A Dog’s Purpose (2017)

01 Monday May 2017

Tags

Bailey, Britt Robertson, Comedy, Dennis Quaid, Drama, Josh Gad, K.J. Apa, Lasse Hallström, Reincarnation, Review

D: Lasse Hallström / 100m

Cast: Josh Gad, Bryce Gheisar, Juliet Rylance, Luke Kirby, K.J. Apa, Britt Robertson, John Ortiz, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Dennis Quaid, Peggy Lipton

A Dog’s Purpose tells the five lives of one canine soul (related in voice over by Gad), who initially lives a very short life as a feral puppy called Toby before finding a “forever home” in his second incarnation as a Golden Retriever. It’s 1961, and Toby is rescued from a locked car by a young boy, Ethan (Gheisar), and his mother (Rylance). Toby is renamed Bailey (or to his ears, Bailey Bailey Bailey Bailey) and he becomes a part of the family. Ethan’s mother is very supportive, but his father (Kirby) can be aloof, and prone to mood swings. When a dinner party for his boss goes awry thanks to Bailey’s fun-seeking nature, seeds are sown in relation to Ethan’s father and the work he does, seeds that will have serious repercussions later on.

As a teenager, Ethan is on course to earn himself a football scholarship, and he has a bright, vivacious girlfriend, Hannah (Robertson). Bailey goes wherever Ethan goes, and life for Ethan is pretty good, but his father pushes his mother to the ground while he’s drunk and Ethan tells him to go for good. Following that incident, one of his “friends” puts a lit firecracker through their letterbox, and the house catches fire. Ethan and his mother only get out thanks to Bailey’s quick response, but in jumping to safety from an upstairs window, Ethan fractures his leg. His dream of playing professional football now in ruins, Ethan becomes embittered and ends his relationship with Hannah, and leaves for agricultural college.

Bailey lives out the rest of his life with Ethan’s mother and her parents, and eventually dies of old age. His next life sees him reincarnated into the body of a German Shepherd K-9 called Ellie. With her police partner, Carlos, Ellie chases criminals and helps Carlos overcome his feelings of loneliness follwing the break-up of his marriage. Ellie has all of Bailey’s memories (and attitude), and misses all the fun and games she had previously with Ethan. In his fourth life, Bailey is a Pembroke Welsh Corgi called Tino who is rescued from an animal shelter by shy college student Maya (Howell-Baptiste). Tino and Maya are together for a long time before his next life comes along. Now a Bernese Mountain Dog, and called Waffles, he’s abandoned by his owner’s abusive boyfriend but is found by someone whose smell he recognises, someone he hasn’t seen since his time with Ethan…

An unashamedly feelgood movie, A Dog’s Purpose has had a surprising amount of negative publicity forced upon it in the last few months, so much so that advance screenings (and its Los Angeles premiere) have been cancelled, supporters of the movie have done their best to distance themselves from it, and Hallström has received numerous hate messages. The reason? Back in January 2017, footage appeared that seemed to show a German Shepherd called Hercules being forcibly dropped into and dragged through rushing water, and with no regard for his safety or if he was distressed. But the footage had been edited to give a false impression of the dog’s “distress” and in February this was confirmed by the American Humane Association.

All of which was very dramatic – way more dramatic than anything that happens in A Dog’s Purpose, and despite the movie killing off its central character four times. Based on the novel of the same name by W. Bruce Cameron, the movie retains the novel’s portmanteau structure, and unsurprisingly, some of Bailey’s incarnations are more effective than others. His time with Ethan gets the most screen time, and their scenes together paint an affecting portrait of mutual respect and understanding. But though the emotional bond between Bailey and Ethan is established very early on, it’s the closer bond between Ethan and his father that matters more, and the inevitable disintegration of their relationship. While the movie puts warm and fuzzy in the foreground, it has the sense to keep dark and upsetting sequestered in the background, and waiting to come out when needed.

