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ABC News
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme review: A bland imitation of The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Phoenician Scheme is textbook Wes Anderson — and that's exactly its problem. What: A black comedy centred on an oligarch who reconnects with his daughter and hatches a last-ditch scheme to save his fortune. Directed by: Wes Anderson Starring: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe, Richard Ayoade, Tom Hanks, Riz Ahmed Released: In cinemas now Likely to make you feel: Like speaking to everyone in deadpan monotony The acclaimed director has earned himself a cult following for visually striking films that create an immersive world complemented by quirky, oddball characters. But after three decades in Hollywood, he's still recycling the same tricks. While The Phoenician Scheme has the ingredients of an Anderson classic, it's missing the heart, nuance and grounding that made his early films so special. Set in 1950, The Phoenician Scheme follows wealthy anti-hero Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro). His ruthless business ventures have made him the enemy of just about everyone, and he's hounded by non-stop assassination attempts. In the face of his likely imminent murder, Zsa-zsa decides to prepare his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) to be his successor. As a nun, Liesl is the absolute antithesis to her swindler of a father, but they soon rub off on each other. Zsa-zsa is also in the final stages of a large-scale infrastructure project to find further fortune within the riches of Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia. With personal insect tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera) in tow, Zsa-zsa and Liesl embark on an intercontinental quest to close The Gap — an ever-expanding financial shortfall — complete his life's work and save the family estate. As always, the film has stunning sets, costumes and cinematography, trademark quips and an impressive soundtrack. But with a convoluted plot and seemingly endless characters — all played by A-listers — it can be difficult to follow exactly what's going on and how everyone fits together. At times, The Phoenician Scheme feels more like an SNL skit parodying Wes Anderson than a fully fledged feature. While his earlier films had some delightfully deadpan characters, there were a range of archetypes on show, with boisterous, zany and even grounded personalities balancing out the blunt. Instead, almost every character in Phoenician Scheme gives a comically stony performance, and with no-one to bounce off, much of the original humour is lost. It feels like actors are impersonating Wes Anderson characters, rather than creating anything original of their own. Del Toro plays another wealthy, crass patriarch who has a strained relationship with his children, along the lines of Gene Hackman in 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums, Bill Murray in 2004's The Life Aquatic or 2012's Moonrise Kingdom, and George Clooney in 2009's Fantastic Mr Fox. Del Toro portrays this part well enough, but it's hard not to compare him to the actors who have filled the same shoes in previous films, and he doesn't quite have the warmth and humour that actors like Murray naturally bring to the role. Likewise, nepo baby Threapleton — who has participated in endless interviews about being Kate Winslet's daughter, and who speaks in an uncannily similar voice to her mother — does an impression of Anderson's previous manic pixie dream girls. While she shoots for Cate Blanchett in Tenenbaums or Kara Hayward as the teenager in Moonrise Kingdom, her monotonous delivery falls flat. Although this is of course Anderson's intention with the character, it leads to inevitable comparisons with similar staples of pop culture — Aubrey Plaza's April Ludgate or even cartoons like Daria — who successfully bring earnestness and depth to a cold role. Scarlett Johanssen cameos as del Toro's love interest in the same style, making the two women near-impossible to differentiate and connect with. With The Phoenician Scheme's brisk jumps between a vast array of whimsical locations, enemies hot on their tail, it feels like an attempt to emulate the success of The Grand Budapest Hotel. But there was a tenderness Ralph Fiennes brought to the lead role of that film, also found in the relationship between a lobby boy and his mentor, that's missing here. And for all Phoenician Scheme's hints at father-daughter tension, it doesn't feel like this relationship is taken seriously as a source of conflict, character or growth. The endless celebrity cameos — from Benedict Cumberbatch in a ludicrous beard to Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston playing basketball — feel more like PR stunts than developed