Swiss Army Man

The debut feature film from “Daniels,” aka directing duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, has a lot of people talking: mostly good, a tiny percentage bad, all expressive because this is an atypical movie that emanates expression. These guys are known for their quirky short films that reveal a human side struggling in a dark society. Swiss Army Man falls right into that category only in a feature length.

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Swiss Army Man
Cast

Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Directed by

Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Duo Credited as “Daniels”)

Written by

Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

Other Info

Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Rated R
1hr 37min

Swiss Army Man is a story about Hank who is stranded on a desert island. He is trying to hang himself when he sees a man wash up on show, Manny (Daniel Radcliffe). He rushes over to him to find him dead but the dead man keeps farting. He discovers it isn’t a loss that the man is dead, he has farting powers that make him function like a jet ski for Hank. Hank is able to use the dead man to get to the other side of the island. As Hank continues his quest to “get back” to civilization, he discovers Manny has all sorts of special functions that help him survive. This is where the title comes from: “Swiss Army Man.”

I want to address the film’s use of farting, since it has become a point of criticism online and it print. Apparently, a small percentage people walked out of the theater at Sundance during one of the farting scenes. I find that laughable that critics would walk out on any movie, much less one screening at film festival. The Daniels addressed this as an exxageration. They say of the 1500 people in the theater, maybe 12 walked out which was 1% of the occupancy. I had a completey different reaction to the fart scenes. I saw them as representative of life. Fart sin this film are the things that bind Hank (Paul Dano) and Manny (Daniel Radcliffe) together. This film doesn’t concern itself with the cool things that usually make up a popular movie. Instead, it points out that things like farts separate us from dead bodies. If a dead man can fart that much, it’s like he is alive. The use of farting to make a point is minimal in my opinion and shouldn’t be criticized.

swissarmy-2Though we’re not sure if Manny ever really comes back to life, though I’d assume he doesn’t, Hank has lots of conversations with him. It brought to mind the way we objectify friendshsips. We assign meaning to our friends and imagine them as they play out our fantasies. Hank teaches Manny all about life as he knows it, and that is pretty grim. He has no courage to approach a girl who he knows has a husband and who he has seen on the bus and taken a photo of on his phone’s wallpaper. This is disturbingly odd when her identity is brought out. if he has a stranger’s photo on his wallpaper, can he even have any relationships on his own? We are given a lot of information but left to interpret it for ourselves. One interpretation might be that Hank is clinically depressed and a sociopath, unable to have relationships with others. As a result, he has taken to the woods with a dead body to serve as his companion. While that may sound extreme, he could be a murderer and a stalker living in the woods as well. There are many shades you can see Hank as.

One hugely effective aspect of this film is the music. It is performed by Andy Hull and Robert McDowell from the indie rock band Manchester Orchestra. There is even some singing, though not a lot. Music is used artfully and weaves throughout this film making it half orchestral and half rock sound.

There is so much life in Hank and yet he is cloistered away from others, except Manny of course. As Hank “teaches” Manny about love and girls, he makes dozens of props to replay his day on the bus and many other times he can in contact with love. There are some heavy statements made about religion and sex. It gives us a chance to look at these things, even look at our own lives in a safe environment with no one there except a dead guy.

There is a lot of unraveling that goes on at the end. It happens so fast, it’s hard to formulate exact answers to some questions. Was the island real? Where were Manny and Hank REALLY? How long was Hank out there? I certainly have my suspicions about what the answers could be but this film is put together loosely so it many me impossible to prove one conclusion over another. For what it’s worth, here’s my spoilers of the plot and ending:

swissarmymanI think the beach was a figment of Hank’s mind. I think he was not lost but “camped out” in the wooded area right outside Sarah’s (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) house like a stalker. Sarah was the girl on the bus that he took a picture of for his wallpaper . I think Hank was already psychotic but he was still a warm, compassionate person while in the woods. Again, the Daniels’ recurrent theme of the oddball, the outcast being as normal as anyone but unable to break through society’s walls. I haven’t figured out where the dead guy Manny came from but with him there, Hank was able to examine his life for the first time in a long time, maybe ever. In the end, my guess is Hank was shot by a policeman and then he dreamed the final scene as he died.

I say this knowing full well there are other rational and valid ways to inerpret the film. Please share your thoughts in the comments. This film was awesome and I am so glad I drove 60 miles to an independent theater to see it. It lost nothing with me. I’ll be watching for more spectacular, cerebral stuff from the Daniels. This is one of those movies I call perfect.

10/10

Super 8

Since I was age 10 when this movie takes place (1979) I was really excited to see the custard colored refrigerators and old school gas stations as well as other stuff from that year. I remember it as a humanistic and inspiring time. Some images of 1979 really made me nostalgic in the first hour. After that however, the movie began to sputter like a 70’s moped in need of a fill up. The homes, schools, and connectedness of the kids all was like 1979. Unfortunately, the story couldn’t continue in that era and turned to your typical violent alien film of the 90’s or 2000’s like Independence Day.

