Titans of industry cannot come to terms. Despite the literal gap between them being a matter of feet—maybe 30 or so by my count—when their two locomotives come to a standstill in a tunnel with miles of track in either direction, Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro, tyrannical, avuncular) is unable to bridge the final inches with Leland and Reagan (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston, stone-faced). It’s an odd situation that becomes odder still when all parties realize the fate of their multimillion-dollar venture must now come down to a game of chance: and this one a bet on whether a Middle Eastern prince (Riz Ahmed) can sink a granny shot from below his knees while playing basketball’s ugly, redheaded step-cousin, HORSE.  It was at this exact moment I realized Wes Anderson had returned to full, magnificently daffy form. As easily the prodigal Texan’s best film in over a decade, The Phoenician Scheme rekindles much of the mirth that informed so many of Anderson’s early films. It is also the first instance one has had any narrative propulsion or tension since his last masterpiece, The Grand Budapest Hotel. While I would hesitate to place such lofty titles onto Phoenician, rest assured that it’s a balmy good time at the cinema where longtime fans get to again spend an evening with impeccably dressed cheats, droll scoundrels, and other variants on the unseemly father figure. Take del Toro’s Korda for instance. He begins the film by surviving what is jointly his sixth plane crash and assassination attempt. (The industrialist’s pilots fare less happily from his habit of falling out of the sky.) He isn’t sure who wants to kill him, but he seems confident it’s probably justified. Of his nine children, eight prepubescent boys live at home with him where their resentments already border on the homicidal. And the other offspring, a daughter he never really knew, wants nothing to do with him, even after he promises to bequeath her his entire fortune “on a trial basis.” Indeed, despite being a novitiate nun, Liesl (Mia Threapleton) has a tough time with forgiveness, especially when it comes to a would-be patriarch or patron. She does agree to at least get to know the old man, though, after he decides to gallivant around the world in a bid to save his empire (hence the aforementioned HORSE of fate). Rather boldly they even board plane after plane, alongside Korda’s ineffectual Swedish nanny-turned-attendant, Bjorn (a chipper Michael Cera doing an accent about three clicks south of the Muppets’ Chef). Together they meet a starry ensemble of walk-on cameos and eccentric business partners, my favorite of which is a preternaturally giddy Jeffrey Wright. Yet always operating beneath the surface is another tale of resentments between bad parents and their adult children. That plus a kooky murder mystery where Zsa-Zsa somehow keeps avoiding being the dead body. From the name of the protagonist alone, Anderson seems intent to signal to audiences with any degree of film knowledge that he is playing once more in the sandbox of his influences. It is hard to imagine a cineaste like Anderson, for example, hearing the moniker “Korda” and not thinking of anti-fascist Hungarian refugee-turned-British filmmaker, Alexander Korda, who directed aesthetic classics like The Thief of Baghdad (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941). Furthermore, Anderson pulls just as much from Korda contemporaries like fellow Hungarian ex-pat Michael Curtiz, particularly when Korda and Lisel wind up at a nightclub owned by Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric). And yes, another movie about traveling nannies and a precocious Liesl is alluded to as well. But the reason The Phoenician Scheme works so much better than Anderson’s last several movies is that while the filmmaker is visibly delighting in his references and what are almost assuredly private jokes between himself and co-writer Roman Coppola, the director also is avoiding the trap of becoming distracted by the aesthetics. Phoenician is still a beautifully designed world of straight lines and adroit square compositions, courtesy of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, where nothing feels natural. Not even the sun or tree vines discovered after Korda, Liesl, and Bjorn become lost in a jungle have any reality about them. But the simple pleasure of observing visual confections is not the be-all end unto itself that it previously was. The travelogue nature of the plot, in which a father and daughter go on an odyssey of unconventional boardroom meetings that include assassins, freedom fighters, and organized crime bigwigs, provides a skeletal structure where Anderson can graft on his increasing preference for narrative vignettes, but there is an emotional spine as well between Korda and Liesl that makes both the jokes and the pathos ebullient. Del Toro has never seemed bigger or more unshackled than as Zsa-zsa. Like most Anderson protagonists, Korda rarely speaks above a polite monotone, but his double-breasted confidence and adventurism provides del Toro with a refreshingly uninhibited floorspace. It also pairs nicely when bantering with Threapleton, a real discovery of a young talent who plays a nun with conviction, even as the twinge of curling judgment on her smile suggests she may never see Heaven. But then she dryly must channel the patience of Job when dodging the advances of a tipsy Bjorn (again, Cera is having too much fun) and the would-be buy-offs of an absentee father. The terrain of an unhappy adult and their aging parent is terrain Anderson has walked many times, but there’s a renewed vigor in his step in The Phoenician Scheme, perhaps because it is the first time he has crossed this territory where he is closer in age to the latter than the former. There is empathy for all parties, though, and new tricks to his whimsy, such as his elegant compositions repeatedly being shattered in close-ups where the camera is assaulted by various subjects filled with so much rage that they literally assail the fourth wall. The Phoenician Scheme is simply a lovely work from an artist with a fresh spring in his step. If you already count yourself among his admirers, it’s a return to form with moments of divine inspiration (just wait until you see who he cast as God). For the rest, it may not cause conversion, but it’s certainly worth sharing some communion wine over. The Phoenician Scheme premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18. It opens in limited release on May 30 and wide on June 6. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!