A Little Vicious

Posted on Aug 20, 2008 By Martha Garvey

The Doc Tank, 1991, 30 minutes

Available at The Doc Tank (www.thedoctank.com)

To view a clip, go here: http://www.thedoctank.com/galley

Once upon a time in the late 1980s, there was a dog named Bandit who lived in a sketchy part of Stamford, Connecticut. Then, Bandit bit a neighbor brandishing a broom, got locked up, returned home, and then bit his owner. Though the owner, an elderly African American man named Lamon Redd, defended his dog Bandit as a consistent, excellent watch dog, the local authorities put the dog on death row, in part because he was a so-called "vicious pit bull."

Unlike so many dogs labeled dangerous, Bandit got lucky - thanks to his owner, a legal defense team, and an eccentric dog trainer named Vicki Hearne, a poet, scholar, and philosopher who wrote lyrical books about the lives of animals. This documentary, warmly narrated by Kevin Bacon, focuses on Bandit's stay of execution while he is trained to be a good dog by Hearne.

In anticipation of a crucial temperament test, Hearne trains Bandit on a rustic farm far from the tough Stamford streets. When we see Bandit perched on the front seat of a car as it approaches his bucolic training grounds, you can almost see him thinking, "What the hell is this?" Hearne seems to feel that Bandit represents a chance to regain Eden. Maybe. Nevertheless, while occasionally we see Bandit resist Hearne's training, he also appears to be a smart, funny dog who even climbs a ladder at her urging.  

Producer-director Immy Humes deftly captures the eccentricities of both the people who love Bandit most of all - trainer Vicki Hearne and Lamon Redd - with a great assist from cinematographer Jean de Segonzac and some sly music choices. Bandit's incarceration and rehabilitation illuminate more than a single dog's story; they expose some not-such-nice assumptions about race and class. Be warned that Hearne wasn't ever a warm and fuzzy trainer, and that while a kind of justice was done, there is no Disney movie ending for this quirky, sturdy documentary.  

When the film was originally released in the early 1990s, it appeared on the American public television series P.O.V. and on Britain's Channel 4 and received an Academy Award nomination. But Bandit's story must be told at a breathless pace to fit 30 minutes. According to an article in The Bark, Humes is considering revisiting her footage on Bandit.

Sadly, Hearne, whose books have been reprinted, and who wrote a whole book about Bandit, died in 2001. Let's hope wherever she is now, there are lots of dogs to love.

Red

Posted on Aug 14, 2008 By Martha Garvey

Magnolia Pictures, 2008, 98 minutes

Is there any way to review this movie without giving some of it away? Probably not. And for many dog owners, the movie's lacerating catalyst may be too much to bear.    

So let's get it out of the way: this film, based on a novel by horror writer Jack Ketchum begins with widower Avery Ludlow (Brian Cox) seeing his 14-year-old dog Red shot dead before his eyes by Danny, a sociopathic teenager. Avery, a courtly, mournful Korean War vet who runs a country store, doesn't want vengeance. He wants justice. He wants Danny, a rich kid with no soul (a seething Noel Fisher), and Danny's two accomplices, include Danny's vulnerable brother Harold (Kyle Gallner), to apologize. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Unfortunately for Ludlow - and the movie - Danny and Harold's father is played by Tom Sizemore, mean and influential, in a bizarre peroxide blond dye job that suggests punk rock, not land baron. Sizemore's scenery chewing signals the movie's drift into weirdness. The film's power lies in Brian Cox's quiet, aching performance. Red's two brief scenes establish him in Avery's heart, and ours, and the rest of the film reveals people who love their dogs, and reach out to Avery in his loss. As Red's absence sinks in, Cox's face grows longer and longer, but his eyes remain dry. A shot of the door that Red used to scratch will be enough to bring most dog owners to tears. But not Avery. It would be a relief to see him cry.

However, when it becomes clear that justice will not be served in the courts, the film's narrative jumps the tracks into 1970s vengeance flick: a little Eastwood, a lot of Bronson, and a whole bunch of guns. A TV news story by a pretty, crusading reporter (Kim Dickens) unwittingly incites more violence, and while there is a resolution, it must be accomplished with another peculiar tone change, some dubious plotting, and a puppy ex machina.