Spoiler ahead (sort of). One difference from other alien movies is that there is just one alien. It is quite ugly but not much different from most in movies extant. The alien is not as scary as the gratuitous shocks the director gives the audience. I counted 6 but there are surely more. Be warned, especially if you are annoyed by these things. There is only one thing that can save a movie with these, in my opinion. That thing is a great ending. Unfortunately, you won’t find that here either. Young kids aged 15 and below will like this movie. A couple times it looks like Transformers. Most above that age will look at their iphone to see the time as it plays out.

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Limitless

Limitless is a movie that takes us to a place where there are no limits for a new mind drug. Not only do we see the classic pitfalls and ills of using drugs but we see a strange new side, dare I say a positive side. A new drug that allows one to utilize 80% more of her/his brain is discovered by a burnt out writer who puts it to good use. As he keeps using the drug he realizes that there are drawbacks to that much brain usage. Somehow he learns to use it to his advantage.

The film was directed by Neil Burger who’s other work includes the Illusionist with Edward Norton. Limitless includes quite a few big names but the biggest are Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. The film has amazing visuals reminiscent of Inception. It has a decent script that takes the viewer on a wild ride from beginning to end. While the visuals move fast however, there are some scenes throughout that tend to lag on. It’s as if they wanted to monopolize on special effects at the expense of keeping the story rolling at a palatable pace. This is one of the only drawbacks in the pace of the film. It is worth waiting out though because the ending delivers a smart and noteworthy conclusion.

Limitless is an excellent film that doesn’t have to be in reality so it isn’t. There are metaphors to real drug use. It opens up a lot for discussion and I recommend it.

Paterson (2016)

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Cast

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When meditating, still life nature scenes and soft spoken recordings are excellent help for me. It was as if this film purposely included such chunks in the film to entrance its viewers. Because I practice meditation and relaxation, I’m attuned to this and I found those places where Paterson read poetry and waterfalls were running in the background to be ethereal, calming.

It reminded me of the music they play when I get my monthly massage. The insertion of calming scenes however couldn’t make up for the lack of believable characterization and the presence of a very dull plot. Still, as a whole, this movie was i its own way enjoyable for me. Paterson is well versed in famous poets but for the most part, he writes like an unschooled diarist and that was hard to sit through.

Jim Jarmusch is the Director. He directed Only Lovers Left Alive. While much more experimental and “otherworldly,” that film has a similar entrancing yet undefined component to it. I’m not yet convinced this director is one I appreciate but I respect he tries doing films that are different.

Adam Driver plays Paterson, the poet by night/Bus driver by day. I had a real hard time swallowing this character. His wife dotes on him, makes special cupcakes for his lunch, and begs him to buy her a guitar. It’s all a disjointed mess if you asked me. City transit bus drivers make just above poverty level wages and yet she treats him as if he is the king with the fat bank account. Sad for her. More importantly though, she has passion while he has none. Well, he is passionate about poetry but not much more.

FINAL THOUGHTS
No one can wow me with William Carlos Williams references. My MA is in literature. I had many classes on modern poets and wrote many papers. Perhaps that’s why this all seemed very contrived to me. I like bringing the great poets back but the way Jarmusch did it here was droll and gauche. This is one where I have to part ways with the big critics who appear to love this film. I give it:

6/10

Country Strong

Sarah and I had a great 3 day weekend in Las Vegas and part of the fun was seeing Country Strong starring Gwyneth Paltrow (Kelly Canter). I’m a big fan of her movies and I was looking forward to seeing a great performance in a movie that looked to be about the life and times of a professional female Country Music musician. I was right on what it was about. Unfortunately it’s a predictable storyline that starts out charming like a gift of everlon but ends up choking on its poor writing. It takes simple concepts and takes too much time and energy to relay what is already known and conveyed. There may be some minor spoilers ahead but I don’t give away much.

I like Tim Mcgraw’s character, James Canter, a lot. This is because he starts out a class “A” a-hole but in the conclusion of the film, I saw him a whole different way. He is Kelly’s husband and manager and when we think him a cheater, we find out he is just a tortured person trying to keep the show going on. Whereas the “Beau Hutton” character, played by Garrett Hedlund, starts out my favorite character, in the end I sort of despise him. We find out he is not Kelly’s AA sponsor and a really selfish guy in many ways. I’ll never believe sleeping with every woman who crosses ones path is a wise or acceptable move. Paltrow plays an excellent modern country singer haunted by her drug and alcohol addiction. She wants to restore her life after a devastating miscarriage and accidental overdose shrouded her public image. I won’t get into the end but really, has any of this plot so far struck you as incredibly original?