characters, their main addition to the story simply being, "Hey look, it's a Hollywood star!" But The Phoenician Scheme does still fill the cup of those craving what Anderson does best: visuals. This is another perfectly symmetrical feast for the eyes, complete with hieroglyphics, rainforests dotted with quicksand and artfully arranged interiors. Michael Cera also shines as the gentle and good-natured Bjorn, whom he convincingly brings to life through his trademark humour and charm. Overall, The Phoenician Scheme is a wholly acceptable addition to Anderson's catalogue, and is sure to delight diehard fans hungry for more Wes. But it's hard not to get nostalgic for his older films, which, for all their idiosyncrasies, felt human. The Phoenician Scheme is in cinemas now.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Sirens' Creator on the Power of Lilly Pulitzer, Michaela's Bird Obsession and Turning Greek Myth Into New England Nightmare
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from all five episodes of 'Sirens,' now streaming on Netflix. Hey hey! Starch your pastels and delete all your incriminating texts — Molly Smith Metzler's new black comedy series 'Sirens' is now streaming on Netflix. Adapted from Metzler's 2011 play 'Elemeno Pea,' the series follows Devon (Meghann Fahy) a prickly, blue-collar New Yorker who visits her sister Simone (Milly Alcock) at the ritzy Nantucket-ish estate owned by Simone's glamorous boss, Michaela (Julianne Moore). More from Variety Park Bo-young on Playing Twins in Netflix's 'Our Unwritten Seoul': 'It Felt Like Shooting Two Dramas at Once' 'Sirens' Star Meghann Fahy Breaks Down the Show's Shocking Ending, That 'Powerful' Last Scene With Julianne Moore and Her Hopes for a Season 2 'Robert Langdon' Adaptation Set at Netflix From 'Lost' EP Carlton Cuse and Mystery Novelist Dan Brown Though Devon visits Michaela's island intent on chewing Simone out for leaving her alone to take of their aging father Bruce (Bill Camp), Devon is quickly suspicious of the strange, cult-like behavior at her sister's new job. While ducking the prying eyes of Michaela's all-seeing house manager Jose (Felix Solis), Devon works to uncover the truth about what's going on at Cliff House and why Simone (who gets the special privilege of calling Michaela by the nickname 'Kiki') is so attached to her mysterious boss. Over the course of one candy-colored weekend, Devon discovers a sordid affair buried in Michaela and her husband Peter (Kevin Bacon)'s mysterious past and races to free her sister from their clutches before she's brainwashed into the coastal elite for good. Ahead of the series' Netflix debut, Variety spoke to 'Sirens' creator Metzler about the murky lines between hero and villain, the double meaning in the show's title, and why uber-rich New Englanders are so obsessed with Lilly Pulitzer. I like that you feel that way, that it's cyclical. Part of it is intentional — this is an adaptation inspired by the sirens of Greek mythology, which is a tale as old as time. We open the show with the shot of Julie on the cliff, and we close it with Simone. They're standing in the same place on the cliff, kind of like the island's always going to be there, and this story is going to continue to go on and on. There's something about that that felt very whole and complete, because that's the surprise of it. That's the treachery of this world, that's the trap. I was also really keen to flip the perspective. We're often hearing about the sirens from the sailor's point of view, and this series is about what it means to be cast in the role of a siren. I don't think any of these women would voluntarily call themselves sirens, but they're all cast in this role. Casting Kevin was so easy. We were like 'You know who would be amazing as Peter? Kevin. Do you think he'd do it?' And Kevin said yes. Peter isn't in the play, so I was creating this role for the first time with Kevin Bacon. It was really, really fun. He's the perfect Peter, because even though he's Kevin Bacon and he's 'Footloose,' in person he's so warm and humble, kind of has a working-class vibe. I loved that for Peter, because Peter's power is so huge, it's almost hard to dramatize. I wanted him to feel like he was fighting against that all the time; he's trying to disarm people and give his power away. I really wanted the audience to forget how much power he has; I wanted the audience to feel like Devon did, 'This guy's cool.' I also don't know that I would call him the villain — I don't know that Kevin would call him the villain, either. At the end, when he's saying 'I want love and family and goodness and I want my life to matter,' he really means those things. He feels that he's been wronged by a monster. That's the question I'm interested in: How are they heroes and villains of their own stories? I'm excited to hear people's interpretations