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    Art house drama hits real life

    A movie as a protest warmup? Sweet Crude hits the Angelika just as Chevronbraces for visitors

    Joe Leydon
    May 25, 2010 | 5:18 pm

    Talk about topicality: As the cataclysmic Gulf oil spill continues apace — and, not incidentally, as activists prepare to gather in Houston Wednesday to protest at the Chevron shareholders meeting — the Angelika Film Center will present a special screening of Sweet Crude, an acclaimed documentary about the true cost of oil, the global environmental crisis, and the struggle for resource control in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, at 8:30 p.m. tonight.

    But wait, there’s more: After the screening, there’ll be a panel discussion with Macon Hawkins, an oil worker who, despite his experiences as a hostage held by Niger Delta militants, remains sympathetic to the needs of the region’s people; Emem Okon, a leader of Nigeria’s women’s movement; Omoyele Sowore, an activist from a Chevron production area in Nigeria, now a U.S.-based journalist; and Sandy Cioffi, director of Sweet Crude, who attracted international attention in April 2008 when she, her production crew and a Nigerian colleague were arrested by members of the Nigerian military in an effort to shut down the film.

    And why, you might ask, were those soldiers so eager to impede production of Sweet Crude? Well, maybe they were image-conscious soldiers. As my Variety colleague John Anderson noted in his rave review of the film, Cioffi doesn't paint a pretty picture:

    “After 50 years and $700 billion in oil sucked out of the ground by Royal Dutch Shell and its co-conspirator, Chevron, the Niger Delta is among the most polluted places on Earth, says UC Berkeley geography professor Michael Watts, Cioffi's most astute talking head. Watts clarifies something else essential about Nigeria: "The exploited African nation is a very shaky, rickety federation that isn't a natural nation at all, but has always been a ripe candidate for divide-and-conquer colonialism."

    “This is not the movie I intended to make," Cioffi says in her initial voiceover, explaining she was there to make a movie about a library, the construction of which marked a rare collaboration between the government, oil companies and usually contentious tribal interests. But the students involved used the opening ceremony to mount a protest over their exploited resources, and Cioffi knew she had another movie to make.

    It's a movie that may find a sizeable and concerned audience here in H-Town, which reportedly has one of the largest Nigerian populations of any United States city.

    unspecified
    news/entertainment

    Movie Review

    Houston native Wes Anderson shows off comedic side in The Phoenician Scheme

    Alex Bentley
    Jun 6, 2025 | 4:00 pm
    Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera in The Phoenician Scheme
    Photo courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features
    Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera in The Phoenician Scheme.

    If you were to do a poll of the best comedy filmmakers of the 21st century, writer/director Wes Anderson is not the obvious choice to come out on top, but there’s an argument to be made for him. His quirky style doesn’t yield the guffaws that more broad comedies do, but the absurd situations he creates in his films are often more consistently funny than anything else.

    Anderson’s inimitable approach is once again on full display in The Phoenician Scheme. At its center is Zsa-Zsa Gorda (Benicio Del Toro), a much-hated businessman who’s looking to complete a number of big projects in the fictional country of Phoenicia. As he seems to be the target of multiple assassination attempts, he appoints his daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), as his heir to try to ensure his legacy.

    Both she and his new assistant, Bjorn (Michael Cera), accompany him around the country as he tries to enact a scheme to have others cover the bulk of the cost for the various projects. Those he attempts to convince include Phoenician Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed), brothers Leland (Tom Hanks) and Reagan (Bryan Cranston), fellow businessman Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), ship captain Marty (Jeffrey Wright), his Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson), and Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch).

    Put in Andersonian terms, the film is a mix between the madcap antics from The Grand Budapest Hotel and the impenetrable storytelling of Asteroid City. If you were to try to understand every detail of what’s going on in the story of The Phoenician Scheme, it might take three or more viewings to do so. But the film is still highly entertaining because Anderson fills its frames with his typical visual delights, great wordplay, and his particular version of slapstick.

    Much of the comedy of the film derives from Anderson inserting moments that initially come as a surprise and then utilizing them as running jokes. The film features more blood than usual for the filmmaker, but each time a character gets wounded (or worse), it gets funnier. The assassination attempts get broader as the film goes along, and the matter-of-fact way in which they’re treated by Gorda and others is also hilarious.

    Of course, Anderson is the cinephile’s comedy director, so the film is also full of high-brow things like allusions to paintings, tributes to other filmmakers, and classical music. Each time Gorda has an attempt on his life, he briefly finds himself in a version of limbo, depicted in black-and-white by Anderson. The cast of characters Gorda finds there - including Bill Murray as God - could come straight out of a 1950s Ingmar Bergman movie.

    Del Toro has delivered some great performances over the years, but this one is near the top for him. This is his second Anderson film (following The French Dispatch) and he nails the deadpan method. Also great is Cera, who uses a ridiculous accent to make a big impression. Threapleton, the daughter of Kate Winslet, makes the most of her first big film role. The list of supporting actors is too deep to properly laud everyone, but they all fit in seamlessly.

    Opinions will differ, but for this critic’s money, Anderson is at his best when he fully leans into the comedy of his films. He does just that in The Phoenician Scheme, to the point that it doesn’t matter that the story is overly complex. The combination of his eye for visual detail, a witty script, and committed performances make it a success.

    ---

    The Phoenician Scheme is now playing in theaters.

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