Movie Nation

I love Westerns, love filmmakers who put the time in to get the period detail right.

Nothing was clean, from sweaty clothes to dirty faces to green teeth. Pistoleros weren’t likely to hit what they were aiming at quickly and you may pick a remote spot to set your town, but there’d be better some logical reason for people to attempt living there in the dust and sagebrush.

“Outlaws & Angels” put the effort in. The New Mexico of 1887 is pitiless and unwashed, violent and opportunistic. Justice is fleeting unless there’s something personal about it.

But it’s an impossible picture to cozy up to, a funereally slow saunter from bloody robbery to murderous hostage situation, with a lawman (Luke Wilson) taking his damn sweet time tracking down the desperadoes.

Chad Michael Murray dirties up and dresses down as the leader of the pack of trigger-happy bank robbers. They’re no better than psychopaths, the lot of them.

“I ain’t used my ax in a while. I’d be lyin’ if I said wasn’t lookin’ forward to it.”

These guys are “straight outta the hoose-gow” and headed to Hell. Or Cuchillo. Whichever comes first.Some of their number die along the way.

They take the long, dry and suicidal route from town to the border, and that’s how they end up laying low at a farm owned by a preacher (Ben Browder), his wife (Teri Polo) and their two feuding, fundamentalist daughters (Francesca Eastwood, Madison Beaty).

The outlaws sniff around the womenfolk, the mother starts to crack up, patriarch is helpless, and one girl — played by Clint Eastwood’s daughter — takes a shine to such sinful intentions.

It was a different time, and hard people did what they had to in order to survive, although many accepted death rather than a fate worse than death. Henry (Murray) is handsome, pretty even, but plainly ruthless and sadistic. Florence (Eastwood) may have ulterior motives, but there’s no getting around what writer-director JT Mollner is propositioning here. This is a romantic treatment of a situation that can only be regarded as rape.

Meanwhile,  Josiah leads an ever-shrinking posse in a dogged, slow-footed pursuit of these cold-blooded killers.

Who, exactly, are we meant to root for here? We’ve been the bad men kill kinfolk and children. Are we to hate the farm folk because of their fundamentalism, or what we suspect is actually going on there?The lawman is as under-developed as the sunscreen that was plainly slathered on his face wasn’t blended in with his skintone, rendering poor Wilson a Coppertoned kabuki, in some shots.

The answer appears to be “Florence,” and that fact and her Eastwood name (her mother Frances Fisher has a cameo) earn Francesca E. top billing. The young Ms. Eastwood has a look and some screen presence. But Florence’s behavior never seems righteous or noble, merely expedient and vengeful.

The whole lot are loathsome, save for the occasional victim, usually killed off too quickly for us to care. The performances are archetypal, illogical and unsympathetic in the extreme.

Worst of all is this 85-minute-story-in-a-two-hour-movie’s lack of urgency. The world moved slower back then, but ever since Westerns have been committed to the Big Screen, pace has been paramount. Just because your story’s told on horseback is no excuse for all this moseying.

MPAA Rating:R for strong bloody violence, disturbing sexual content, and language

Cast: Chad Michael Murray, Francesca Eastwood, Teri Polo, Luke Wilson, Ben Browder, Frances Fisher
Credits: Written and directed by JT Mollner. A Momentum/eOne release.

Running time: 2:00

I’m a car buff, and have been since childhood. Over the years, I’ve owned muscle cars and Mercs,  econoboxes, hot hatches and Jeeps and Mini Coopers — restored a Triumph TR6, and am just waiting on the day I can get another icon of my youth in my garage.

But one thing that wasn’t around back then is automotive programming on TV. Now, there is a whole network devoted to it (Velocity in the US), and any channel that draws guys (Discovery, History, CNBC, BBC America) is at least attempting to park something there to keep enthusiasts, hobbyists and just plain  car shoppers tuned in.

“Top Gear” blew the lid off this genre, and seemed to peak about four years ago for me. I still like the British show, even in its current fluctuating reboot state. They’re still not there with host chemistry, and blood will be spilled before the LeBlanc/Evans dust up is settled. The American version never did anything for me (Anglophile, I suppose). They never got the chemistry right with the hosts, not one of them was somebody you’d like to have a beer and talk cars with. Narrow demo (they were all pretty much the same age), equally annoying.

