PopaHALLics #145 "Schemers & Dreamers"

In this week's offerings: A businessman trying to con investors, improv actors trying to con criminals, a group hoping to draw attention to black string bands, and cops trying to solve murders despite long odds. Will they succeed or fail?

In Theaters:

• "The Phoenician Scheme." Writer/director Wes Anderson's latest quirky, deadpan, exquisitely shot dark comedy features an industrialist, his estranged daughter, and a Norwegian bug expert trying to swindle his investors when a scheme goes awry. Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera star, with Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bryan Cranston, and more.

Streaming:

• "Deep Cover," Prime. In this 2025 British action comedy, the police recruit three improv comedy actors (Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, and Nick Mohammed, of "Ted Lasso") for undercover work in London's criminal underworld. They're soon in over their heads. With Sean Bean, Ian McShane, and Paddy Considine.
• "Dept. Q," Netflix. Based on the Danish book series by Jussi Adler-Olson, this British crime thriller series follows an emotionally scarred Scottish detective (Matthew Goode) tasked with solving cold cases. With Chloe Pirrie, Jamie Sives, Leah Byrne, and Kate Dickie.
• "The Sinner," Netflix. Bill Pullman stars as a police detective who investigates crimes committed by unlikely culprits and attempts to uncover their motivations in this USA Network series that ran for four seasons.
• "Don't Get Trouble in Your Mind: The Carolina Chocolate Drops Story," Prime, Hulu, YouTube, and other streaming services. Director John Whitehead's compelling 2016 documentary, newly available streaming, traces the trio's improbable rise to success and the personal tensions that drove them apart.

Books:

• "The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream," by Thomas Dyja. This extensively researched and well-written history explores post-WWII Chicago's impact on wider America through architecture, electric blues, early television, advertising, and more.
• "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead," by Olga Tokarczuk and translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, this "funny, vivid, dangerous and disturbing" novel (Annie Proulx) explores human behavior through a literary murder mystery.

Music:
PopaHALLics #145 Playlist (Drops) features the old time string band music of the Carolina Chocolate Drops as Fantastic Cat, an indie music supergroup.

Click through the links to watch, read about, or listen to what we're discussing.