in this, am I crazy to imagine there was a bit of Wes in that line he gives Cera? After the (spoiler alert) reveal about his identity, when he says something like, I’m not really a bohemian, I’m a moderate Republican from Wilmington?

lol yeah good call

The first two Paddington films were pretty clear Anderson copies, but Paddington 2 was still better than anything Anderson has done imo. But it can't really be compared, the Tarantino style seemed easy, it's like Godard said* ''all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun'. The Anderson-style is much more difficult to copy. Also, make it too dark and people will just say it's a Seidl-copy instead.

*Godard claimed it was a quote by Griffith, but it's not.

Question: Has anyone ever tried to replicate Wes Anderson's films (like the Quentin Tarantino copycats in the wake of Pulp Fiction)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwu51SYfQQs

Paddington films are not Wes Anderson aping, they're just traditional British storybook aesthetics, Anderson overlaps with those on occasion but has a sharpness that those movies aren't really aiming for.

Re: removing the politics from inherently political subject matter, I feel that way about Grand Budapest Hotel at times.

The French Dispatch most offended me in that regard.

As for this one I went in having read the Sight & Sound interview where Anderson talks a lot about viewing the protagonist as a Hearst era tycoon, treating nations like his playthings, so I saw more acidity in those post colonial settings than I probably would have otherwise. The trick is of course the film relies a bit on you still finding sympathy for this deranged monster - I do think the ending does an elegant job of squaring that circle.

Napoleon Dynamite was frequently criticized at the time for being too much of a Wes Anderson knockoff.

To me the film lands in the middle of his canon. I had to get used to Del Toro, at first glance not a natural (heh) for Andersonlandia.

I liked his segment in The French Dispatch more than the other two

Alfred, I think you mean Seymour Cassel as Max Fischer's dad in Rushmore.

Nah, I garbled it: I meant to say Murray as surrogate. Thanks.

Napoleon Dynamite was frequently criticized at the time for being too much of a Wes Anderson knockoff.

― MarkoP, Monday, June 9, 2025 9:57 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's why I loved it, it was like "what if a Wes Anderson movie was actually funny"

I thought this was pretty funny, or maybe droll would be a better word. Low chuckles under ones breath funny. It was also just fun to watch. Almost every shot seemed to have at least one amusing or eye-catching detail. Personally I'd rather watch Del Toro, Threapleton and Cera than some of the usual Anderson suspects, e.g. esp. Schwartzman, but YMMV. Del Toro was effective as a hard-boiled Bogart type. Threapleton seemed to only have one mode, but it she was convincing in it. And Cera's "Bjorn" nearly stole the show. It may be coincidental but since I happened to watch "Radio Days" for the first time the other night, it does seem like there are some parallels: Both are set in a kind of nostalgia-tinted vanished past. Both are about family dynamics, but have lots of comic set pieces with colorful secondary characters that tangentially intersect the main story (more so in Radio Days). Both take a deadpan approach to blending tall-tales and reality on-screen, to the point that the question of realism becomes moot. Allen's movie did seem to have a deeper understanding of human psychology though, and while Allen obviously doesn't have Anderson's fanatical attention to design, his vision of the early '40s is visually richer than you may remember.

The Cera character should've been awful, but he's so committed -- as an actor and as the character that his character he plays, if you catch my drift -- that I laughed whenever I saw him.

I think.the reason I liked this more than I remember liking other WA films is because it doesn't pretend to be more than it is. It's light entertainment. There's a gentle emotional tug: we start out with strictly symmetrical compositions (until Cera peeks his head under the table) and eventually we're in a crashed plane with jungle and moonlight spilling in the back. But I'm not being asked to feel more than the material can sustain. And I thought all the fun stuff was fun. For once everyone being in on the joke felt right.

seemed like it had very little reason to exist

Should be on his tombstone.

Del Toro becomes more sympathetic but I don't think it ever gets into heart of gold territory. As it is, he ends up with the punishment a communist revolution would saddle him with - he loses all his wealth and has to lead a working class existence from now on. We might want him to suffer a more violent fate, or be less happy with the one he was dealt - but frankly if all the billionaires showed up working at my local kebab tomorrow, their fortunes gone, I wouldn't be mad.

ok didn't see that, per the walking out because of boredom and frustration

It wasn't clear to me why Korda ends up there at the end:

The last thing we see before that is Uncle Nubar blowing up his model. We're told that the other partners go forward with the scheme, without Korda. Why does that make Korda go broke? He was going to put all his money into the scheme, but now he's out. So why does he have to go open a little restaurant?

