FILM REVIEW and Harris aren’t ideally cast as “average” folk, but Skarsgård owns the film in a performance that couldn’t be more different from his captivating work in the recent series River.
Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano in Swiss Army Man.
The only problem with the film is that details were clearly jettisoned to keep the running time down. Issues like Perry and Gail’s marital problems are probably no great loss, but Hector’s dodgy relation to his superiors could have been better explicated. One gets spoiled by the amount of detail you can work into a 10-hour TV show. Opening Friday at the Dipson Eastern Hills Mall Cinema. ••• Filmmakers Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert say that their debut feature Swiss Army Man was initially conceived as a short film that would have been pointless because it lacked substance. I disagree: That short is more or less the first 10 minutes of the feature, and it seemed to me that it would have been perfectly wonderful all by itself. Which is not to say that the film in toto isn’t an accomplishment: Winner of the Directing award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, it is undoubtedly the damnedest thing you’ll see at the movies this summer, and probably this year.
TV OR NOT TV OUR KIND OF TRAITOR / SWISS ARMY MAN / THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS BY M. FAUST FANS OF FICTIONAL ESPIONAGE who demand more real-
ism than they get from James Bond have migrated to television, where shows like Homeland use their larger canvases (in terms of time if not screen size) to accumulate the kind of detailed ambiguity that movies can’t. Viewers who renewed their acquaintance with John le Carré with the recent limited series The Night Manager will be the best audience for the new film of his 2010 novel Our Kind of Traitor. Ewan MacGregor and Naomie Harris star as Perry and Gail, a British couple on holiday in Marrakesh. When she has to squeeze in some work time, he is swept up by some hard-partying Russians led by Dima (Stellan Skarsgård). Equally dazzled and horrified by these thugs who paw expensive prostitutes and guzzle €16,000 bottles of wine, Perry warms to Dima, who prizes his family above everything.
AT THE MOVIES A selective guide to what’s opening and what’s playing in local moviehouses and other venues
BY M. FAUST & GEORGE SAX
OPENING THIS WEEK THE BFG—Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the Roald Dahl children’s book. The title is not a variant on “BFD”—it stands for “Big Friendly Giant.” Starring Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton, and Jemaine Clement. A review will be posted at dailypublic.com. AMC Maple Ridge, Dipson Amherst, Dipson Flix, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria, Transit Drive-In THE LEGEND OF TARZAN—Alexander Skarsgård as the classic jungle hero in a movie presumably loaded with special effects developed for the recent Planet of the Apes reboot. Co-starring Rory J. Saper, Christoph Waltz, and Samuel L. Jackson. Directed by David Yates (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). Reviewed this issue. AMC Maple Ridge, Dipson Flix, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria, Transit Drive-In THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS—Documentary about the Silk Road Project, cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s effort to find an international musical language using players from around the world. Directed by Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom). Reviewed this issue. Dipson Amherst OUR KIND OF TRAITOR—In this John Le Carre adaptation, a Russian mob accountant (Stellan Skarsgård) enlists a vacationing poetry profes-
Dima is a high-ranking money launderer for the Russian mob. Hoping to get his family to safety in England, he gives Perry a memory stick filled with details and asks him to pass it on to MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. Thinking he’s discharged the favor, Perry instead finds that he has involved himself and Gail in a deeper struggle run by Hector (Damian Lewis), whose capabilities to protect them and Dima are less than he leads them to think. As always for le Carré, corruption is everywhere—he wrote the book based on news of British bankers and politicians colluding to accept dirty Russian money—and the appeal of Our Kind of Traitor is in trying to guess who is hiding the most. (Fans of Homeland and Billion will have no trouble accepting Lewis in a conflicted role, once they get past hearing his natural British accent.) Director Susana White keeps the atmosphere unsettled with unnatural lighting, odd camera angles and distorted reflections. MacGregor
sor (Ewan McGregor) to help him deliver incriminating information to the British government. Co-starring Damian Lewis and Naomie Harris. Directed by Susanna White (Nanny McFee Returns). Reviewed this issue. Dipson Eastern Hills, North Park THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR—Second sequel to the horror thriller set in a future where all violent crimes are legal for one night every year. Starring Frank Grillo, Elizabeth Mitchell and Mykelti Williamson. AMC Maple Ridge, Dipson Flix, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria, Transit Drive-In SWISS ARMY MAN—Oddball indie movie starring Paul Dano as a young man stranded on a Pacific island whose life is saved by a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) that washes up on the beach. Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Reviewed this issue. Regal Transit
ALTERNATIVE CINEMA
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1945)—The first film version of Agatha Christie’s novel Ten Little Indians. Ten people, strangers to each other, are invited to a lavish estate on an island where their unseen host accuses them of murder before passing sentence on them. Starring Walter Huston, Barry Fitzgerald, Judith Anderson, and Louis Hayward. Stylishly directed by Rene Clair. Tue 7:30pm. Screening Room BAND OF OUTSIDERS (Bande a Part, 1964)—Like his debut feature Breathless, this shows JeanLuc Godard indulging his fascination with dime store novels and American crime films. It’s one of his more entertaining films, mixing philosophical observations with musical numbers in a story of three friends plotting a robbery. Starring Claude Brasseur, Anna Karina and Sami Frey. Presented by Cultivate Cinema. Thu July 7, 7pm. Amherst
