The Phoenician Scheme

critic Reviews

, 77% Certified Fresh Tomatometer Score
  • A caper made with all the intricacy of a Rube Goldberg machine, The Phoenician Scheme doesn't deviate from Wes Anderson's increasingly ornate style but delivers the formula with mannered delicacy.
  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Kimberley JonesAustin Chronicle
    More charitably, The Phoenician Scheme is a palate cleanser – a lovely lark, a spirits lifter.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Ann HornadayWashington Post
    At its fleeting best — in its meditation on the transactional and the transcendent — this one feels like it’s reaching for something more than surface charm.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Michael PhillipsChicago Tribune
    A beautiful mixed bag, let’s say, all told.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Max WeissBaltimore Magazine
    I was thoroughly entertained and left a bit cold.
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  • , Rotten Tomatometer Score
    Coleman SpildeSalon.com
    The resulting product is just that: a product, with all of the matte pastel appeal of Anderson’s oeuvre, yet little of its memorable charm.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Justin ChangThe New Yorker
    The result is more digestible, though also less moving, than Anderson’s recent Asteroid City, but it does have a stealth emotional weapon in Threapleton’s Liesl, who exudes the intelligence and self-possession of a young Anna Karina.
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  • , Rotten Tomatometer Score
    Yasser MedinaCinefilia
    Despite the elegant aesthetic, I suspect the narrative treads on average ground and becomes somewhat superficial with its group of eccentric characters led by Benicio del Toro. [Full review in Spanish]
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Natalia TrzenkoLa Nación (Argentina)
    ...[The Phoenician Scheme is] a story that once again explores the complicated ties between parents and children, although in such an exaggerated formula that it surpasses the absurd and dangerously approaches the ridiculous. [Full review in Spanish]
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Eric MarchenRogers TV
    Del Toro carries himself similarly to how Orson Welles once did: larger-than-life, cutthroat, and cultured. He’s a citizen who belongs nowhere and everywhere. 

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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Sebastian Zavala KahnCinencuentro
    Everything looks great, but it fails to generate much emotional impact, and it also feels a bit tedious, as if Anderson were running out of visual and stylistic resources. [Full review in Spanish].
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