The bizarre shifts in tone can partially be explained by the credits - the original director was apparently replaced. What's good about this movie is very good, and that is most of the cast, particularly the teenagers, who hold their own against Cox. What's weird is very weird. Those who are Dean Koontz or Stephen King fans may find it more to their liking. Tenderhearted dog owners: Stay far away.

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The Bear

Posted on Aug 11, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Sony Pictures, 1988, 93 minutes
 
It's rare for a movie that portrays dogs as "bad guys" to win over dog lovers. Yet Jean-Jacques Annaud's documentary-style masterpiece about an adorable, orphaned bear cub managed to win over this dog lover.
 
As the cub and the older Kodiak bear who adopts him are stalked by two determined hunters across British Columbia's late-nineteenth-century wilderness, I was definitely not rooting for the pack of mixed-breed hunting dogs the men employ to help bring the bear down - even though several of them reminded me of my own beloved dogs. (The big bear is played by a performer named Bart, a nine-and-a-half-foot-tall, 1,500-pound hunk of natural acting talent who played opposite Alec Baldwin, Anthony Hopkins, and Brad Pitt in a long career that ended with his death in 2000.)
 
And yet, when some of the hunting dogs are injured and one - the younger hunter's favorite - must be put out of her misery, you realize with sadness that they were only following humans' orders. That's when the director's message comes through loud and clear: big-game hunting is terrible for all involved, not just the quarry.
 
This film makes such a powerful case for showing mercy to animals that American Humane awarded it a special citation. From the film-industry watchdog that ensures "No animals were harmed" on the movie sets they monitor, that's praise from Caesar. By showing the harm hunters do to animals, "The Bear" has what it takes to inspire more people to forsake this blood sport.

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Kit Kittredge: An American Girl

Posted on Aug 4, 2008 By Elizabeth Edwardsen

Like all her American Girl  counterparts, Kit Kittredge has the determination, courage, and pluck to overcome the obstacles of her day.

In case you haven't known any little girls in the past 20 or so years, each American Girl in the wildly popular doll, book, and now movie, series, represents a period in U.S. history. Kit lives in Cincinnati during the Great Depression, and she watches as neighbors lose their homes and her father loses his car dealership and moves to Chicago to find work.

This is a children's movie, so some of the financial hardships of the Depression are rather cheerfully displayed; the hobo camp where Kit, played by Abigail Breslin, helps solve a mystery is Mayberry-esque in its friendliness. But enough loss and suffering comes through to let young viewers know that these were very hard times. One character affected by the economic losses could very well be a 2008 resident of any U.S. community. Gracie the Bassett Hound, abandoned on the street with a sign indicating her previous owner can't afford to keep her any more. As I watched this movie with my own American Girl fan, I thought of all the /dogs left adrift by the ongoing U.S. foreclosure crisis/ [link to Nose post on foreclosure crisis ] and hoped that Kit's nice mother, played by Jula Ormond, would let her take Gracie home. (Of course she did.)

Gracie doesn't play as big a role as some of the other supporting actors -- a hilarious group of boarders that include Joan Cusack, Stanley Tucci, Jane Krakowki, Glenne Headley and Stirling Howard IV (of Mr. Magorium's Magic Emporium) -- but she holds her own against the other acting animal, a sneaky but cute little monkey.

Like all the American Girl stories, there's a gripping plot that includes a nice kick of girl empowerment in Kit Kittredge's tale. It's a story of friendship and of love and it manages to sneak a little history in. If any young girl in your house has not yet talked you into escorting them to this yet, go see it. It's one of those kids' movies that is as enjoyable for parents as kids and will spark a good conversation on the way home. If your daughter's grandparents didn't live through the Depression, or if your neighbors have not lost a house to foreclosure, use the movie to talk about dog abandonment and rescue and the state that the foreclosure crises has left the nations shelters in.

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Retro Reel: The Three Lives of Thomasina

Posted on Jul 31, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Disney, 1964, 97 minutes
 
Thomasina - the talking pet of the title - happens to be a cat, but that doesn't mean there isn't plenty for dog people to love about this underrated Disney classic.