The new BBC version is averaging one good segment per installment, which is all the old show ever did. They’ll get there, with or without Evans (or LeBlanc).

My interest in the Amazon series the previous cast have cooked up, “The Grand Tour,” is mostly due to the title. It hasn’t really lived up to that promise, I have to say.

The BEST thing “Top Gear” did was put those three in beaters they’d bought themselves and forcing them to drive through Africa/Vietnam/The American South/The Middle East, keeping them running as they did. The new “Gear” is attempting that, but Evans in particular seems to not get that buying a cushy, lightly-used Jag for a song makes for really dull TV. No character, no breakdowns, no fun.

I love Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” available online or streamed through Crackle. (UPDATE – Now on Netflix) It’s more about the comics than the cars or the coffee, but it’s a great vehicle (ahem) for Seinfeld to get together with his peers, talk about “the work” and chat a little about the classic car Jerry picks up the guest comic in. Margaret Cho he fetched in a zany Mazda Cosmo last week.

“Jay Leno’s Garage” is about another comic with a car Jones, and Leno is, if anything, more famous for his cars than even the Great Seinfeld. The show has multiple elements — celebrities, stunts, themes, etc. It predates Seinfeld’s show (it started on Youtube before finding a slot on CNBC), but feels like a bigger budget attempt to best it. Leno is affable and only occasionally insufferable (a knock on his later “Tonight Show” tenure), and the show is a winner with good segments on “investment collectible cars” and the like. He’s competitive, so if Seinfeld is picking up Obama in a Corvette, Leno is coming for Joe Biden in a Corvette. And the show is getting better, something I look for in a car series.

“Fantomworks” is a car restoration show that gives you a bit of “Here’s how people do this or that” to restore a car, and a lot more of its obnoxious host, Dan Short.  The short-tempered Short has a bias for American muscle cars, though his Norfolk, VA shop handles almost anything. He comes off as a “type” any car owner or collectible car enthusiast will recognize — a jerk who looks down his nose, insults the owner and earlier work done on the car and high-handedly tells you the way it’s going to be. Southerners will recognize the bonus trait of wrapping himself in the flag (Norfolk’s a Navy town, so it doesn’t hurt him). Personally, if I show up at a car or boat business with too much of that, or Jesus fishes on its business cards, I run. There’s no bargaining or certainty of getting a square deal from guys like him.

“Dallas Car Sharks”  (Velocity) has a little wheeling and dealing — cars bought at auction in Texas — a little restoration work and a lot of personality. Like too much reality TV, it’s pushed dealers into “character” roles — the idiot know-it-all, the cheapskates, the arrogant jerk who throws his money around, etc.

A lot of these programs (“Fast’N Loud” stands out) put a lot of effort into the “personality” side of things. It works to create branding and conflict. “All Girls Garage” and “Car Fix” and “Overhaulin'” and many others fail to stand out and try too hard to make stars.

The Canadian “Restoration Garage” is more my speed — civil, detailed, sentimental.

And I really enjoy “Chasing Classic Cars” even if it is a guilty pleasure. Host Wayne Carini has been in the collectible car biz/car restoration game since childhood. He’s a perfectly bland TV personality whose limitations are exacerbated by writers and editors who do him no favors. He doesn’t want to say what he paid for a car? Why? Are the sellers cheating the tax man? He has a habit of repeating, in narration, something he’s just said on camera, or vice versa. That’s TERRIBLE television, slack and sloppy and lazy. How lazy becomes obvious when the producer is interviewing this or that car seller. The quotes they pull from these inane chats repeat info we’ve already been given, or worse, state the stupidly obvious. “I saw this car, and I kinda liked it. So I bought it.” Yeah, and? Any TV news production vet would know they haven’t got “the money quote” in an interview that goes like that and could cajole something more revealing, more exciting, out of the seller/show organizer/vendor. Carini should push for an upgrade in that crew because they make this show dotty, old and dim. The quirky old mechanic Roger is the best thing about the “Chasing” and he’s not getting any younger. Try harder. Seriously.

