Dream Scheme

We had the pleasure of watching Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme (2025) this week. We got exactly what we thought we would, but I don't think we got much more.

It starts in a private airplane in the 1950s, where we meet Benicio del Toro, playing dealmaker Zsa-Zsa Korda. The plane is suddenly shot down. Del Toro ejects his pilot and attempts a crash landing in a corn field. He finds himself in a black-and-white heaven, about to be judged, but comes to. Soon he is recuperating in a tub, in a large bathroom, with private nurses and champagne cooling in the bidet.

Tired of all the assassination attempts, del Toro contacts his estranged daughter, Mia Threapleton. She is a Catholic novitiate, and isn't interested in his business, but he has made her his heir. That way, if he is killed, no one but her will benefit. When we meet his nine preteen sons (by his three pre-deceased wives), they are pretty savage - I kind of suspected them. 

He explains his latest and greatest scheme: a massive overhaul of the country of Phoenicia. The plans are in several shoeboxes, one for each stage of the scheme, and their related funders. Then there's the Gap - the funding shortfall. He will take Threapleton along to see how he can close the gap. 

At an international secret law enforcement conference, Rupert Friend explains the del Toro, is an arms dealer and middleman who causes wars and peace where America and other governments don't necessarily want them. Friend plans to bankrupt del Toro by increasing the price of mashable rivets - increasing the Gap.

So we see del Toro meeting his investors and trying to swindle, charm or strong-arm them into putting some extra money in. These include Tom Hanks and Brian Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Almaric, Jeffery Wright and [REDACTED], his brother. All throughout, he is completely confident, even while being nearly killed over and over - visiting Heaven each time. His catch-phrase is "Myself, I feel very safe" - usually just before someone attempts to kill him. 

Del Toro also has a personal assistant, who is also an entomologist so he can lecture during downtime. He's played by Michael Cera, with a Swedish chef accent. He gets close to Threapleton, even though she's going to be a nun.

Del Toro's Korda (named after the classic filmmakers?) is quirky, resilient, supremely confident, and unreflexively amoral. He carries a crate of hand grenades around, and hands them out like cigars. He is always wounded but never slows down. He's rich enough to do business deals with the Catholic church. I'm not sure if he's meant to be likable, or just interesting. But he is definitely interesting. And I don't know if there's really much of a story here, although people do grow and change in good ways. 

But what the movie really delivers on is the Wes Anderson look - symmetrical frames, period pastels, odd details. Its story is not as convoluted as Asteroid City or as random as French Dispatch. So if you liked all the meta stuff in those, too bad. But if you don't care too much about playing with structure, and just want to see some Andersonic fun, this should work for you. 

Squared Jaws

SInce we enjoyed the original, we were looking forward to the sequel: The Accountant² (2025).

It starts in a bingo parlor/dive bar. Daniella Pineda is meeting up with J.K. Simmons, retired to private practice since the last movie. He wants her to find the Salvadoran mother, father and son in an old photo. She declines, but mentions that he has been followed. Soon, they are both fighting their way out. She escapes, but he is shot by a sniper. 

His replacement at the Financial Crimes Unit, Cynthia Addai-Robinson (from the last movie), sees that he has written "Find the Accountant" on his arm. But he (Ben Affleck) finds her first. After reviewing Simmon's pile o' evidence, he decides he needs to bring his brother, Jon Bernthal in to help. To get info on the gangs, they go to a cheap motel and order up a trio of hookers. Bernthal gently asks them to call their security guard. When he shows up, they stuff him into the trunk of Addai-Robinson's car. This is a little bit too illegal for her, so they split up.

Working on her own, she discovers that the woman in the old photo is Daniella Pineda. She had a bump on the head and developed Acquired Savant Syndrome, giving her amnesia and awesome martial arts skills. 

Meanwhile the brothers have figured out that the boy in the photo was separated from the family and is being trafficked. So it's off to Juarez for the big showdown.

First, I want to complain about the running time - there's no need for this to be 2 hours, 12 minutes. There's a scene early on where Affleck tries speed dating. He's reverse-engineered the algorithm to attract women, but his autistic personality drives them off. What is the point of this scene? I guess it's kind of funny, but doesn't contribute to the plot. And we don't really need it for characterization. 