Based on the book by Paul Gallico, who also authored The Poseidon Adventure, it dramatizes the unbreakable bond between a little Scots girl named Mary and her beloved marmalade tabby, who narrates the film (with the voice of actress Elspeth March).
 
When Mary McDhui's cat Thomasina goes missing and is found terribly ill, she implores her father, the cranky town veterinarian (played by Patrick McGoohan - yep, Danger Man [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Man ] himself) to save her pet. He promises he will, but alas he's too busy performing emergency surgery on a blind man's German Shepherd, so he arranges for Thomasina, who's contracted Tetanus, to be euthanized without making any attempt to cure her.
 
This shocking development happens early on in the film, but fear not - this is a Disney movie, after all, so that's not the final ending. As the title promises, Thomasina gets to live out all three lives, thanks to the tender loving care of Lori MacGregor (a radiant Susan Hampshire), a beautiful but reclusive young woman feared by the neighborhood children as a witch. But there are some surprisingly modern, psychologically complex, and downright un-Disney-like scenes in which little Mary grieves for her lost cat (these are way too upsetting for very young kids), plus Thomasina's truly intriguing dream sequence, and if you're not impressed with these elements, then I'll eat my tam o'shanter.
 
Along the way, we see plenty of dog stars, including a mutt who's the beloved best friend of a kindly old lady, an overweight Pug  belonging to the town vicar, and an adorable puppy. And the movie offers, in easy-to-swallow, sugar-coated pill form, an excellent edu-tainment lesson in the humane treatment of creatures great and small, from bears to frogs - and why it's so very important to promote and defend it, no matter how young or old you may be.
 

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The Dark Knight

Posted on Jul 29, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Warner Bros., 2008, 152 minutes

In director Christopher Nolan's sequel to Batman Begins, the underdog doesn't stand a chance in a world gone crazy with corruption. This movie paints a bleak picture of contemporary Gotham: In the gritty city, everyone has a dark streak - even an ostensibly good guy like crusading D.A. Harvey "Two-Face" Dent (Aaron Eckhardt). The Bat light still shines, a beacon of hope in the night sky - but this time around, the real Caped Crusader (Christian Bale) isn't the only vigilante answering the call for help. He's got competition in the form of pitifully underqualified Batman wannabes.
 
Batman's arch nemesis is The Joker, played to the hilt (literally: his signature weapon is a knife) by the late Heath Ledger, who absolutely deserves the posthumous Oscar cinema pundits are saying he'll win. This baddest of bad guys comes out of the Jacobean theater's cruel "horrid laughter" tradition by way of the Kabuki makeup department. The cackling clown is an abstract painting by Francis Bacon come to life, and his singular style of wreaking havoc chillingly reminds us of  things we'd rather forget, including September 11th and the videotaped killing of Daniel Pearl.
 
Most chilling, however, is the movie's use of dogs as symbols of evil. In a film with such great potential for unqualified magnificence, Rottweiler lovers will be appalled to see their favorite noble dog breed stereotyped as a dark, dangerous menace. Maybe "no animals were harmed" in the filming of the movie, but the thousands of sweet Rottweilers already languishing in animal shelters certainly won't benefit from the way the breed is portrayed here. 
 
Even the "good" dogs - the German Shepherd police K9s - are a thorn in the side of the Batman. Adding insult to injury, Bruce Wayne worries aloud whether his new Batman suit will protect him from dog bites (!) and the Joker is characterized - by others and in his own words - as a mad dog.
 
Once upon a time in the 1950s and 60s, D.C. Comics gave us a character called Ace the Bat Dog, canine crime-fighting partner of Batman and Robin. Memo to Christopher Nolan: Please consider reviving and updating Ace in your next Batman installment - and please go against type by casting a brave, gentle Rottweiler in the role.
 

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Riding in cars with dogs on film

Posted on Jul 21, 2008 By Julia Szabo

The motorized motif of dogs in the car - or truck, or army transport - is one that crops up often on film. So if you're not planning a road trip with your own Rover any time soon, here are a few cinematic suggestions in which you'll catch a glimpse of a dog - or 101 dogs - being taken for a ride.  

The Ugly Dachshund starts out with a frantic car ride to get Suzanne Pleshette's very pregnant Dachshund to the vet in time.  