The same occurs when Bailey becomes Ellie. Ortiz’s melancholy police officer lacks the connection that Ethan had with Bailey, and though the mechanics of the overall storyline dictate that each incarnation has its fair share of problems, Ellie’s life is the toughest, and the complete opposite of Bailey’s. This is reflected in the manner in which Ellie becomes Tino, but even though it should be heartbreaking, the knowledge that “Bailey will return” negates any inherent drama. Thanks to Cameron’s spin on canine reincarnation, there’s no sense that there’s anything at stake here, and even though it’s fairly obvious where all these different lives are heading, there are few lessons learnt along the way, and Carlos’ and Maya’s stories end up feeling incidental to the main focus, which is when will Bailey and Ethan be reunited?

What helps and hinders the movie in equal measure is the voice over provided by Gad. As a way of (literally) getting inside Bailey’s head during each incarnation, it’s an idea that gives the movie the opportunity to see things from the dog’s point of view, and to do so in a way that avoids the usual kind of anthropomorphism so often seen in movies where animals feature as central characters. There’s no sappy, snappy banter a la Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), just Gad relaying the joy of being a dog, and in such an infectious, humorous manner that you can believe that this is how all happy dogs think and behave. But there’s a serious side to it all as well, as Bailey takes time out every now and again to ponder on the bigger questions, such as why cats want to be dogs deep down and can’t admit it, why some owners don’t want to play Fetch, and more importantly, what is Bailey’s purpose in coming back so often.

While the answer may sound a little cheesy, and not quite as profound as Hallström and Cameron (plus his four co-screenwriters) would have liked, it does serve to give the movie more meaning than usual, and the material overall is in Hallström’s very safe hands. The director of My Life As a Dog (1985) and Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009) maintains his unique ability to craft emotionally resonant movies out of stories involving our canine friends, and though in many ways this is a movie that offers little in the way of anything new or original, it succeeds by telling Bailey’s story simply and directly. With a superb canine cast that easily puts its human counterparts in the shade, the movie also has a sentimental, decorative score from Rachel Portman, and vibrant, energetic cinematography from Terry Stacey that complements Bailey’s joie de vivre.

Rating: 7/10 – infectiously enjoyable, and a movie to warm the hearts of dog lovers everywhere, A Dog’s Purpose is at its best when showing the depth of the bond between a dog and its owner; less successful in terms of its structure, and perhaps showing one life too many, the movie also suffers from too many perfunctory performances (the script’s fault, not the cast’s), and a saccharine quality in places that’s completely unnecessary.

Oh! the Horror! – Backtrack (2014) and The Last House on Cemetery Lane (2015)

13 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Andrew Jones, Blind woman, Camping trip, Georgina Blackledge, Haunted house, Horror, Julian Glover, Lee Bane, Mark Drake, Murder, Nazis, Plumpton, Reincarnation, Revenge, Review, Rosie Akerman, Screenwriter, Sophie Barker, South Downs, Tom Sands, World War II

aka Nazi Vengeance

D: Tom Sands / 97m

Cast: Mark Drake, Sophie Barker, Rosie Akerman, Miles Jovian, Julian Glover

When Ralph (Drake) undergoes past life regression at the suggestion of his friend Claudia (Akerman), he has visions of Nazis in the small English village of Plumpton, and the deaths of an unknown woman and her three children. Confused and upset by this, Ralph manages to persuade his girlfriend, Andrea (Barker), along with Claudia and her boyfriend Lucas (Jovian), to go on a camping trip to the South Downs, and to investigate the area that Ralph saw glimpses of. Finding the village proves more difficult than expected, and while Ralph and Claudia explore further afield, Andrea and Lucas stay with the tents and continue the affair they’ve been having. While in the midst of having sex, an old man knocks Lucas unconscious and threatens Andrea with a shotgun. He ties up both of them and takes them to an old farm building where he tortures them before leaving to find Ralph and Claudia.