Which brings us to a car-flipping/restoration show that is trying harder, and improving season by season. The British born/American transplant “Wheeler Dealers” buys cars cheap (TV camera crews and TV star leaning on a seller has to help), fixes them up and flips them. Minis and Jeeps and Rovers and Saabs and Porsches and Fiats and BMWs and Lambos and Dancing ponies. Oh my. There’s a lot of work that erudite and unflappable mechanic Edd China puts in to make these flips pay off, and for over a decade, the knock on the show was how it revealed the cost of the car, the cost of parts and paint, but labor was left out. This season, they’ve added that to their tally. This season, based on the first show, has Mike Brewer, a genial host given to a half-dozen catch-phrases, trite expressions and “Woaa–ho-ho-hos” behind the wheel, “getting me hands dirty” and pitching in on body work and repairs. My jaw dropped when he sat down, picked up a tire wrench and did the brakes on the 1968 Corvette they flipped in their 13th season premiere.

The shows retains its Britishness, even when they’re doing seasons of the series in the US.

Better still, they’re now including out-takes at the end of the show. Backyard mechanics are better served knowing that stuff goes wrong and profanities are tossed out when they do. Sometimes. It’s the best, and to me, getting better. Well done, “Wheeler Dealers.”

UPDATED: I can’t say “Wheeler Dealers” has missed a beat after Edd China quit. Ant Antstead is more of a “hot” (in your face, enthusiastic, energetic) presence than the professorial cool of Edd. Ant’s terrific, and checking out his old “For the Love of Cars” episodes makes him an endearing authority/mechanic.

I’m tracking what Edd does post-“Dealers,” and would gladly watch any show with him on it. Top tip? “Top Gear” could find a spot for Edd, a “Beaters Corner” that would cut back on the Supercar porn and cut into time from the re-engineered collection of hosts, but that chemistry isn’t dazzling, anyway. Chris and Matt’s fake rivalry and Rory’s “Just THRILLED to be here” aren’t the show’s selling points. Yet.

The embarrassing lack of diversity in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was nakedly on display this past Oscar season. But the Academy, to its credit, vowed to do something about it, to make its membership look more like the industry it represents and America as a whole.

So they added lots of women and members of minority groups in this year’s new class of invited members.

But as TMZ points out, they’re but a drop in the bucket. Still a tiny proportion of the membership at large.

Still, you do this for three, four, five years, and the natural ageing out of the In Memoriam generation will provide a balance that, at least, looks proportional, looks like America.

Opportunities within the industry? That could change over time in the same way, with the Academy setting an example. Not fast enough for many, but let’s face it, it’s an industry that is disproportionately white, gay and Jewish. Some of that will change with concerted effort, a lot of it won’t. It’s an upper class/middle class career/educational choice, for many. The true “up from poverty into the movies” stories are trumpeted, but rare.

A fairytale-ish musical about troll dolls starring the talking/singing voices of Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake, “Trolls” is a November Dreamworks release relying on names, tunes and toy-branding to attract an audience.

Not a laugh is given away in this first trailer. Not one. The animation is troll-doll bland. But the tunes are straight kid-friendly pop, as sung by the leads. And the voice talent is showcased (always a sign a cartoon is reaching).

Will it hit?

The weeks of abuse for this review of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” seemed like they would go on forever.

“Glib facsimile” became an Internet meme.

And then, it stopped. Because others came out as thinking the movie was a recycled bore, the same movie as “A New Hope,” only rendered in broad, PC strokes. More inclusive, far less interesting and a lot less fun.

James Cameron is pals with George Lucas, and he’s been caught dancing around saying “It sucked” in an interview that touched on “The Force Awakens.”

I’ve interviewed Cameron a few times, and while he’s thin-skinned about his own movies, he’s a little less so about other people’s projects.

Now granted, Cameron isn’t the most original storyteller (“Terminator” plagiarism, “Avatar” recycling). And he’s a lot more diplomatic than perhaps I was in panning the J.J. Abrams “Star Wars” outing.

But, in essence — an inferior copy of the GLucas original. A “glib facsimile.” There you go.

The Ape Man goes into the “Heart of Darkness” in this generation’s version of “The Legend of Tarzan.” Which is an interesting place to park a story and a character fraught with the potential for racist/imperialist undertones from the moment Edgar Rice Burroughs conceived him.

So while we still get the man raised by gorillas, we still get the “talks to the animals” stuff, the vine-swinging and the famous yell, this version of the legend is politically correct, as well as the usual patronizing and preposterous.

He fights animals without killing them. He is beloved by Africa and almost all the Africans we meet. And he saves the continent from a European menace.

We meet Lord Greystoke in London, where he’s lived with wife Jane (Margot Robbie) for years. He still has his jungle heritage, and the knuckles and hands of a man who grew up running on all-fours. He’s needed back in Africa. King Leopold of Belgium has closed off the Congo to the world and is committing unspeakable atrocities in the name of harvesting the riches (ivory, minerals) there.

“I’ve already seen Africa,” Greystoke (Alexander Skarsgard) complains. “And it’s hot.”

But an American envoy and Civil War survivor (Samuel L. Jackson) convinces the once-and-future Tarzan to join him for a fact-finding mission. Jane is most enthusiastic of all, even though she’s not invited.

King Leopold’s Henchman in Africa, played by Christoph Waltz (of course), is determined to snatch the legendary Tarzan and deliver him to an ancient enemy (Djimon Hounsou). And if he has to snatch Jane to get to Tarzan, so be it.

It’s a seriously old-fashioned jungle action picture, with white colonials brutally mistreating simple natives, a long journey up river (both borrowed from Joseph Conrad) and jungle creatures fought, understood and summoned like the cavalry in every B-Western in movie history. Flashbacks tells us the over-familiar story of how Tarzan came to be raised by apes, and how he met Jane.

Harry Potter assembly line veteran David Yates shot this in the muted (3D) colors of memory and old movies. The result is a dreamy, other-worldly picture, but one that even in scenes that capture a bit of Africa, looks fake.

Digital ostriches, digital gorillas, digital lions, digital hippos and digital crocodiles make the movie practical and safe for cast and crew. But they never look real.

Bringing in Craig Brewer (“Blacksnake Moan,” “Hustle & Flow”) to co-write the script gives the movie a little cover from tumbling into attitudes easily regarded as racist today. But the effect tends to neuter Tarzan. He can’t have a fight with an African and admit he has a genuine beef with the guy.

Skarsgard makes for a lithe and limber Ape Man. He makes you wait for him to take off his shirt. Even shirtless, he’s entirely too bland to make much of an impact.

Jackson treats his comic sidekick role as if he’s in a PG-13 rated Tarantino movie — sarcasm, anachronistic wisecracks, self-consciously cool with a lot of gunplay and a little profanity.  He has fun and he does his damnedest to animate the movie.

Robbie is a modern liberated American woman with runway experience shoved into a tale of 19th century Jungle Love.

The result is a “Legend” that feels inoffensively modern, or at least less offensive than it could have been.

It’s too violent to be the kids’ movie it wants to be. And it isn’t up to the challenge of giving adult audiences something meatier to chew on, despite the novel Belgian Congo genocide backdrop.

You can’t make a bold statement or exciting action picture when every frame is filled with fear — of offending someone, of upsetting animal rights activists, of giving the audience a Tarzan they won’t recognize, of failure.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, some sensuality and brief rude dialogue

Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Margot Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Djimon Hounsou
Credits: Directed by David Yates, script by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:49

A tip of the hat, then, to Brian Tyler, the REAL star of “Now You See Me 2,” a sequel ordained by the same logic that gave us “Neighbors 2.”

As in, the first film was just enough of a hit that we could boost our bottom line in a season of the year when we have no other ideas for popcorn pictures.

So Summit Entertainment better have slipped something extra into composer Tyler’s paycheck for this one.

The cast is still top drawer, and adding Daniel Racliffe as a villain, giving Woody Harrelson an identical, sleaze-ball twin and swapping Lizzy Caplan into the sassy, sexy “girl” member of the team of magicians called The Four Horsemen (replacing Isla Fisher) was an upgrade.

The banter is snappy enough, the editing slick and quick.

But there’s so little substance, too much smoke and mirrors, the pandering to the Chinese market even more obvious than in “Independence Day,”  the ending too much a cop-out, for this to come off.

But Tyler’s swinging, swaying jazzy score — augmented by the odd hip hop or pop hit used for effect — keeps it all afloat. Or from sinking straight out of sight.

Three of the Four Horsemen — Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco — are on the lam. They’re a blend of David Copperfield and Anonymous, activist/vigilantes led by rogue FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo), and their last caper had them faking one guy’s death and putting their “magic debunker” nemesis (Morgan Freeman) in prison.