Bernthal gets an introduction where he's trying to chat with a woman in a fancy penthouse. She's clearly terrified, but he just wants to get to know her. When he leaves, we see that he has killed everyone else in the room, but left her, since she's just sex-work bystander. It's a fine scene, a little long, but, you know, we might have enjoyed the action scene that came, unseen, before it. 

I do like Bernthal here. He's get a great look, all cheekbones and a broken nose. He is assured where Affleck is confused by the world of people and emotions. And they are great in the action schemes when we do get them.

We also get the Airstream from the last movie, as well as the home for weaponized autistic children. But this is treated like sacred lore - something for fans to drool over. It's all fine, but I wasn't as excited as I perhaps was supposed to be. 

Still, it was a fine action movie, and we managed to finish it over two nights. And I suppose we'll watch Accountant Cubed when they make it. 

Killer Kung Fu

Put on The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979) because I just felt like a like old-school kung fu action. I was not aware of the Wu Tang connection.

It starts with Mark Long going around challenging various kung fu masters, throwing down a metal plate with a mask on it, and killing them with his Five Elements Style. The son of one of the victims is Lee Yi Min. He vows vengeance and goes to enroll in a kung fu school. Before he arrives, he gets in a fight outside a chess school. The chess master's cute daughter gets him to stop the fight, and Long discovers that the guy he was fighting is a senior student at the kung fu school. But he decides to attend anyway.

At the school, he is bullied by the seniors, and made to wait on them at meals. He notices that the cook has some skills, and gets him to teach him some kung fu - mostly rice bowl related. So the next time the senior tries to bully him at dinner, he can skillfully maneuver as many rice bowls as needed. 

But someone finds that he has the metal plate that the killer leaves as a challenge. We know find that this man is ... Ghost Face Killer! The plate is the Ghost Face Killing Plate. Long is mistaken for an accomplice, rather than someone seeking revenge, and expelled. 

So he seeks out the chess master, who has been hiding from GFK. He doesn't want to teach our hero, but his daughter talks him into it. Training is mostly chess, with some light torture (they string him up in a split, while daughter contemplates his crotch) thrown in. But will he understand chess boxing before the Ghost Face Killer shows up?

So, now I know where Ghostface Killah got his name. I understand there is a song as well. That's cool, although I'm too old for Wu Tang Clan (it's for the children, right?). But this also delivers a lot of kung fu exercises and stunts, delivered well. I particularly liked the rice bowl gags. I don't know if the Five Elements forms were particularly interesting, but we got a lot of them, and many other styles - including chess boxing. 

Paradise Island

We wtched The Island (2023) for one reason: Michael Jai White. Also, Ms. Spenser needed to work, so I put on sonething where she didn't have to pay attention to.

It starts on The Island - an unnamed Caribbean island, played by St. Kitts and Nevis. A lovely singer is auditioning for club owner Edoardo Costa. He tells her she's hired, and acts very suave, until a wiater spills some wine on her. Then he stabs the waiter in the neck, and tells her she works for him now.

Cut to LA: Two undercover cops, White and Jackson Rathbone, are doing a drug deal. White is quiet and serious, Rathbone a motor-mouthed goofball. Things go wrong, but they handle it easily (at least White does). Then White gets a call - his brother, the waiter, is dead.

He heads for the island and starts investigating. He also meets up with his ex-wife Gillian White (his real-life wife). She teaches martial arts to kids. Think she'll get taken by the bad guys as a hostage? Think she'll get out of it? Will Rathbone show up to help out? You probably don't need to watch to find out. 

White is a fine martial artist, although he might be starting to age out. He doesn't have a lot of long fights here. When he does, he is very fast, and his high kicks are flawless. I really wish we had more movies with him really working out. But even when he isn't fighting, he has a great presence and a deep, smooth voice. This movie wasn't anything special, but he made it worth it.