Anyway, I don't know whether to blame the acting or the writing, but I thought this suffered from Del Toro never finding a way to convey personality or charisma in the lead role. It is possible to do that within the confines of Anderson's writing/direction--a bunch of his other stars have done it. But Del Toro couldn't pull it off here.

and Del Toro's happy in that restaurant -- I saw no comeuppance.

It took me a while to accept Del Toro in the role; he's not in Gene Hackman or Ralph Fiennes' league as a resourceful actor but his rumbling almost hostile presence won me over.

and Del Toro's happy in that restaurant -- I saw no comeuppance.

Yee but that's surely the point! Anderson removes the reason we have for disliking the character without us getting the catharsis of comeuppance - I think that's actually quite elegantly done.

yeah I agree.

I still find him dislikable but that's not at all a point against the film

Good acting can sell a dislikable character and while Gene Hackman pulls it off and Del Toro didn’t. I have nothing inherently against having an anti-hero or roguish lead. Hell, even Matthew Broderick almost gets you on his side in Election, against your better judgement.

He seems to have cast a spell over...Armond White!

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/05/wes-anderson-shows-how-the-world-works/

The headline kills me. If you want to understand how the world works--the one we're living in right now, the course of your daily life--Wes Anderson's your guy.

(Geraldine Chaplin: "Of course, the people are all wrong for the actual world, aren't they?")

I've never seen Mr. Arkadin, so can't comment on the comparison, but otherwise I mostly agreed with that review. The headline is taken from this paragraph:

Zsa-zsa could be any flawed great man of our time, or our own mirror image. Remember Welles’s classic introduction to Arkadin: "We must accept him for what he is: a phenomenon of an age of dissolution and crisis." That’s how fantasist Anderson personalizes the way the world works.

I guess I can buy that. I don't think most titans of industry lead as colorful lives as Zsa-zsa, but it seems plausible that they are as ruthless and single-minded about extracting a few more percentage points on a financial transaction.

@ JRN - my understanding was that Korda decided to liquidate his fortune not to invest in the scheme, but to cover the gap so that the scheme goes forward. It's cash down the drain to compensate for the increased price of rivets that set the plot into motion. Exactly why he does this was a little muddy to me, but I think the implication is that the combination of his daughter's moral compass and his visions of the afterlife leads him to adjust his own priorities... Maybe this is also embodied in him physically confronting his half-brother rather than continuing their "just business" posture.

I basically enjoyed this and appreciated seeing WA stretch his style a little in a few places, as others have noted. I had gone in thinking it was about an international super-thief carrying out a heist, which seemed like a naturally Anderson-y sort of premise. Seemingly for WA, a billionaire swindler carrying out a neocolonial developmentalist scheme is an equally good premise for a quasi-nostalgic romp. I can't really muster being too upset about it though.

Watched this tonight. It's in the bottom half, bottom third maybe, of his films, but I belly-laughed a few times.

I'd put this one at the bottom imo, just really undercooked (nb there are a couple Anderson movies I haven't seen). Del Toro was a bland main character in a bland story, though I liked Threapleton and Cera. But just not much else to enjoy

Thought Threpleton was a nonentity too. Not like her mom at all.

it would be really hard for anything to ever dislodge Darjeeling Limited from the bottom imo. these late-period follies may all end up clumped together, but they've so thoroughly left the world of normal human experience that i don't find myself getting worked up about any of their failings.

Darjeeling was my previous least favorite Anderson too, but it has the soundtrack going for it.

Darjeeling is one of my favourite of his (best being Tenenbaums and Fox and Zissou and French Dispatch being the ones I like the least). I enjoyed the latest. It’s simple with a little heart and good performances. It may be my favourite since Budapest.

huh! is it safe to say that almost everybody here would put one of the first three features as #1, while the rest would be a near-complete scramble from person to person?

I think Fox is near my top!

There was a definite step down Roman Coppola replaced Owen Wilson as collaborator.

huh! is it safe to say that almost everybody here would put one of the first three features as #1

Nah, my #1 is Moonrise Kingdom, and I think some would say Grand Budapest Hotel.

Tennenbaums would be my bottom choice - it's the combination of boy's own adventure and melancholy that does it for me, remove either element and I'm not really interested. But I am aware that's a hot take and will give a rewatch soon.

Asteroid City is probably my fave Wes movie

I doubt anyone would put Bottle Rocket as #1, and I think many of us put Fox near the top.

