All-Star Cast

The Phonecian Scheme Year: 2025 Rating: PG-13 Length: 101 minutes / 1.68 hours After a few “COVID years” of Wes Anderson films like The French Dispatch (2021) and Asteroid City (2023), it felt good to get back to an Anderson film that felt classic in its themes and presentation. The Phonecian Scheme (2025) has all the hallmark traits of modern Wes Anderson with its all-star cast, monotone affect, hilarious running gags, and geometric/symmetrical cinematography. But, even more, its plot has a driving force that doesn’t feel as fragmented as the films he made during the COVID years. I have always appreciated modern Wes Anderson films for how they have a signature visual style. The Phonecian Scheme takes it even farther by making the camera almost like a character in itself, almost justifying the head-on centered framing that has been a staple of his style for so long. The colors here are definitely bold, like in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), with the dream sequences featuring...

Asteroid City Year: 2023 Rating: PG-13 Length: 105 minutes / 1.75 hours At this point, when I see a Wes Anderson film, I know what I'm getting. Not just the visual aesthetic or the almost monotone line delivery from every actor. Instead, there's a framing that either brings the disparate narrative together (like in The French Dispatch (2021)) or acts as a lens (like in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)). Now that we're almost 10 years into this phase of narrative framing (with a few exceptions like Isle of Dogs (2018)), it's finally gotten to the point of being distracting. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the base story that's being told in Asteroid City (2023). It hearkens back to some of Anderson's earlier works that dealt with the death of a loved one (a la The Darjeeling Limited (2007)). The science fair subplot was fun, and the whole military lockdown of the second half was entertaining. Just by itself, the core plot of...

Tag: All-Star Cast

MOVIE: The Phonecian Scheme (2025)

MOVIE: Asteroid City (2023)