Ralph and Claudia return to the tents but don’t immediately realise that their partners have been abducted. Later they do, but by then it’s late and they decide to bed down for the night and go for help in the morning. The old man attempts to grab them but they manage to escape. Having got away, Claudia suggests that Ralph undergo further regression in an effort to find out more about what happened in Plumpton, and if it has any bearing on what’s happening to them now. Ralph learns he was one of the Nazis he saw before, and that he was responsible for the deaths of the woman and her children. He and Claudia seek shelter in a church but the old man is laying in wait for them; they too find themselves held captive with their partners in the old farm building and at the mercy of the old man’s thirst for revenge.

Sometimes, when watching horror films – especially if you’ve seen way too many of them for your own good – there’s often a point where you know exactly what’s going to happen next, and how, and why. This is the feeling you get after the first five minutes of Backtrack, and the feeling persists throughout. For example, when Ralph and Claudia realise their other halves have been abducted, neither of them can make a call on their mobile phones (naturally). Or when Ralph realises he was a Nazi – something the viewer’s known all along. Or when Claudia tells Ralph to keep a Swiss Army knife in his pocket because, you know, it just might come in handy later on. But these examples of lazy storytelling aside, this is a movie that gets it wrong on so many levels it’s almost embarrassing.

While the basic idea of Backtrack is okay for this sort of thing – revenge-driven World War II survivor targets reincarnated souls who killed his family – the movie is defeated from the beginning by some really really really terrible dialogue (think Harrison Ford’s famous quote, “You can type this shit, but you can’t say it”, and you’ll find you’re not even close to how bad the dialogue is). Defeat comes as well through its cast’s complete inability to make the dialogue sound even remotely normal (even Glover, a classically trained actor, can’t do anything with it). And to make matters worse, the cast are uniformly awful, giving amateurish performances and exposing their lack of experience, and lack of knowledge of their craft in every scene.

Stepping away from the world of documentaries for which he’s best known, Sands does a ham-fisted job in every sense, and fails to inject any tension or drama into the proceedings, leaving the cast to fend for themselves and showing no sign that he’s recognised the absurdities of Mick Sands’ apparently first draft script (the old man stalks the two couples by tractor, one that must have the biggest muffler in the world attached to it, as it doesn’t make a sound). With basic attempts at framing and composition, and the feeling that a lot of shots were first takes, the look and feel of Backtrack is that of a movie that should have had a lot more attention paid to it at all stages of its production.

Rating: 1/10 – dire in every way possible, Backtrack is an object lesson in how not to make a low budget horror movie; if the choice is watching this or watching paint dry, then watch the paint – at least it’s got a more credible story arc.

D: Andrew Jones / 81m

Cast: Lee Bane, Georgina Blackledge, Tessa Wood, Vivien Bridson

When screenwriter John Davies (Bane) rents a house for a couple of months in order to work on his latest screenplay, he finds there’s a sitting tenant up on the third floor: a blind old lady (Bridson) who never leaves her room. Annoyed at first because there was no mention of the old lady in the advertisement he saw, John is reassured by the estate agent (Wood) that it won’t interfere with his work. He spends a day or so visiting the nearby town and reminiscing on the visits he made to the area as a child. Then, one day, he meets a young woman, Cassie (Blackledge) in the garden. She apologises for being there, but John is unconcerned and, slightly smitten, tells her she can visit again if she wants to.

As his relationship with Cassie develops into something more romantic, John begins to have nightmares and experience strange phenomena. At night, a record player comes on and plays the same song each time. A doll in one of the bedrooms is found on the stairs, and a picture that hangs in the hallway ends up on the floor without being touched. He contacts the estate agent to see if the house has a history, but she says there’s nothing to tell. Cassie suggests using a ouija board, but John rejects the idea – at first. One night he uses one to find out if anything has happened in the past, and it tells him that there was a murder there. Convinced that the old lady must know what’s going on, he visits her, only to find that nothing is quite as it seems, and that his life is now in danger.