But this mysterious magician society called The Eye summons them for a new job, and that runs them afoul of a tech tyro (Radcliffe) who has also faked his death. Naturally, he’s hiding out in Macao, aiding their need to bring China into the movie. He’ll be hard to outsmart.

“Once again, science beats magic,” he chirps as he bests them, time and again.

To foil him, they’ll need the aid of the “world’s oldest magic shop” (in China) to steal a microchip conveniently the size and shape of a playing card.

“We’re going to have to brush up on our card-istry,” J. Daniel Atlas (Eisenberg) announces.

And they’ll need a fourth, in the person of Lula, who invites herself in.

The money scene? Getting this chip out of a supercomputer, while they’re strip-searched (not entirely) by Chinese security. Each character pointlessly flips the card to the next character to be searched — AFTER the first character has eluded detection with his or her “card-istry.” The moment you’ve gotten away with it is the perfect time…to risk detection all over again by passing the card on. It might be the most pointless moment in any movie this year.

There’s a little pleasure in Harrelson playing two parts, with the new version a curly-headed, amoral slicker. Franco is lightly amusing, with little screen presence.

And it’s always fun to watch Ruffalo and Freeman give full, fair value in every scene they share, amping up the intensity.

Caplan has the spark of a magician/man-eater. She handles the repartee better than any of them. But there’s so little of it that mainly she’s here to wear short skirts and thigh boots.

And Radcliffe? Not menacing at all.

The big gimmick is hypnotism (aids in covering logical holes in the plot), the stunts are all movie magic and “explaining away” the tricks they do. These “star” magicians” are plainly over-hyped, with only Eisenberg presented in a way that suggests he could keep a live audience interested. He has the eyes for it — legerdomain eyes.

It was never going to be all that. But that score — insistent, sexy, jazzy and loud — almost puts it over, letting us jauntily skim over the laws of logic and physics that are violated, the lack of charisma of these “charismatic” magicians, the works. Until the ending, that is, where it all feels like a cheap cheat and a waste of two hours and nine minutes of your life.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and some language

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Radcliffe, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman, Dave Franco, Michael Caine
Credits: Directed by Jon M. Chu, script by Ed Solomon. A Summit release.

Running time: 2:09

The Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn makes movies with more tone than tension, more feel than feeling.

Every shot is immaculately composed and often held several beats too long. Can’t move on until the viewer’s had a chance to appreciate the portents in every poetic image.

Sometimes the material — a get-away driver’s attack of conscience in “Drive”, a supernaturally psychotic and scenery-chewing convict in “Bronson”  — overwhelms this sense that Refn would be happier as a still “art” photographer. And sometimes, as in his horrors-of-the-modeling-trade thriller “The Neon Demon,” his indulgences just take over and deaden the movie.

“Demon” tells the story of Jesse, a Georgia beauty whose youth (she’s 16) and fresh look make her the new darling of LA’s pretentious and cannibalistic modeling scene.

“That little deer-in-the-headlights thing is exactly what they want,” the too-helpful makeup artist Ruby  (Jena Malone) purrs.

Jesse (Elle Fanning) is a naif among the professional waifs of this world, a mere child surrounded by eating disorders, vanity, cutthroat cruelty and predators of every stripe who prey on unblemished beauty. An agent (Christina Hendricks) takes Jesse on, lightly quizzing her on whether she can take the competition — the skinnier, the more beautiful, those who would undermine her with a dismissive look or veiled insult.

Because that’s what she gets from Ruby’s model-pals, Gigi and Sarah. “The Neon Demon” reminds us that by these standards, a Jena Malone isn’t even in the “beauty” conversation. Bella Heathcoate and Abbey Lee are stunning specimens, like aliens. And they have fangs. Not literally, of course.

Gigi (Heathcoate) on the surgery that makes her competitive in the “most beautiful” sweepstakes — “Plastic is just good grooming.”

The virginal Jesse is almost overwhelmed. But her confidence grows with every attention from the omnivorous and silent star photographer (Desmond Harrington). No, she has no talent, no education and no skills.

“I’m pretty,” she tells the younger photographer who wants to be her beau (Karl Glusman). “I can make money off that.”

