The Phoenician Scheme 2025
Benicio del Toro plays Zsa Zsa Korda, an unkillable tycoon who survives his sixth plane crash and names his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton, Kate Winslet's daughter), a novitiate nun, sole heir over his nine sons, then drags her through a globetrotting caper to fund a giant Phoenician public-works scheme. Michael Cera plays Bjorn, a Norwegian tutor and entomologist; the cast also runs Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as the 'Sacramento boys' (a two-on-two game of horse), Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson as cousin Hilda, Benedict Cumberbatch as half-brother Nubar, plus Bill Murray as God, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham and Charlotte Gainsbourg in black-and-white afterlife tribunals. Dedicated to Anderson's father-in-law, the Lebanese businessman Fuad Malouf, on whom Korda is loosely modeled. First cinematographer other than Robert Yeoman (Bruno Delbonnel shoots it). Amanda found it very funny and playable as pure caper; Sean, on a second viewing, read it as a linear, deeply thematic film about fatherhood, mortality, faith and how the powerful lie their way through the world. Both moved by it; Sean calls it minor-to-middle Wes but urges a rewatch.