With the look and feel of a short movie expanded to meet the needs of a full-length feature, The Last House on Cemetery Lane contains a lot of padding and a shortage of actual drama. The first twenty minutes contain enough off-putting moments to make even die-hard horror fans tune out from boredom, and though the introduction of the blind old lady adds a bit of mystery to proceedings, John’s walk through the nearest town, and then along the beach (accompanied on the soundtrack by a trenchant piece of AOR) seems almost like a test: if you can endure this, then the rest of the movie will be a piece of cake (or a walk on said beach). And even though writer/director Jones begins throwing the odd bit of supernatural phenomena into the mix, the movie finds itself focusing on John and Cassie’s relationship instead, subjecting the viewer to mildly interesting scenes where they get to know each other and trade inane lines of dialogue.

It’s not until John consults the ouija board that the movie begins to pick up pace and reminds itself as to why it’s here. The old lady’s revelations, though, prove less than original and lead to a violent showdown that borrows from Halloween (1978) for a key moment, and which lacks any real tension thanks to the clumsy way in which it’s shot and edited. And with a clear resolution to the tale, the script then undermines and ignores its own logic, both insulting itself and the patient viewer. With so much going on that lacks adequate attention from Jones, it’s left to Bane to carry the bulk of the movie, and while he’s worked with Jones on several previous occasions, even he can’t help the viewer along when the going becomes dull.

A haunted house mystery where the real mystery is why the movie was ever produced, Jones’ strives for atmosphere but misses it by a mile, and never develops his own tale beyond its mundane opening scene. There’s the germ of a good movie here, but Jones and his crew can’t quite get a grip on it.

Rating: 3/10 – only occasionally intriguing, The Last House on Cemetery Lane is a throwback to the kind of rural thrillers made in the Seventies, but without any energy or attempts at effective pacing; with a score that’s more irritating than eerie (not to mention too loud in places), any pleasure to be had will come from its brevity, and its brevity alone.

I Origins (2014)

28 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Biometrics, Brit Marling, Delhi, Drama, Iris patterns, Michael Pitt, Mike Cahill, Reincarnation, Research, Review, Sci-fi

D: Mike Cahill / 106m

Cast: Michael Pitt, Brit Marling, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Steven Yeun, Archie Panjabi, Kashish, Cara Seymour, William Mapother

A graduate student researching the evolution of the human eye, Ian Gray (Pitt) is determined that his findings will discredit the creationists. One Halloween he meets a young woman named Sofi (Bergès-Frisbey) at a party but she leaves before he can get her number; all he has is pictures of her eyes (Ian takes photographs of the eyes of the people he meets).

Some time later, Ian sees Sofi’s eyes on a billboard poster and uses it to track her down. They begin a tentative relationship and eventually plan to marry. On the day of their planned wedding, Ian’s lab partner Karen (Marling) calls him with momentous news: she’s identified a species of worm that is blind but which has the genetic capacity to develop an eye. This leads to an argument between them that reaches its peak when they find themselves in an elevator that breaks down between floors. Their attempt to get out results in Sofi’s death, and Ian retreats from his work and everyone around him. Eventually, Karen visits him and her support leads to Ian returning to his work and their relationship becoming more intimate.

Seven years pass. Ian and Karen are married and expecting their first child. Ian has published a book about his research, though it’s still ongoing. When their child, Tobias, is born his eyes are scanned into the hospital registry but at first another patient’s details show up on the monitor. Passed off as a glitch in the system, Ian and Karen think nothing more of it until a few months later they receive a call from a Dr Simmons (Seymour). She tells them routine blood work taken when Tobias was born shows he may be autistic and she would like him to be brought in for further tests. The tests prove unusual and lead Ian and Karen to become suspicious of Dr Simmons’ motives. When Ian delves deeper, he finds Simmons appears to be working on the hypothesis that iris patterns – normally unique to every individual – may be an indicator of reincarnation.

