Phoenician schemes with Anderson's flair

Knowing his niche audience well, filmmaker Wes Anderson sticks to what works for his crowd in The Phoenician Scheme. This includes an off-the-wall, nonsensical story with phenomenal cast members putting their skills towards a staccato style dialect amid fantastical sets. As in his Best Picture Oscar nominated Grand Budapest Hotel, the allure comes from a sense of play joining a fairy tale sort of world where the outrageous seems perfectly normal.  Using a stiff but challenging approach to dialogue repeatedly lures big name stars, in this case Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, F. Murray Abraham, Bryan Cranston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johannson, and others in small roles that often have them delivering overlapping shouting matches. A couple of larger roles go to Michael Cera and Mia Threapleton, whose large eyes and knowing looks show her genetic link to mom Kate Winslett.  Benecio del Toro leads action as a billionaire out to preserve the title Phoenician scheme, a corporate shell game that possibly has no bearing on anything but simply spurs one meeting after another, each featuring bizarre characters and circumstances.  Some viewers might go deeper and find a redemption story from Anderson and co-author Roman Coppola, who also tap into religion, with Bill Murray playing God. However as generally happens in the various Anderson-Coppola projects, most rewards come from taking a ride off the mainstream into an imaginative world that happily avoids predictability.