Tag: Tom Hanks

New Movie The Phoenician Scheme Streaming On Prime Friday December 5, 2025

The Phoenician Scheme stars Benicio Del Toro as wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda who appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins. The Movie also stars:

  • Mia Threapleton
  • Michael Cera
  • Riz Ahmed
  • Tom Hanks
  • Bryan Cranston
  • Mathieu Amalric
  • Richard Ayoade
  • Jeffrey Wright
  • Richard Ayoade
  • Scarlett Johansson
  • Benedict Cumberbatch
  • Rupert Friend
  • Hope Davis

The Phoenician Scheme was produced, written and directed by Wes Anderson from a story he conceived with Roman Coppola. The Phoenician Scheme had its world premiere in the main competition of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2025 and was released theatrically in the United States by Focus Features on Friday May 30, and in Germany by Universal Pictures on June 29, 2025.

From The BBC Article by Emma Jones May 21, 2025:

One of the trademarks of a Wes Anderson film is the guaranteed tranche of famous faces that always appear. But the charismatic actor set to be the biggest talking point in Anderson’s latest feature, The Phoenician Scheme, is practically unknown. Twenty-four-year-old Mia Threapleton, whose mother is the actor Kate Winslet, has been described by critics as “sensational” in her first leading role, following the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this week.
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Threapleton plays Liesl, a red-lipped, pipe-smoking, alcohol-drinking noviciate nun, whose withering put-downs turn her father Zsa Zsa Korda, a wealthy tycoon embarking on a questionable multi-national infrastructure project (aka “The Phoenician Scheme”), into putty. She is ordered out of her convent to go on a trip with him, as he tries to groom her, comedy Don Corleone-style, for the family business.
⋅
An exploration of a family dynamic is hardly a departure for this director, but Anderson says that he and Coppola had been planning something quite different for the story. They were, he says, intending on writing something “very dark” about an industrialist who “is not really concerned with how the big decisions he has empowered himself to make for the world, are affecting populations of workforces and landscapes.”
⋅
“Originally what I thought we would make was about a guy who refuses to be killed, who refuses to die even when he does die, and that he’s gathering people, resources, minerals, great possessions and money and none of it is having any effect on him,” Anderson tells the BBC. “It was going to be about someone who learns a lot and changes zero. But that wasn’t what we ended up writing at all.” By the end of the first scene, he adds, they’d gone into “a vision, a biblical motif” which gives the film a black-and-white subplot of Korda’s judgement in heaven, presided over by Bill Murray as God. But the heart of the film became the father-daughter love story Threapleton and del Toro enact.
⋅
“I think if I didn’t have a nine-year-old daughter, this character Korda probably wouldn’t have a daughter,” Anderson confesses. “There’s also an inspiration for the character from my father-in-law (the late Lebanese construction entrepreneur Fouad Mikhael Malouf) and I observed the relationship between him and my wife. So parts of my life went into this one. Roman Coppola has a daughter, Benicio has a daughter. It’s something that connected all of us and I think that’s how it got into the centre of the film.”
⋅
The Phoenician Scheme was made in Babelsberg Studios in Germany; the cast and crew stayed together and shared mealtimes, which is standard practice on an Anderson set.  Threapleton describes the experience as “the best summer camp ever”.
⋅
“The idea of the circus, or the travelling acting troupe, that’s what I am drawn to and I like stories with that kind of atmosphere,” Anderson says. “There is an itinerant feel about the way I make films; we tend to make these stories in different countries, in different settings, and we bring our group to those places, and it’s always a big reunion when we start a new movie. Ultimately, I think the only true reason why we work this way is because I think it’s more fun and I like it more.”
(L to R) Benicio Del Toro as Zsa-Zsa Korda and Mia Threapleton as Liesl in director Wes Anderson’s THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Benicio Del Toro stars as Zsa-Zsa Korda in director Wes Anderson’s THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Mia Threapleton stars as Liesl in director Wes Anderson’s THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.

Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme Coming To Theaters Friday May 30, 2025

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE!