We saw the same theme of “fame is empty” in Rock Star (2001). Scene after scene we are shown how seeking fame is a foolish game. In the end, 2 characters find that out and drop out of show business. One has to wonder if these young talents would have been so forthright in the real world. Ultimately, we are left with a scattered image of the real world in “Country Strong.” If I may be so bold as to say that the ending proves that Country Strong really isn’t strong at all. There is a lot of coffee conversation here. I recommend this film for a date but understand it is like eating melba toast with watered down iced tea. Nothing “feels” real. Even when Beau and the young starlet Chiles Stanton, Leighton Meester, “get it on” in his hotel room (They apparently get drunk and dare each other to take their clothes off) there is a feeling like neither is really attracted to the other. Certainly this is not a romantic scene. I can almost hear her say, “when am I getting paid for this?” What probably exists on paper as a “love scene” is just two marginal actors filling up space on a time-line of a movie that says little and delivers less in the way of any message.

My final word is this: It its attempt to be “Country Cool” this movie fails to deliver a vignette of what the title and term Country Strong really means.

Despicable Me

This is my article first published as Despicable Me Is Not Your Typical Villain Movie on Blogcritics.

People have asked me what movie is the best of 2010. This is my answer. Despicable Me is a delightful film with much to offer families and any movie-goer looking for fun in a film. It was co-directed by relative newcomers: Pierre Coffin, Gary’s Fall 2003, and Chris Renaud, in production on The Lorax and creator of No Time for Nuts, a short on the Ice Age DVD. I watched previews for Despicable Me with some cynicism thinking: “Here we have yet another piece of CGI predictability.” I was pleasantly proven wrong, however, when the characters, writing, and voice performances turned me around 180 degrees. I haven’t been this impressed with an animated film since Meet the Robinsons (2007). In the same way Robinson’s does, Despicable Me does more than entertain us: it shows a portrait of our humanity.

Without giving away too much, the movie is about Gru, a super-villain who is trying to recover a shrink ray from Vector, another super-villain. This is sort of the opposite of a human growth hormone. After multiple efforts to penetrate Vector’s lair, Gru discovers Vector’s weakness for girl scout cookies as he lets girl scouts come past the gate. Gru then gets a “lightbulb” and surreptitiously adopts three girl scouts from a local orphanage to do his bidding. Gru quickly learns what caring for kids is all about, and the girls prove less expendable than he thought.

There are some big names behind the voices in this movie; most are incredible performances. Steve Carell brings a superstar appeal to the film’s marketing. Having said that, I don’t find anything extra special about his voice in the film. He does an okay job as “Gru,” the Pinocchio nosed, Russian-accented villain who becomes an unwitting dad. The CGI is what makes his character amazing. His legs are unnaturally spindly and belie his enormous rotund body. He’s hilarious without uttering a word. I really liked Steve Carell in Dan in Real Life and most everything he does. He has a great personality-filled voice, but I think he served more to get people into the movie than to give Gru a memorable voice.

The other characters are a whole different story. The actors doing the voices for the girls, (Margo: Miranda Cosgrove, Edith: Dana Gaier, and Agnes: Elsie Fisher), Miss Hattie (the adoption lady): Kirsten Wig, and Vector: Jason Segel, are noteworthy and special. They provide a sonic reality to the animation rarely seen in the minions of CGI animated movies nowadays.

This movie is being marketed as a villain movie. It is indeed that for a while, but eventually it moves to a wider encompassing place. The juxtaposition of such an evil guy, Gru, with three sweet little kids lends the movie a global warmth, taking it beyond a potentially one-dimensional villain movie with just “neat” effects. I think it will have mass appeal with family movie-goers. It made me want to hug my kids. Comic relief is provided by the “minions,” amazing little yellow tubes that serve Gru and do many hysterical things. Interesting trivia: the minions are voiced by the two directors of the movie, Coffin and Renaud.

Vector is a great “villain’s villain.” You love to hate him. He is reminiscent of villains we’ve seen in the past, but Jason Segel brings new character to the villain we love to hate. I had to stay after and watch the credits because the voice was just so familiar to me. I was a big fan of him in I Love You Man and, when I saw his name in the credits, it was a V8 head-smacking moment. Segel does a great job voicing the true villain in this film.

The littlest girl Agnes is beautifully portrayed. The scenes when she talks to Gru begging for a bedtime story get me to the core. I would say any father in the theater could attest to the same. I’ve already alluded to it twice but I will say it again that I feel the audio performances like the one of Agnes make this a unique and special animated film.

To wrap this, I recommend Despicable Me to families and people who appreciate more than just visuals in an animated movie. The characters, writing, and voice performances work together to make this film exceptional. Despicable Me made me glad I spent my $10 and 95 minutes at the movies.