of the ending. We looked at so many different takes of Simone on that cliff, and we went with the one we went with because it has a bit of a Mona Lisa quality. She's a little bit smiling, a little bit not, and it's hard to know exactly what she feels in that moment. I have my answer, but I love that we give the audience that question. Is it fair, the people we cast in the roles of 'monster' in our lives? Are we villains? Are they? What is a monster, really? The play is a five-character, 90-minute play that happens in one room — the guest house. The five characters are Michaela, Simone, Devon, Ethan and Jose. I wrote the play a bazillion years ago, but they've been with me this whole time, they're the core cast on this show too. From there, really everything else changed. It's a five-hour mini-series, we're never just in one room. The vibrancy of this world: the cliff, the island, all those visual elements, it was extraordinary to be able to bring them to life. Then there are the characters we hear about but don't meet in the play: Bringing in Peter was huge. Devon and Simone's father we hear about in the play, but to have him come on and be Bill Camp? There are so many things we hear about onstage but don't get to see, like how many people worship Michaela. It's one thing to hear about that on stage, but we don't get to see it in person. Everything got wider, deeper, more layered, more lush, more pastel, more cult. Quite simply, I spent a summer in Martha's Vineyard and I've since spent some summers in Nantucket. My best friend has a house there, and it's for real. Lilly Pulitzer is for real. They all have it on in Nantucket. Then there's the Nantucket reds, the salmon color pants. The first time you see it, you're like, 'Where am I?' It's so bright. It's sort of like, if you've been there, you're in on the joke, you know the pants to buy. It also takes a certain status to put on a dress like the one Simone has one when we meet her. It's ridiculous. I love Lilly, I have some Lilly, but it's a little ridiculous. There's something so saturated and bright about it. We're so fortunate Carolyn Duncan, our costume designer, took that and just ran with it – most of the stuff on the show that looks like Lilly Pulitzer is actually custom. Simone's a very difficult role. Milly is such a fantastic actor — it was only her, ever. What was important about Simone is that we [the audience] can't get ahead of her. We have to wonder, we have to be trying to figure her out. She can't tell us everything. She has to break our hearts a little. To have this ability to contain secrets but to withhold them and have this facade with Michaela that's totally different than the relationship with her sister, to keep all those plates spinning, that's a tall order. She's so precise in when she turns certain cards over in her performance. Adapting this story for 2025, there's a class gap in our country and the wage gap is just getting bigger and bigger. A lot of people are in a position like Devon: You have aging parents, and now it's suddenly your new job, but you don't have any money for it. It's a way for me to talk about my favorite subject, class and socioeconomics. There's also an expectation that you're not going to go through that alone — you're going to have your siblings. What happened to Simone as a child is horrible, and in her brain, she is therefore absolved of having anything to do with her father. Is that fair? I don't know, but I think that's a great question between them, a great conflict. What do you owe the people who raised you? Can you change where you're from? Can you actually go forth and absolve yourself of your parents and never go back? These sisters have a code word — in the play, it's 'Elemeno Pea,' which is the name of the play and there's a whole story behind why that's the code word. In the show, 'Sirens' being their code word, it's the ultimate '911, drop everything, I need you.' When I was writing the Greek mythology element and naming the show 'Sirens,' in the script, I had them text each other the sirens emoji. It came from a subconscious place — maybe instead of the emoji, it's the word 'sirens,' and then we get to have this beautiful double-meaning. That never happens as a writer, but it just coalesced and landed in my lap. In my summers in Martha's Vineyard, when I worked at the Yacht Club, I had noticed that they picked up each other's way of saying things. One woman would come in with a new bracelet that just dropped in town, and then they'd all have it. They did it with language, too, they had their own way of speaking and there was a contagion to it. In my mind, Michaela just sort of said it one day, and then Simone said it back, and it became something the two of them say. I just made it up. That's in the play. There are very few things that are verbatim in the play that make it to the