The Phoenician Scheme stars Benicio Del Toro as wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda who appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins. The Movie also stars:

  • Mia Threapleton
  • Michael Cera
  • Riz Ahmed
  • Tom Hanks
  • Bryan Cranston
  • Mathieu Amalric
  • Richard Ayoade
  • Jeffrey Wright
  • Richard Ayoade
  • Scarlett Johansson
  • Benedict Cumberbatch
  • Rupert Friend
  • Hope Davis

The Phoenician Scheme was produced, written and directed by Wes Anderson from a story he conceived with Roman Coppola. The Phoenician Scheme had its world premiere in the main competition of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2025 and will be released theatrically in the United States by Focus Features on Friday May 30, and in Germany by Universal Pictures on June 29, 2025.

From The BBC Article by Emma Jones May 21, 2025:

One of the trademarks of a Wes Anderson film is the guaranteed tranche of famous faces that always appear. But the charismatic actor set to be the biggest talking point in Anderson’s latest feature, The Phoenician Scheme, is practically unknown. Twenty-four-year-old Mia Threapleton, whose mother is the actor Kate Winslet, has been described by critics as “sensational” in her first leading role, following the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this week.
⋅
Threapleton plays Liesl, a red-lipped, pipe-smoking, alcohol-drinking noviciate nun, whose withering put-downs turn her father Zsa Zsa Korda, a wealthy tycoon embarking on a questionable multi-national infrastructure project (aka “The Phoenician Scheme”), into putty. She is ordered out of her convent to go on a trip with him, as he tries to groom her, comedy Don Corleone-style, for the family business.
⋅
An exploration of a family dynamic is hardly a departure for this director, but Anderson says that he and Coppola had been planning something quite different for the story. They were, he says, intending on writing something “very dark” about an industrialist who “is not really concerned with how the big decisions he has empowered himself to make for the world, are affecting populations of workforces and landscapes.”
⋅
“Originally what I thought we would make was about a guy who refuses to be killed, who refuses to die even when he does die, and that he’s gathering people, resources, minerals, great possessions and money and none of it is having any effect on him,” Anderson tells the BBC. “It was going to be about someone who learns a lot and changes zero. But that wasn’t what we ended up writing at all.” By the end of the first scene, he adds, they’d gone into “a vision, a biblical motif” which gives the film a black-and-white subplot of Korda’s judgement in heaven, presided over by Bill Murray as God. But the heart of the film became the father-daughter love story Threapleton and del Toro enact.
⋅
“I think if I didn’t have a nine-year-old daughter, this character Korda probably wouldn’t have a daughter,” Anderson confesses. “There’s also an inspiration for the character from my father-in-law (the late Lebanese construction entrepreneur Fouad Mikhael Malouf) and I observed the relationship between him and my wife. So parts of my life went into this one. Roman Coppola has a daughter, Benicio has a daughter. It’s something that connected all of us and I think that’s how it got into the centre of the film.”
⋅
The Phoenician Scheme was made in Babelsberg Studios in Germany; the cast and crew stayed together and shared mealtimes, which is standard practice on an Anderson set.  Threapleton describes the experience as “the best summer camp ever”.
⋅
“The idea of the circus, or the travelling acting troupe, that’s what I am drawn to and I like stories with that kind of atmosphere,” Anderson says. “There is an itinerant feel about the way I make films; we tend to make these stories in different countries, in different settings, and we bring our group to those places, and it’s always a big reunion when we start a new movie. Ultimately, I think the only true reason why we work this way is because I think it’s more fun and I like it more.”
(L to R) Benicio Del Toro as Zsa-Zsa Korda and Mia Threapleton as Liesl in director Wes Anderson’s THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Benicio Del Toro stars as Zsa-Zsa Korda in director Wes Anderson’s THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Mia Threapleton stars as Liesl in director Wes Anderson’s THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.

Here

2024   Sony Pictures

Rated:  PG-13

Length:  1 hr  44min

Drama

Directed by:  Robert Zemeckis

Starring:  Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, and Kelly Reilly.

“Here, in a cinematic journey through time……time flies.”