Ian’s old lab partner Kenny (Yuen) has created an iris database that is linked into iris scanners around the world. When they scan Sofi’s eyes into the database it brings up a hit – a scan made in Delhi three months before. Ian travels to Delhi and finds the centre where the scan was carried out but learns that the girl involved (Kashish) is an orphan and will be hard to find. If he does, he resolves to test her in the same way that Dr Simmons tested Tobias.

An intriguing premise that mixes science with a belief in the unexplained, I Origins is a thoughtful, engrossing, yet ultimately uneven sci-fi drama that ends up sitting on a very broad fence in its attempts to be fair to both the scientific community and those who promote faith over facts. It’s a clever movie, erudite and well conceived by writer/director Cahill, and puts across its central tenet with intelligence and verve. Even though the science rests firmly in the realms of fantasy, it’s presented so convincingly that the movie’s first half is a fascinating exercise in scientific research intercut with Ian and Sofi’s serious-minded love affair.

Once Sofi dies the science takes a back seat it never returns from, and the focus switches to the possibility that Dr Simmons’ research really does point to the possibility that reincarnation is real – and can be scientifically proven. Ian’s reaction isn’t typical: he travels to the place shown in photos used in Tobias’s test. It’s a weak moment that doesn’t fully convince; Ian makes an assumption about the photos’ providence and is on his way almost in the blink of an eye (no pun intended). And the whole notion of an iris database linked to scanners on an international level is never fully explained, the reason for its existence skimmed over, and its inclusion seems forced, more to drive the narrative forward than anything else.

Stretching the narrative in this way leads to a lessening of the drama and the quality of its effect on the viewer. Once in Delhi, Ian’s search for the little girl with Sofi’s eyes proves too easy and hints at Cahill’s screenplay needing to speed things up to reach its conclusion. It’s a decision that hurts the movie and undermines the credibility it’s built up in its first hour. However, it’s not quite enough to undermine the journey the movie takes the viewer on, and there’s still the mystery of how well the little girl will do when Ian tests her. This allows the movie to end on a note of goodwill, but one that is put in jeopardy by a post-credits sequence that shows the extent of Dr Simmons’ studies – it’s a logical extension of Sofi’s “reincarnation” but instead feels contrived rather than thought provoking, as was probably intended.

Pitt gives an impassioned performance that isn’t always sympathetic as Ian can be self-centred and blinkered around others. His scenes with Bergès-Frisbey carry a studied intensity though that is reminiscent of his performance in The Dreamers (2003). As the love of his life (even after he marries Karen, Ian still fantasises about Sofi and their time together), Bergès-Frisbey is aloof, mysterious, and proud, a free spirit who doesn’t like to be challenged. Rounding off the main characters, Marling is brittle and reflexive, studious and controlled, but hiding a passion for Ian because of his relationship with Sofi. It’s Bergès-Frisbey who gives the movie its passion, and Marling who gives it its intelligence; both actresses give high quality performances.

Cahill directs with a strong visual sense, and while not a flashy director, contributes – along with DoP Markus Förderer – a consistent tone that benefits the movie greatly. While its early, wintry theme seems a little overearing when viewed against the later warm brown hues of Delhi, Cahill nevertheless makes each scene captivating to watch, even if the thematic content is lacking, or the dialogue sounds occasionally like it’s been drawn from the well of verbosity. It’s a movie that takes a fair degree of risk in presenting its story to the viewer, but ultimately pays off despite its change of tack at the hour mark.

Rating: 7/10 – intelligent, well-considered sci-fi that manages to say something about identity and the quest for knowledge at the same time; I Origins – while appearing to say something about death and its attendant consequences – actually works best as a meditation on what it’s like to have your scientific view on life eroded by emotions and longing.