In conclusion, we've been watching a lot of Death In Paradise lately. If you haven't seen it, it's a BBC TV show set on a Caribbean island, where a series of eccentric British police detectives solve a series of seemingly impossible murders. Due to the setting of this movie, I kept getting confused about when the detective would show up.

Aargh Island

I finally saw Cutthroat Island (1995), all 2+ hours of it. I've been a fan of pirates forever now, and went to see all the bad 1980s pirate movies, Yellowbeard, Pirates, The Pirates Movie, ... This is sort of the last entry (1995 is very late 80s), and I guess I had wised up by this time. 

It starts with a sexy little sex piece, introducing us to Geena Davis as pirate Morgan Adams and her monkey sidekick. Then she goes to rescue her pirate father from her pirate uncle. Each has a one-third piece of the treasure map to Cutthroat Island. They escape, but her father dies. Since his part of the map is tattooed on his head, she scalps him, but finds that the map is in Latin. To find a Latin scholar, they go to the slave market, where they purchase talented scoundrel Matthew Modine. 

And so Davis and Modine set out to find the other two-thirds of the map while being chased by her uncles. We get sword fights, sea battles, storms and shipwrecks, mutinies and every other thing you can think of in a pirate movie. But a smart script and some direction might have been nice. We get olde-timey dialog, spoken in dead California accents. We get incongruous humorous quips, falling like lead balloons. And that's the big problem. 

The action is done quite well - this is directed by Renny Harlin, who is pretty good at that. We see Davis doing her own stunts a lot. She doesn't look that great doing them, but points for effort. We get great practical effects, what looks like a real ship or three, and some nice miniatures. All these are things we love. But as soon as someone opens their mouth, oof.

I don't think that Davis is the problem. It's her husband, Rennie Harlin, a very mixed director who did much better with her next movie, The Long Kiss Goodnight. 

In conclusion, this pretty much killed the pirate movie until Depp put on eye shadow.

The Scottish Movie

It turns out that I've never seen (or read) any version of the Scottish Play (except Throne of Blood). So, to celebrate spooky season, we watched Macbeth (2015).

It starts with a battle, with Michael Fassbender as MacB defeating King Duncan's enemy. After the battle, Fassbender and Patty Considine as Banquo come upon the witches - four, because one brings a little girl. I assume the witched are Maiden, Mother (with Daughter) and Crone. They predict that MacBeth will be Thane of Cawdor and King, but will not start a lineage. Banquo will be father of kings.

When MacB returns from the wars, he finds that King Duncan, David Thewlis, has executed the Thane of Cawdor and gives the title to MacB. So the prediction comes partly true. Now it's time to kill Duncan. Although the king has selected Malcolm as heir, Lady Macbeth (Marion Cotillard) and a ghost urge him on. He does the deed, and kind of freaks out. Malcolm sees which way the wind is blowing and takes of. In his absence, Macbeth is proclaimed king.

There are some more murders, some more witches' prophecies, and more ghosts. We were mainly into the ghosts and witches, and we get them. We also get all the good speeches, with Cotillard doing several great Lady Macbeth monologues. The acting and cast seem to be top notch. It is also a very cinematic film, with lots of atmosphere and some nice battle scenes. But it seems to me that they cut the original play down a lot to fit it all in. That's fine, but I'll want to watch a less trimmed version soon.

This was directed by Justin Kurzel - we last saw him directing Assassins' Creed. Seems random, but they do both star Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Maybe this was his way of repaying them.

Working Title

David Ayer has made another profession-based action film with Jason Statham. Last time was bees, now he's just A Working Man (2025).

Statham is a construction foreman for Michael Peña's firm in Chicago. He's well loved by his crew and Peña's family. He also has a young daughter who is in the custody of her grandfather - he sleeps in his car to save money to pay lawyers to help get her back.

Ariana Rivas plays Peña's daughter, who just started college. She goes out for a night on the town with some friends and gets roofied and abducted by some shady characters. Peña turns to Statham for help, because he knows he was a commando in the British armed services. Statham isn't sure about doing this - he's trying to keep his head down for his daughter. But his friend, blind veteran David Harbour convinces him.