From the very beginning you realize the camera is set. It never moves. The first thing you see are dinosaurs with a massive volcano in the background. Then the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Fast forward as you watch through the same lens pointed the same way…the ice age, then re-greening of the land. Onto the cave-men, then the Native American Indians, and then the colonists clear land and build a Mansion that is seen through the rest of the film. It is a brief look at history from the dinosaurs on through the present through a fixed lens on one plot of land.

Years later a house is constructed around the camera as a housing development gets built up. Then we see the different owners of the house through the years.. And we see five different families and generations grow, live and die in the house. All from the same camera angle. It was definitely something new and completely different to view. It was more of a cinematic journey than an in-depth drama, not to say there wasn’t personal drama that was explored as the families lived in the house.

That really is the gist of it without giving a lot away. There was AI de-aging as Tom Hanks and Robin Wright live out their lives in front of the camera. Both Tom and Robin are good in this, it had to have been a challenge to act in this movie given how it was filmed over a long period of chronological time. It was sort of like a play in that regard. I think you really have to enjoy the journey, just watch and experience the ride.

I loved it, I thought it was great. I loved the cinematic journey of watching History through a fixed lens, centered around one house and the different people and happenings within and outside those walls. “If these walls could talk.”

Highly Recommended!

Two Thumbs Up!

Greyhound

2020   Sony Pictures

Rated:  PG-13

Length:  1 hr  31min

Action ~ Drama ~ History ~ War

Directed by:  Aaron Schneider

Starring:  Tom Hanks, Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan, and Elisabeth Shue.

“The only thing more dangerous than the front lines was the fight to get there.”

Tom Hanks stars as US Navy Captain Ernest Krause commanding his first ship, The USS Keeling Destroyer codenamed “Greyhound”. The year is 1942 and Greyhound is assigned as an escort to a convoy of 37 merchant and troop ships headed for Liverpool, England. They have aircraft escorts as well, but they can only fly so far before they reach the point they have to fly back before they run out of fuel. Same thing on the other side of the Atlantic, the British escort fighter planes can only fly out to meet them so many miles. The middle of the Atlantic between these two Airplane boundaries where there is no Air protection from the Nazi U-Boat Submarines was called “The Black Pit”.

The Nazi U-Boat name was short for the German word “Unterseeboot”, meaning Under Sea Boat, shortened to U-Boat. It is the German term for Submarine. It was in The Black Pit where the German U-boats took advantage of the Convoys lack of air cover to hunt ships in the convoys. Without air support they were easy targets. They would typically travel in packs referred to as Wolfpacks to better hunt and sink Allied convoy ships. “Greyhound” details the 40 hour journey across the Black Pit by Captain Krause and his crew aboard the USS Keeling. As one of the four escort ships they encounter numerous U-boats and fight to destroy them and keep the convoy safe.

It is a stress filled, adrenaline fueled 40 hours fighting off ruthless U-boat attacks from every direction. There is little time for eating and no time for sleeping during the highly dangerous passage. Tom Hanks does an excellent job of portraying the Captain on his first mission across the Black Pit, displaying all the various emotions a first time Captain put into that precarious situation must have felt. The loss of men and ships weighing heavily on the man assigned to keep losses from happening. Stephen Graham also does a good job of portraying Lieutenant Commander Charlie Cole. You might remember him as “Baby Face Nelson” in Public Enemies(2009) or as “Tony Pro” Provenzano in “The Irishman”(2019), he has been in a lot of movies.

Elisabeth Shue plays Captain Krause’s girlfriend but you only see her in the very beginning of the movie before he departs out to sea. I thought it was a really great depiction of what it must have been like to cross the Atlantic during WWII. It is a nail-biter that will keep you on the edge of your seat as U-boats seem to come out of every direction to hunt and kill. It is based on the novel   The Good Shepherd by C. S. Forester. Although not a true story, it is a pretty accurate account of the crossing by hundreds of Convoys during WWII. During the course of the war there were 3,500 ships carrying millions of tons of cargo sunk. 72,200 souls were lost forever on those ships.

Definitely worth a watch, but it is a war movie portraying a sea battle, it may not be for everyone. But it is a damn good movie in my opinion.

Two Thumbs Up!