Top 5:
Moonrise Kingdom
Grand Budapest Hotel
Royal Tenenbaums
Asteroid City
Rushmore, probably

I think he's gotten better at integrating the needledrops over the years. Both Rushmore and Tennenbaums sometimes feel a bit too much like he wants to get his entire record collection in there.

Huh, I think the music really works in Rushmore, maybe less so in RT

Top 5:
Moonrise Kingdom
Grand Budapest Hotel
Royal Tenenbaums
Asteroid City
Rushmore, probably

Replace Asteroid City with Fox, move Rushmore to the top and that would be my top 5.

The pop songs in Rushmore are integrated brilliantly, I'd say.

My top 5:

Grand Budapest Hotel
Royal Tenenbaums
Fantastic Mr Fox
Life Aquatic
Rushmore

Wow, I was way off! Most of the takes I've encountered kind of aligned with my sense that the earlier, more grounded pictures had more emotional weight etc. But different strokes. I'd also put Moonrise Kingdom up there with those... I think it might be the only one I've ever rewatched. My instinctive sense is that Budapest is right after that, then everything else in some order or another, with Isle of Dogs and Darjeeling Limited right at the bottom.

Top 5

Asteroid City
Fantastic Mr Fox
Royal Tennenbaums
Rushmore
Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom and Bottle Rocket could swap out with any on my list on a different day

great: bottle rocket, rushmore, tenenbaums
very good: fox, zissou
pretty good: phoenician
meh: moonrise, budapest
bad: darjeeling

havent seen or forgot: asteroid, dispatch, isle of dogs, straight to netflix roald dahl shorts

I had an epiphany not long ago that a sign of Anderson's greatness (for lack of a better word) is that one person's #1 might be another's #10 (or wherever we are at this point), and vice versa, with neither take a challup. For example, "Darjeeling" and "Life Aquatic" are two of his I really didn't like the first time so never saw again, but I've encountered people who made passionate cases for both (or at least "Darjeeling."). On the flip, sometimes I think "Royal Tenenbaums" is my favorite, but I had lunch with a friend the other day who told me that "Tenenbaums" was the last Anderson he saw because he hated it so much (!). Sometimes I think I'm over his schtick (for example, never saw Dispatch or Dahl shorts), but then I belatedly, even reluctantly see "Asteroid" and it makes a big impression on me, which makes me want to reconsider any of his works I disliked or dismissed or ignored. And yet, still haven't seen this new one, let alone the aforementioned Dispatch or Dahl, and for no good reason! I should know better.

Grand Budapest Hotel
and Fantastic Mr Fox are so obviously the great ones that I squint otherwise.

Fox is the one that won me back after Life Aquatic and Darjeeling. Then he followed it with Grand Budapest and Moonrise Kingdom, and I thought, dang, this guy! Then I thought Isle of Dogs was boring, and it threw me off again.

Yeah I've also gone back and forth. Loved Tenenbauns, disliked Zissou enough that I skipped everything till Grand Budapest, which I loved. Since then, I've watched some of the newer ones, some of the ones I missed, all decent+. But Phoenician is bad enough that I may take a break again

The TSPDT list is usually a good general overview, especially when it tells me what I want to hear.

https://i.postimg.cc/QdrkS8sc/wes.jpg

They've got the right top two, even if I'd reverse them and put a few hundred films in between. I like a couple of the others and care about none of them.

I lost it (giggling fit that persisted too long) at “That’s enough blood, man.”

I haven’t kept up with Anderson — there’s nothing urgent-seeming about him and I don’t watch a ton of movies anyway — but (Zissou excepted) I’ve enjoyed the hell out of every one I’ve seen, this one included. Sometimes I get irritated that I like his shit so much — it’s the dad-rock of filmmaking — but he packs a lot into it, even when (as here) the plot is just a mcguffin.

Wow didn’t know Life Aquatic was so hated. I love it!

Enjoy your love, then.

Thank you, Ned ;)

We checked this out last night. It was fine.

I'm come to terms with my challops that Fantastic Mr Fox is Wes Anderson for people who don't like Wes Anderson (I'm aware that another way of translating these runes is "the good one")

I thought this was a lot of fun and much better than Asteroid City. I'd probably rank 'em, as of today:

The Royal Tenenbaums
Rushmore
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The French Dispatch
The Phoenician Scheme
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Moonrise Kingdom
Isle of Dogs
The Darjeeling Limited
Bottle Rocket
Asteroid City
The Life Aquatic

As said previously here, it’s interesting that no one has the same bestWA movies !