So he starts in the bar where she was last scene and goes from there. At each stage he picks up a new link in the chain, and usually kills a few people - sometimes before he gets any info. Kind of sloppy. 

And so it goes. Rivas was kidnapped by the Russian Mafia for sex purposes and sold to a random (?) pervert. I think he's random, but they didn't pay a lot of attention to him. Long story short, Statham finds her, and while he's taking out the henchman, she kills the pervert. And it all ends happily, with a hint of a sequel.

Now the screenplay was cowritten by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone, so it shouldn't be surprising that it is both less goofy and more cliched than Beekeeper. Also, a different kind of weird - there weren't any shadowy agencies or tech bro hackers funding US Presidents. Just standard combat veterans, Russian mafia, and the occasional biker. It was a lot less bonkers, although it was weird in some ways. For one, Statham really seemed to take his time searching for Rivas. No time pressure felt at all. 

Still, if you like Statham and sort of generic action, this was as well done as any. I have no complaints. 

Original Sin

Now that Spooky Season has started in earnest, we got to see the latest fine Ryan Coogler horror: Sinners (2025).

Set in 1920s Clarksdale Mississippi, it starts with a young man Miles Caton entering a small church to see his father, the preacher. He's bloodied and carries a busted guitar. His father tells him this is the result of sin and asks him if he's ready to renounce his evil ways. Cut to one day earlier.

The twins, Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan, are standing by a rundown structure looking badass. They just got back from Chicago, with a bunch of money. A white man shows up to sell them the place. They plan to turn it into juke joint - opening that night. They go meet up with Caton, their cousin. He plays blues on a resonator guitar they gave him and they want him to play the joint that night. He also goes along to help them set up. 

One twin goes to town to the Chinese grocery for supplies. He already has a truckload of bootleg booze but they'll need some catfish. When some no-accounts try to lift some of the booze, he shoots them in the street. That establishes his badassery. He also recruits his (ex-?) wife Wunmi Mosaku, a hoodoo woman, as cook. The other twin and Caton go looking for harp player Del Roy Lindo as another entertainer. 

Around this time, a badly burnt man, Jack O'Connell, comes to a white couple's door, begging them to let him in and hide him from the Choctaw who are chasing him. Which they think is strange, because there are no Choctaw in Mississippi. They do hide him, the Choctaw show up and leave, and as the sun goes down, he turns out to be a vampire, who turns the couple. 

At the juke joint, things are hopping. Caton does a blues number which opens the portals of time and space, and the joint becomes crowded with African griots and dancers, hip-hop dancers and MCs, and maybe some spacemen. There are more musical numbrs (none surreal like this), and a lot of fun, with sexy times for many, including Caton.

But then O'Connell and his two friends show up at the door, asking to be invited in. They just want to hear some music, have a drink, you know, good times. The black folk inside tell them to move along, but they say they sing and play too - doing a pretty version of Pick Poor Robin Clean. They still won't get invited in. Mosaku figures out that they are "haints", in fact, they are vampires.

Now the battle of the white vampires (soon to become integrated with the newly turned) vs. jukers. The vampires love Irish music, and perform a lively dance number - this movie is about the power of music. 

And it ends with Caton, now an old man (played by Buddy Guy!) meeting some vampires, still young. SPOILER, I guess. It looks like he did not renounce the life of sin, but he also stayed mortal.

It's funny that so much of this movie takes place outside the vampire story. It's more about black life in old Clarksdale, home of the blues. The casual and serious racism, the bonds of friendships and family, the cotton, the music. The music is great, but I have one nit to pick: Some of the blues sounded a bit modern, especially Alvin Youngblood Hart's Travellin', which was sort of the theme. It had a sophisticated structure where I like a simpler, 12-bar Delta style. But the musicians, who included Cedric Burnside and Buddy Guy, are great. Caton does his own singing, and he's pretty great too.

Another nit I could pick is that the movie had problems sticking to a style and theme. The historical race drama, the surreal musical, the vampire horror, the power of music, all mixed up. But I won't complain about that. It was a bit of a mix, but a skillful one. No matter what the tone was, it always looked great.