In El Perro, the dog of the title - an enormous Argentine mastiff - makes himself right at home in the passenger seat of his new owner's truck.  

In Lady and the Tramp, our Cocker Spaniel heroine is picked up by (gasp!) the dog catcher and carted off to the animal shelter. A similar mishap befalls Bill the Collie in The Courage of Lassie - except he's hit by a truck, taken to a veterinarian, and later drafted into military service.  

In 101 Dalmatians, one of the most nail-biting scenes ever filmed occurs when the spotted puppies make their great escape from Cruella DeVil's henchmen, traveling by rickety truck at breakneck speed along a steep, winding road. Yikes!  

Hilary Swank's own beloved dog Karoo makes a brief, blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in Million Dollar Baby - the sweet little mutt is spotted through the window of a truck, sitting in the lap of director Clint Eastwood's daughter. And speaking of Clint, his earlier movie Tightrope has a terrific scene involving several dogs and two kids in a car that will put a smile on the face of anyone who's ever driven with dogs.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Posted on Jul 14, 2008 By Martha Garvey

Criterion Collection, 1988, 172 minutes

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For those who take the long, romantic journey of this lyrical film, director Philip Kaufman's adaptation of the Milan Kundera novel, remember: good dogs come to those who wait.  

Karenin, the shambling, shaggy-eared girl dog adopted by Tomas, the compulsively philandering neurosurgeon (Daniel Day-Lewis, smirking and sexy) and his long-suffering wife Tereza (played by a luminous Juliette Binoche), doesn't make her first appearance until nearly an hour into this nearly three-hour film.

Tereza and Tomas impulsively buy Karenin as a puppy on their wedding night from a woman in a pub. It is the height of their love - and the flowering of Czech society. Karenin's name has a literary root - Tomas votes for Tolstoy, but Tereza protests that their dog is girl. So they give her a shortened version of one of Tereza's favorite characters - the unhappy Anna Karenina.

The name will prove prophetic - for Tomas and Tereza's relationship and for 1960s Czechoslovakia. But not for Karenin. Tereza will nearly be destroyed by Tomas's womanizing. Czechoslovakia will turn on Tomas and Tereza as the Russians occupy it, turning them into exiles. Karenin, meanwhile, abides, happily traveling in the car, bearing up under a snub from a snooty Afghan hound, and, memorably, chasing Day-Lewis, delightfully goofy with a croissant in his mouth. Karenin is happy whether she's being eyed on a train by a scary Communist officer, or shuffling around a dingy Prague bar. And however Tomas and Tereza suffer, their mutual love for Karenin is never in doubt.

Ironically, it is only when Tomas and Tereza have lost nearly everything that Karenin finds love - with a handsome farm pig, Mephisto. But be warned - this is a movie shot through both with romance and with loss. 

 

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The Cave of the Yellow Dog

Posted on Jul 11, 2008 By Martha Garvey

Tartan Video, 2005, 93 minutes

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This movie is in the FetchDog Top 20

The Cave of the Yellow Dog boasts a classic dog movie plot: resourceful child finds stray dog, child tangles with parent about keeping stray dog, until the stray dog... well, you should see the movie, so I won’t spoil it. While on paper the storyline reads as classic Disney, don’t expect to find any of its ancillary products at your local fast food joint: this film is shot in ravishing western Mongolia, and the family in question is a group of nomadic shepherds. Ever wondered how you dismantle a yurt? You won't wonder after you see this movie - and you'll be fascinated. (There is a little too much focus on the making of cheese, but that's what a fast forward button is for.)

Director Byambasuren Davaa (whose previous film was The Story of the Weeping Camel) has cast her film with a real family of shepherds, the Batchuluuns - mom, dad, two daughters, a baby boy, and …oh yeah ... the dog: Zochor. Zochor, Mongolian for "Spot," is discovered by Nansal, the family's oldest daughter, while she is gathering dried dung for her mother. Zochor, who looks like the product of crazy love between a Border Collie and a Jack Russell, and is cuteness personified, but not to Nansal's father. The family has already lost two sheep to a wolf attack. Dad fears that Zochor, abandoned by a family that's retreated to the city, has been living with wolves. If they keep Zochor, Dad believes the wolves will return. This sense of foreboding frames the whole film. While the film reverently shows us extraordinary vistas and a placid sheep-tending routine, the city waits, just off-screen. Inevitably, the Batchuluuns will move to the city - but not quite yet.

