The Phoenician Scheme is a film about raw deals and bad fathers. Like most Wes Anderson movies, it's a story of familial ties that bind and break us. But it's also a caper, an adventure yarn, and the closest the Texan auteur has gotten to crafting a stop-motion animation in reality. It is another masterwork from one of our finest living filmmakers.

Benicio Del Toro plays Zsa-Zsa Korda, a scheming crook without morals or ethics, and a questionable sense for business. Like many Anderson anti-heroes, he believes he's three steps ahead, when he's not even playing the same game as others. On his fifth assassination attempt, Korda figures he's had enough. It's time to put his grand plan into action. To do that, he must make amends with his estranged blood relative, Liesel (Mia Threapleton), who is becoming a nun.

There's a lot more, naturally. All of which Anderson spins with such frenzy it becomes dizzying. Korda visits the afterlife, there's a fast-talking ship captain played by Jeffrey Wright, Richard Ayoade leads a jungle militia, and a fight scene explodes with the same frenetic energy that made Fantastic Mr. Fox such a joy.

Yet it never overplays its hand or outstays its welcome. This is Anderson tightly wound and precisely crafted. Not a single minute is wasted, no setup underutilized. Like fine Swiss clockwork, the mechanisms work with such finesse you can't help but marvel at it.

But it is still a Wes Anderson film, and if you're not onboard with his definitive style, The Phoenician Scheme won't win you over. In fact, it might deter you even further. For fans, there's immense pleasure in seeing the areas that Anderson continues to evolve. Even as a maximalist, Anderson is a wry and dry comedic force, easily wringing jokes out of black and white Spanish Catholic iconography and a triumphantly blasphemous cameo from God.

And while The Phoenician Scheme isn't as melancholy as The Grand Budapest Hotel or as heartfelt as The Darjeeling Limited, it finds a lovely middle ground between the two. By the end, it whittles the lunacy and hubris into a cozy, almost dreamlike reality that could only exist in Anderson's world.

Once again, family proves the most compelling mystery, and Anderson delivers a poignant, droll, and inventive tale that has the same anarchic energy as the Roald Dahl stories he previously adapted. Deep in the heart of all this madness lies a satirist, humanist, and deeply empathetic storyteller who spins his yarns big and bold because the reality of their topics would be too heartbreaking to deal with otherwise.

I, for one, welcome such flights of fancy. I embrace Anderson's dreams and wish that we're due for many, many more for years to come. If The Phoenician Scheme is any indication, he has only begun to stretch his legs as an artist.