20 THE PUBLIC / JUNE 29 - JULY 5, 2016 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM
Paul Dano stars as a fellow stranded on a tiny Pacific Island. He is in the process of hanging himself when a corpse washes up on the beach. The corpse is played by Daniel Radcliffe. This is not a trivia-answer cameo, like Kevin Costner’s performance as a dead body in The Big Chill: Radcliffe is, in every way, the co-star of a film that essentially has only two actors. And no, he doesn’t turn out to be a zombie. Should I explain? No, because in no time at all we’d be down a rabbit hole of details that would also need explanation, to little avail. It isn’t until you get to the end of Swiss Army Man that its shape becomes clear. Until then you need to go along with it, not bothering too much with details that are seemingly being ignored. The movie is cheerfully gross, surreally funny, and oddly touching. Which is to say, don’t expect it to be in theaters for very long. See it while you can at the Regal Transit. ••• A documentary about cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, which brings together musicians from around the world, must have sounded like a no-brainer to its funders. Surely, any reasonable person might think, all you have to do is turn the camera on these people and their stories and gold will ensue. Listening to the enthusiastically voluble Ma discuss his love for world music alone should be more than enough. Yet despite all the fascinating material at his disposal, director Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) dropped the ball with The Music of Strangers. Perhaps it’s mostly that expectations run so high: The recordings this loosely defined ensemble have produced since 2000 are endlessly fascinating even to those who don’t much care for “serious” music. But the film has no focus, introducing us to one musician after another whose talent and journey are only minimally discussed before moving on to another. The composition and arrangement of the music gets little attention: Neville seldom thinks even to introduce the numerous instruments that are unfamiliar to us. No documentary on this subject could be wholly without merit, but The Music of Strangers is at best an introduction for audiences who will want to learn and P hear much more. Opens Friday at the Dipson Amherst.
JAWS (1975)—Bruuuuuuuce!! Thu 7pm. Riviera NIAGARA (1953)—Marilyn Monroe’s last film before becoming a major star in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was this suspense thriller in which she plays a wife scheming to murder her husband (Joseph Cotton) while vacationing just a few miles north of Buffalo. With Jean Peters and Richard Allen. Directed by Henry Hathaway. FriSat 7:30pm. Screening Room CONTINUING ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS—Tim Burton did not direct this sequel to his 2010 Alice in Wonderland, which may be the most promising thing about it. Starring Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, and Rhys Ifans. Directed by James Bobin (Muppets Most Wanted). Dipson McKinley, Four Seasons, Transit Drive-In CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR—By now it’s evident that the superhero movie boom is no fad, but a full-blown cinematic genre akin to the American Western. Captain America: Civil War, which could have been called Captain America v. Iron Man, is the latest and best of the Marvel Universe films. It’s a film so jam-packed with super-powered beings you’ll be forgiven for keeping a scorecard even if you’ve followed all of the previous films. This “issue” finds Cap (Chris Evans) and his fellow Avenger Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), at odds over the government’s decision to regulate and limit heroes following civilian casualties caused during previous battles. All of the supers are forced to choose sides, and half the fun is in seeing who aligns with whom. The character interplay is strong, the emotional underpinnings of the story surprisingly powerful, and the action scenes spectacular, especially the epic set piece in which the heroic factions square off against each other. The smart script not only introduces Black Panther and re-introduces Spider-Man, but manages to give the
many characters some of their best moments, and directors Anthony and Joe Russo’s use of the 3D format is often breathtaking. To be continued. —Greg Lamberson Four Seasons, Regal Elmwood, Regal Transit CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE looked from its advertising to be another action comedy based on the model last seen in Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Brothers Grimsby: slick secret agent saddled with a nerdy partner. Instead, it takes its cues from the classic The In-Laws, with Kevin Hart in the Alan Arkin role of a mild-mannered guy living a dull suburban life and Dwayne Johnson in the Peter Falk part of a CIA agent who ropes him into what may or may not be a rogue operation. It starts out promisingly enough, establishing the characters’ background in high school (where Johnson was the fat, bullied dork) and slowly building Hart’s unease as he is drawn deeper into a deadly game. But it never finds the lunatic plateau it aspires to, petering out in dull action set pieces, lazy writing, and (worst of all) failing to get the best out of its stars. – MF With Amy Ryan, Danielle Nicolet, and Aaron Paul. Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball). Dipson Flix, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria, Transit Drive-In THE CONJURING 2—Horror sequel. Starring Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, and Madison Wolfe. Directed by James Wan (Insidious). Dipson Flix, Regal Elmwood, Regal Niagara Falls, Regal Quaker, Regal Transit, Regal Walden Galleria, Transit Drive-In DE PALMA—Documentary about Brian De Palma, the director who made a career out of emulating the work of filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and—well, mostly Hitchcock. Directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow. North Park ENDS THURSDAY DHEEPAN—Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year, this drama follows three Tamil refugees posing as a family in order to start new