There is a plot, and the movie is very family friendly, but if your kids are used to special effects, explosions, and gratuitous violence, they may get restless. However, this movie brims with little girl power. What a treat to see Nansal, a tiny, stubborn girl of 6 or 7, fearlessly mount a horse, tend a huge herd of sheep, or retrieve her dog from a dark cave. She could revive a whole city of Ophelias. In an interview on the DVD, the director admitted that one day, the girl playing Nansal decided she didn't want to be filmed anymore. What did they do? "We filmed clouds that day," the director reports. What Nansal wants, Nansal gets.

 

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Cinematic Dog reaches a milestone

Posted on Jul 10, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Back in February of this year, FetchDog's Cinematic Dog blog posted our humbly opinionated list of the Top 20 Dog Movies of All Time. And ever since, we've been working hard to review all of them for movie hounds eager to get the full picture on each fetching flick.

This week we reached a milestone: with Martha Garvey's post on The Cave of the Yellow Dog, all twenty titles have now been reviewed.

The other titles rounding out the list are: 101 Dalmatians, A Boy and His Dog, A Dog's Life, Best in Show, El Perro, Good-bye, My Lady, Greyfriars Bobby, High Sierra, I Am Legend, Lady and the Tramp, Old Yeller, Port of Shadows, The Courage of Lassie, The Incredible Journey, The Road Warrior: Mad Max 2, Umberto D, Sounder, Where the Red Fern Grows, and White Dog.

So, if you're looking for suggestions on what to screen at home with the family or without (our fun Reel Rating system will tell you what is and isn't OK for kids to watch), take a look. And please send us your comments, favorites, and suggestions for future films to review.

The Incredible Hulk

Posted on Jul 8, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Universal, 2008, 114 minutes

To view the trailer, go here.

The Marvel Comics superhero The Incredible Hulk, green-giant alter ego of fugitive physicist Dr. Bruce Banner, was born in May of 1962. One year later came the TV premiere of The Fugitive, about an on-the-run doctor also wrongly accused of murder. Then came The Hulk, a short-lived 1966 TV series, followed by 1977's huge hit The Incredible Hulk, starring Bill Bixby as Dr. Banner and bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk. (In addition to various Hulk specials, the eighties would also bring us a band of fugitives called The A-Team, but I digress.) Yet even before TV's Incredible Hulk, dog lovers were glued to the set watching a series called Run, Joe, Run, about a heroic German Shepherd who managed to stay several steps ahead of the people wrongly accusing him of attacking his trainer.

Whether the hero is a doc or a dog, audiences can't get enough of the fugitive theme (which, incidentally, first showed up in 1952's The Greatest Show on Earth). The proof: Ang Lee's 2003 movie Hulk was released in 2003, yet here we are five short years later lining up to see a new and different version directed by Louis Leterrier (who, incidentally, also directed a Jet Li film called Danny The Dog, a.k.a. Unleashed).  This time around, Ed Norton stars as Dr. Banner, and the movie - to the delight of hardcore Hulk fans - boasts nostalgic references to the seventies TV series that Ang Lee's version did not.

In addition to providing the titular CGI character's voice, Ferrigno makes a brief appearance, looking buffer than ever. Bringing everything up-to-the-moment, we also get a brief visit from Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), as well as the requisite cameo by Stan Lee.

And for those seventies TV viewers (this reviewer included) who couldn't get enough of the four-footed fugitive called Joe, there's even a bit of dog action. When we first meet up with Dr. Banner, he's living with a handsome, black-and-white mixed-breed in a densely-populated neighborhood of Brasil that teems with owned and stray dogs. Of course, the reason audiences love the fugitive kind is that they, like the dogs in this movie, are underdogs. Memo to Hollywood: isn't it high time for a movie adaptation of Run, Joe, Run?

