While the festival season has really only just begun—Telluride is over, we’re in the middle of Venice, and the Toronto International Film Festival just beginning—there are plenty of films being released in September that have already earned some well-deserved buzz or promise to entice audiences based on the trailers alone. And with all due respect to titles like “Blinded by the Light,” “The Farewell,” and “Ready or Not,” things are certainly looking up from the rather abysmal last two months.

Continue reading 10 Films To See In September: ‘Goldfinch,’ ‘Ad Astra,’ ‘Dick Long’ & More at The Playlist.

If you’ve seen 2016’s “Swiss Army Man,” you have a pretty idea why we’d say that the trailer for the new A24 release “The Death of Dick Long” is strange. Directed by Daniel Scheinert, one half of the directing duo known as The Daniels (the guys behind “Swiss Army Man”), ‘Dick Long’ seems to follow in the footsteps of the earlier film by taking what should be a fairly tragic story and injecting a heaping helping of offbeat humor and awkwardness.

Continue reading ‘The Death Of Dick Long’ Trailer: One Half Of The ‘Swiss Army Man’ Directing Duo Returns With His Southern-Fried ‘Fargo’ at The Playlist.

A pitch-black comedy akin to a white trash version of “Fargo,” “The Death of Dick Long,” is the sophomore directorial effort of Daniel Scheinert—the self-described redneck half of directing duo DANIELS, who created the terrifically inventive “Swiss Army Man” (filmmaking partner Daniel Kwan sits this one out). And, just like Joel and Ethan Coen‘s crime thriller, Scheinert’s film is infused with the playful embrace of cultural stereotypes that come with the genre.

Continue reading ‘The Death Of Dick Long’ Is A Hilarious, Southern-Fried ‘Fargo’ From Co-Director Of ‘Swiss Army Man’ [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

While “Swiss Army Man” left the Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered earlier this year, known as “that farting corpse movie,” that’s not quite accurate. The film is about the universal human experience of defecation, and examines the cultural norms that cow people into hiding pieces of their identity out of shame. That’s still not an easy sell, but if you skipped the film based on its premise, you missed out.

Continue reading ‘Swiss Army Man’ Directors The Daniels Talk Finding Beauty In The Scatalogical, Next Projects, And More at The Playlist.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Sundance drama/adventure thing “Swiss Army Man” proved to be something of an overperformer this weekend. With wildly divided reviews out of Sundance, and the premise of being a buddy movie with Paul Dano as a suicidal stalker and Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse with a boner-compass, it seemed like it would be a bit of a box office washout.

But A24 appear to have worked something of a miracle, with the film outperforming other arthouse releases significantly and ending up with one of the best theater averages of 2016 to date.

Continue reading ‘Swiss Army Man’ Directors Say They Want To Remake ‘White Chicks’ As An Oscar-Bait Drama at The Playlist.

Daniel Radcliffe is a dead body that gives life in the infinitely strange and terminally unsatisfying “Swiss Army Man.” The feature directorial debut from inventive and successful music video directors the Daniels (real names: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) teams Radcliffe with Paul Dano. It edges into the non-sequitur weirdness of Quentin Dupieux (“Rubber,” “Wrong“) and the fantastical romantic yearning of Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind“) but doesn’t persuasively mint a uniquely “Daniels” brand of oddity.

Continue reading Daniel Radcliffe & Paul Dano Have A Surreal Fight For Survival In ‘Swiss Army Man’ [Review] at The Playlist.

Continue reading Sundance Review: ‘Swiss Army Man’ Starring Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe & Mary Elizabeth Winstead at The Playlist.