series, but Jose calling Michaela 'Mi Amor,' and then later transferring that to someone else, that's always been in there. I love Jose. I wanted to keep it because it's a good reminder that Jose has a lot of power in this house. He sees and knows everything, and says nothing. He knows where all the bodies are buried. He's higher up on the food chain than Michaela, even though it doesn't seem like that when you meet them. There's a tinge of condescension to 'Mi Amor' as well. So, the locket — no, there's no drugs, but the lockets are a real thing in Nantucket Island. It's something you can only buy in Nantucket, they're called basket necklaces, and they usually have ivory from Wales in them. But they're very expensive, they're handmade, and everyone in Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard is wearing them. It's a status symbol. You're not in the club if you don't have one. Carolyn Duncan made that happen, made all of them happen. It's a great symbol of having arrived. You have the key, you have the necklace, but it's a little culty. It's a little like wearing a cross, like a religion. You know something that everyone else doesn't. When Homer first describes sirens, he describes them as half-bird, half-woman. Eventually, over time, they became the sexualized mermaid thing, but their original portrayal was half-monster, half-woman. They're awful, they're ugly — it's really interesting how it changed over time. So that's part of it, it's a nod to the original Greek mythology. The other part is, Michaela has filled her life with something to mother, something to care about. And I think she might consider herself a rare bird. But they're also predators. They look very beautiful, but they'll rip your face out and break your heart and come back and smash your window. They're not sweet. Sirens are not sweet. They're half predator. This interview has been edited and of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Telegraph
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Sirens, review: a delightful skewering of the mega-rich
Do you enjoy The White Lotus, The Perfect Couple and Succession? Then you have a taste for wealth TV and will luxuriate in the details to be found in Sirens (Netflix), in which Julianne Moore plays the kind of preposterously rich American who gets her favourite chocolate 'overnighted' from Japan and has a peregrine falcon called Barnaby. Michaela Kell, for that is her name, married a billionaire and now lives a life of splendour in a clifftop estate, where a retinue of staff maintain insane levels of perfection and a chef must come up with ever-more original types of smoothie ('Today we have a black cherry cold press with sea kelp and tarragon'). It's a blackly comic affair, and while it's nowhere near the level of Succession or the first two White Lotus series, it whips along with a healthy sense of the absurd. Just when you're wondering about the quality of it, Michaela's husband turns up and he's played by Kevin Bacon, who doesn't do much TV so it's a treat to have him here. We see all this through the eyes of an outsider, Devon DeWitt (The White Lotus's Meghann Fahy), a grungy falafel server whom we first meet after she's spent a night in jail. With her problems piling up – her car has been impounded, she's got no cash, and she's the chief carer for her dad – she heads off on a whim to visit her estranged sister, Simone (Milly Alcock), who has put their tough childhood behind her and found a job as Michaela's super-efficient personal assistant. 'There's a transient person at the house asking for you. She's carrying hot garbage and she says she's your sister,' a maid tells the horrified Simone, whose first instinct is to hide Devon from her boss and try to send her packing. But Devon ends up staying when she begins to suspect that Michaela is running some sort of cult. The action takes place over one weekend – and just five episodes, a welcome change from the usual TV bloat. Fahy is great, swiftly moving beyond the caricature of a hot mess to give us a fearless, likeable character. What lets Sirens down a little bit is the tone. There is emotional depth in the relationship between the two sisters and with Devon and her father (the estimable Bill Camp), who has been diagnosed with dementia. But the scenes suggestive of a cult, with Michaela's Stepford Wives-style acolytes in matching dresses and crazed grins, don't work at all. Moore wafts around being by turns icy, woo-woo and intense, in a role that could just as easily have been played by Nicole Kidman. The main pleasure is in the ridiculous details of the Kells' lifestyle, from bird funerals and perfumed underwear to Michaela asking her PA to script sexy matrimonial text messages. The estate is a character in itself. 'Of course they're bad people,' says a visiting Vanity Fair photographer. 'Look at their house.'
The Guardian
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Last Incel review – the hate, horror and comedy that lurk online
Three men are gathered in an online forum to speak of women as cunts, bitches and 'Beckys'. These are 'incels', who boast a coded vocabulary of hate and valorise male celibacy. That is, until a fourth man among them has sex. The opening scene is the morning after and the woman he spent the night with stands hovering behind his laptop. Cuckboy (Fiachra Corkery) and fellow incels Ghost (GoblinsGoblinsGoblins) Crusher (Jackson Ryan) and Einstain (Jimmy Kavanagh) are volubly and virulently anti-women. 'Feminists have destroyed male and female courtship,' says one. But gradually they are shown to be desperate for intimacy, once the itch has been scratched by Cuckboy's hookup with Margaret (Justine Stafford). First staged at the Edinburgh fringe last summer, this show about incel ideology, and what leads men to attack the opposite sex with such fulminating misogyny, has only grown in relevance. A black comedy by Dublin-based writer Jamie Sykes, who directs too, it takes the high-stakes decision to eke laughter from a culture based on hate and sometimes murderous terror. And on the whole it succeeds. Visually it has a ludicrous set up, the actors carrying cardboard frames in lieu of laptop scenes, which, when they glitch or are turned off, show characters comically frozen on the screen. The script sometimes elicits sympathy for these men, some of whom were terribly bullied boys once; all of whom are evidently lonely, inadequate outsiders. Their contempt for women turns your stomach but their loathing is turned inwards too, with graphic self-hatred, depression, and an almost fetished attitude towards suicide – although the drama does not go further into that darkness. It is at its best when it captures the men's twisted sexual hunger. 'Women,' they chant, and you feel their resentful yearning. The actors give thoroughly fabulous performances, and the show includes breakouts of music and movement that archly reflect the men's sexual frustration in dance, then turn into expressions of inner turmoil with wavy-armed Kate Bush-style emoting. These interludes are very amusing, but perhaps repeated too often to lessened effect. Margaret is too conveniently a journalist who wants to find out what makes these men tick. Also too conveniently, she makes all the intellectual counter-challenging arguments against inceldom, throwing the Magdalene laundries and Irish laws around contraception into the mix, as well as bringing in the story of her brother, too briefly. The men threaten to dox her and it is a potentially terrifying moment – especially in light of the misogynistic online threats that women all too often receive – but the danger here is too quickly neutered. The ending does not have the punch it might, yet this play is gripping, queasily entertaining, and shows clear signs of arresting originality. Skyes is definitely one to watch. At the Pleasance theatre, London, until 31 May
Vogue
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
How the Sister Midnight Team Made a Punk-Rock Feminist Fable Set in a Mumbai Slum
Sister Midnight is a Mumbai-set black comedy following Uma (Radhika Apte), a headstrong woman fresh from the sticks who's chafing at her arranged marriage to a distant man. As she grapples with isolation and circumscribed domesticity, Uma's frustrations manifest in ways both macabre and surreal (not to mention darkly funny), including sucking blood and galavanting with a gaggle of stop-motion goats. Boasting striking compositions (with every shot evocatively storyboarded), rich colors, and the first score composed by Interpol frontman Paul Banks, writer-director Karan Kandhari's feature debut premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival in Directors' Fortnight and was nominated for outstanding debut at the BAFTAs. It's a marvelously audacious, utterly sui generis salute to those who defiantly flout tired rules and clash with customs, whether you call that feminism or punk rock; really, they're two sides of the same rebellious coin, Kandhari points out. 'The film is a hymn to being an outsider,' the London-based filmmaker tells Vogue. 'I'm attracted to misfits and weirdos and people who don't fit in society.' The film was inspired by his first visit to Mumbai 20 years ago. 'I was mesmerized by this chaotic city, full of character and contradictions. It possessed me.' He'd always gravitated toward films where specific cities loomed large, like the Hong Kong of Chungking Express and the New York of Taxi Driver. But Mumbai is also a place where he struggled. 'I found it very hard to penetrate. A lot of this film is about loneliness, which I experienced the first time I went there,' he explains. Its story is about operating in the world without a manual, whatever your role: adult, man, woman, husband, wife. 'It spun out from this one moment in the traditional setup of an arranged marriage,' Kandhari says. 'The very next morning, after the dude has gone to work, what happens? The whole thing unfurled from that.'