 

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101 Dalmatians

Posted on Jul 1, 2008 By Martha Garvey

Walt Disney Video, 1996, 103 minutes
 
Available on Amazon.com
 
There is evil.and there is EEEEVIL, and in this live action remake of the Disney animation classic, Glenn Close, as the iconic Cruella De Vil, is pure EEEEVIL.

Cruella is so EEEEVIL, her gloves have their own claws. Visually, Close's brilliant Cruella seems a combo of Lily Munster, Norma Desmond, and just a hint of Anna Wintour. Cruella adores fur. She's never met an endangered species she didn't want to have some couture made out of. But dogs - especially very adorable black and white spotted dogs - will do just fine. Behind the high fashion and the even higher hairstyles, Close appears to be having a grand old time. (Although in real life, we know that FetchDog's blogger and favorite actress Glenn Close genuinely loves dogs.)

Meanwhile, humans Roger (a charming Jeff Daniels) and Anita (a tender Joely Richardson) meet cute in picturesque London when their Dalmatians, Pongo and Perdita, fall crazy in love. Before you can say "double wedding with dogs," Roger and Anita and Pongo and Perdita have made one happy, dog-scented household. As love blooms, Pongo and Perdita welcome a passel of puppies, who turn in star-making performances thanks to coaching by ace animal trainer Gary Gero.

Bad news for the puppies - Anita's boss is none other than Cruella! Dreaming of a 101 Dalmatian fur coat, Cruella sets her bumbling henchmen, played by Mark Williams and Hugh Laurie (acting about a hundred I.Q. points dumber than Dr. House) off to kidnap the puppies. Due to their idiocy, Cruella must swoop in again to nab the pups herself, only to be met with a resistance army made up of dogs, cows, birds, and even the occasional rebellious raccoon.

Kids will be thrilled as the puppies are returned to their rightful homes after much muck has been flung, mostly at Cruella. And parents will appreciate the wily gusto Close gives her gloriously nasty character. 

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Tightrope

Posted on Jun 26, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Warner Home Video, 1984, 114 minutes
 
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Clint Eastwood produced this crime thriller, starring as Wes Block, New Orleans police detective and single parent to two young daughters and three dogs. His assignment: track down the serial rapist-murderer who's been targeting young, attractive women into kinky sex. Except there's just one little complication: when he's not on duty, Wes frequents the same seedy haunts now terrorized by the killer. This variation on the Dirty Harry icon is dirty indeed, and the tightrope of the title is the precarious one that links his personal and professional lives.
 
Early in the film, Wes and his daughters (the elder, Amanda, is played by his real-life daughter Alison) encounter a stray mutt. The girls ask to keep him, and they get their way. The foundling becomes pet number four; the other three are a Dachshund, a Miniature Poodle, and a Saint Bernard. As an owner of multiple dogs myself, I laughed out loud in recognition to see the entire family, two- and four-legged, traveling by car, snouts sniffing out the windows - a welcome moment of levity in a story that fills the viewer with serious dread.
 
When Wes secures a date with rape counselor Beryl Thibodeaux (Genevieve Bujold), his younger daughter Penny asks, "Does she like dogs?" This is a thriller, so I'm not about to reveal the plot twists. Let's just say that, even though not one of the dogs is called by name, this movie offers admirable proof of a plain, brown, mixed-breed's extraordinary survival skills. 
 
In fact, Kathie Coblentz, editor of Clint Eastwood: Interviews, urged me to see this film years ago because one of its themes is, as she put it, "the superiority of mutts over purebreds." I'm glad I finally took her advice.
 
Special kudos to Clint, who happens to be seriously allergic to dogs, for letting the mutt sleep with him in bed, the better to portray Wes as a guy who, deep down, is A-OK, in part because he values dogs as bona fide family members.

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Boynton Beach Club

Posted on Jun 23, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Sony Pictures, 2005, 95 minutes
 
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This romantic comedy follows the funny-sad love lives of seniors in a Florida active-adult community to show that elders - the human and canine variety - still have much to offer. Director Susan Seidelman, directing a screenplay she co-wrote with her mother, draws layered performances from a great cast led by Joseph Bologna, Dyan Cannon, Len Cariou, Sally Kellerman, and Brenda Vaccaro. 