Their “expiration date” is 21, maybe even 20. They’re used and abused at every stage of the process. And yet still they come, longing to make money and eventually marry money, against all odds. The tyranny of “the new, the young, the fresh” has never seemed clearer.

“True beauty is the one currency we have,” a designer (Alessandro Nivola) opines. “Beauty isn’t everything. It’s the ONLY thing!”

Which is why Refn fills the edges of his film with grotesquerie. There’s a sleazy motel owner (Keanu Reeves) who preys on the models who book rooms in his dive. A mountain lion sneaking into an empty room is merely a reminder that this guy isn’t the apex predator in this universe. Ruby’s side-job is doing makeup at a mortuary. Nobody is happy, no one eats and almost no one smiles.

Fanning (“Super 8”) has the swanlike features that allow her to be transformed into a convincing model, and a natural gawkiness that works for the character.

But Refn’s skewering of this empire of awfulness is undercut by his plodding, portentous pacing. Scene after scene — often conversations staged in austere, Scandinavian minimalism and echoing silence — goes on too long. The techno music and obscure symbols that pop up between conversations don’t resonate.

And when the film’s hundred minutes of dread turn, occasionally, to genuine violence, we feel little. Our emotions mirror the movie’s — drained away, wasted, frivolously spent for the sake of effect.

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent content, bloody images, graphic nudity, a scene of aberrant sexuality, and language

Cast: Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Karl Glusman, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves
Credits: Written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. An Amazon Studios/Broadgreen release.

Running time: 1:58

Daniel Radcliffe has his most useful role ever in “Swiss Army Man,” a dark, existential comedy of dizzying originality.

Because Radcliffe has the title role, that of a corpse who washes up on a beach to “save” a shipwrecked, suicidal and psychically lost soul, played by Paul Dano.

This is no ordinary stiff. Oh no. It has physical and spiritual utility to Hank Thompson (Dano).

Hank has been frantically writing soul-emptying  rescue notes on bottles, making note-rafts out of juice boxes with messages ranging from “Help” and “Save me” to “I’m so bored” and “I don’t want to die alone.”

Failing to revive the dead man, he sinks back into despair, only to discover corpses are buoyant. And their deteriorating guts have…propulsive qualities.

Before you can say “Personal watercraft” Hank is Jet-skiing to the mainland on his new pal, whom he’s decided was named “Manny.”

But it’s only when they’re ashore, somewhere on the littered, remote Pacific northwest that “Swiss Army Man” actually gets weird.

Co-writers/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, adorably billing themselves as “Daniels,” turn two of the cinema’s most eccentric seekers loose on a tale of survival, soul-searching, terror and yes, romance.

Hank is no MacGuyver. But he finds uses for Manny’s flatulence, for the open mouth that captures the rain after Hank has gone to sleep (he’s a water fountain), for his stiffened arms (axes), and so on.

And in Manny, he has his confessor. How Hank ended up so lost isn’t explained (we can guess), but he talks and hums his way through self-psychoanalysis. As he opens his heart, Manny develops something like a pulse. He talks, has no memories, so Hank must explain the universe — emotions, the necessities of life, bodily functions.

“This is what FEAR looks like!”

They hum together, sing-songing through psychotically amusing ditties about their situations and their psyches. The theme to “Jurassic Park” seems triumphant enough in moments like this.

And there’s this woman’s photo on Hank’s slow-to-die phone, a beguiling girl-next-door played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (of course).

Dano is properly pathetic and manic, and his brother in odd movie choices (“Horns”) Radcliffe manages even more pathos in his limited movement and spare selection of lines of “the life I’ve forgotten.”

It doesn’t add up to much, to be honest. But clever, creative touches abound, as Hank discovers the part of Manny’s body that serves as a compass needle, thanks to a discarded copy of the Sports Illustrated “Swimsuit Issue.”

Whatever its qualities and shortcomings, “Swiss Army Man” makes one promise it most certainly keeps. You have never seen anything remotely like it.

MPAA Rating:R for language and sexual material

Cast: Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Credits: Written an directed by Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:35

This is the final trailer, probably, and the last chance, almost certainly, to make a pitch for this late-summer blockbuster. Well-cut, somber, sharp, but there’s no sign of lightness, the flippancy one would expect from a Simon Pegg scripted take on the franchise.