The movie's back story makes the case that the senior pet population, a.k.a. AARF (American Association of Retired Fur-persons), is another great untapped resource. When the children of Vaccaro's character Brenda present her with a dog; she's reluctant to accept the gift. But the bushy-tailed actor, a seven-year-old Shih Tzu named Sadie, the pet of a production assistant, easily wins over Vaccaro and the audience by giving a spot-on performance despite having had no prior acting experience.

Here's the director's take on her canine scene-stealer: "The screenplay calls for the dog to look disappointed, and I thought, How am I going to direct a dog portraying that emotion?" Seidelman says. "And I couldn't blame the writer because I wrote the script! When Brenda's character finally bonded with the dog, it was all done in one wide shot. The dog looked sullen, then just jumped on the bed and laid down next to Brenda in exactly the right spot, on the first take. The dog was a natural." 

Attention, young turks: Not many wet-behind-the-ears pups could turn in a picture-perfect performance like that. 

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My Life as a Dog

Posted on Jun 18, 2008 By Martha Garvey

Criterion Collection, 1985, 110 minutes
 
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In this classic Swedish film, 12-year-old Ingemar has little he can count on. While he lives with his angry, ailing mother and volatile older brother, his truest companion is a small, expressive female dog, Sickvan. When Ingemar's mother grows too ill to care for her children, Ingemar is sent to family members in the country, while the dog is sent to a kennel.
 
For a while, Ingemar is able to distract himself with his loving, soccer-mad uncle Gunnar and a motley crew of characters who populate Gunnar's workplace, a glassblowing company. The movie, set in the 1950s, revels in period detail, from old record players to the proud acquisition of the town's first TV. Ingemar inches closer to adolescence - he sees his first naked lady, a curvy model for a local artist. He even acquires a tomboy pal, Saga, an ace soccer player who loves the game so much, she and Ingemar bind her breasts so she can play with the boys. Meanwhile, his heart aches for his mother, who suffers from TB, and for Sickvan the dog.
 
The little Swedish glassblowing town Ingemar finds temporary refuge in rivals the series Northern Exposure  for eccentrics per square inch. For the briefest of moments, Ingemar finds a loving, stable home. But be warned: the dog of the movie's title, the one Ingemar identifies with? That would be Laika, the hapless dog the Russians shot into space.
 
Despite glorious performances by all the actors, particularly the children, this movie - a tribute to a child's resilience in the face of unbearable loss - is not for kids, or fainthearted adults. Perhaps this beautifully made film's greatest triumph is that, just when you don't think you can bear it any more, it makes you laugh just enough to keep watching.  

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A Kid's Take: Air Bud: World Pup

Posted on Jun 16, 2008 By Raphael Pierson-Sante

Walt Disney Video, 2000, 83 minutes

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I think I've watched this movie about 23 times. Which means I figure I'm good for another 15 viewings at least. Everything about this movie makes you feel good. Even the music - now I sing along when they play the song called "Lucky Star." Boys and girls both will like this movie, and there's one big reason why - plus a lot of little ones. That's right: Air Bud, the famous ball-playing Golden Retriever, becomes a dad! And these puppies have just one word to describe them: C-U-T-E. Especially when they wear their soccer team uniforms.  

There's a lot I like, but my hands-down favorite parts are when Air Bud scores a winning soccer goal for his team, the Timberwolves, with just one second to go. And then, when he gets called in to the women's World Cup finals, he blocks a goal by the Norwegian team so the American women just go crazy and love him. So does everyone else, too, especially his boy Josh, who spends the movie figuring out that he doesn't have to be a tough guy, just himself, to impress Emma, the girl he likes.

By the way, Emma plays on the Timberwolves, too. When she and Air Bud take the field, you'll laugh when the other team's coach can't believe his eyes. "Girls, dogs - what's next? A water buffalo?" That's my favorite line. And I bet you'll laugh even harder when you see Air Bud get a make-your-own sundae - which turns into a make-your-own mess!

If you don't get your fill of dogs with Air Bud and his puppies, you will with the dog stampede. I won't tell you any more about it, because you'll see for yourself. And if you love dogs, you really should.  

 

Presence of dogs:
Respect for dogs:
Canine star quality:
Family friendly: