gbill-74877's reviews

"I met the president. We in trouble."

Not always politically correct by today's standards, but the importance of Richard Pryor's comedy can't be overstated. His ability to slip into characters in this act and deal with a rather unruly crowd in New Orleans were fantastic. And amidst the riffs on his troubles doing drugs and in his marriages, he also slips in bits like the custom of dancing at funerals in New Orleans, the pride of the newly independent country of Zimbabwe, and how America typically handles drug issues ("They call it an epidemic now. That means white folks are doing it"). It's not his greatest act, but there are some real gems, and I loved the raw sense of authenticity.

"'Cause there aren't any."

Prime Richard Pryor, despite what he had just done to himself a couple of years earlier. There are lots of great bits here, but hearing him talk about going to Africa and his addiction to freebasing cocaine are truly special. Loved the Mafia and Mudbone segments too. Must see if you like comedy.

"With enough time and enough money, you could spend the rest of your life following the summer around the world."

The pinnacle of Bruce Brown's surfing films and a cult classic, The Endless Summer has a couple of things which distinguish it from his others, which are all a celebration of the emerging surf lifestyle and a window into an era. For one thing, it follows two surfers, 21-year-old Mike Hynson and 18-year-old Robert August as they travel around the world in search of untouched surfing spots and the "perfect wave." That alone gives it the feel of a travelogue as they visit Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, and California. While a lot of that was incredibly cool, like their discovery of extraordinary waves at Cape St. Francis in South Africa after trekking three miles over sand dunes, there is also some unfortunate bits of casual racism in Brown's narration, e.g. When he condescendingly refers to a village in Ghana as being primitive, so beware of that.

The other thing which makes this film so unique is the idea of remaining in an "endless summer" by traveling the world from one hemisphere to another, which Brown admits would take a great deal of privilege. There is an aspect of this idea that seems like it's cheating Time, or defying the natural way of things, and when you combine that with the degree of nostalgia in the film for youth, it's irresistible.

There's a nice enough opening scene to this British noir, with a murder played to high pitched music, and with a cast that featured Michael Redgrave, Ann Todd and Peter Cushing, I was quite hopeful. As a bonus you even get the film debut of Joan Plowright as a cheeky chorus girl as well as Lois Maxwell (Moneypenny) in small parts. Unfortunately, you also get several incredibly hammy performances, the worst of which was from Leo McKern. The scene where he screams "Why are you doing this to me!" is pretty comical, and it's not the only time he clutches his face with both hands in anguish.

There is tension in the story but it's also mighty contrived. The father arrives after his son is convicted of murder and has already lost two appeals, and then on the day of the execution tries to play detective and uncover the truth. He's also alcoholic and bizarrely able to get things sorted after taking the time to hit the bottle a couple of times, an odd message. Clearer is the film's firm anti-death penalty stance, though it's delivered in a rather preachy way. And while it's easy to see who the suspect should be (which is of course emphasized by the viewer having seen him in the opening scene, both mistakes if you ask me), oddly it doesn't occur to anyone else. Along the way, the motivations of the wife are suspect, giving an alibi for her husband but then working against him. It's a mess of a story that the twist at the end can't quite save. It's not terrible if you're looking for something over-the-top, or are interested in the cast though.

A reminder of how important it is for gay marriage to be legal, as well as for people to have a will, ensuring that life partners are provided for after one passes away. Touching performances all around, and it's a film that exercises restraint, knowing that the viewer will undoubtedly feel plenty of outrage. That's balanced a bit by wonderful moments with a group of lesbian friends, and I liked how thoughtful this was. It's notable that while it was permitted in Hong Kong, it's not shown in mainland China.

Other than the soundtrack there's not a lot that's original here, and how it depicts the inner city as an almost alien world, filled with danger, seemed stereotypical. Among other things, it went a little overboard with all of the trash blowing in the wind. It was also not helped by casting Denis Leary and Emilio Estevez as the leads, as both feel pretty generic. Along the way you'll have to forgive questionable character motivations, like why the bad guy doesn't use the knowledge of where the good guy lives earlier, instead of doggedly pursuing him into the sewer, or why the good guy doesn't call anyone else for help during the 17 minutes they're waiting for the police. It's also pretty obvious how this one's going to go, so as it played out I found my interested waning. It feels like standard Hollywood fare, without much to elevate it.

"Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped peoples."

The are some haunting images here, and I mean beyond seeing the victims of bombing and other atrocities. The shanty towns of Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) juxtaposed with the country clubs of white people, for example. I also agree with rising up against colonial oppression, using force if necessary, and Frantz Fanon makes compelling, passionate arguments for that as well as reparations for centuries of plundering. But while the broad picture was painted, I was held back from loving this film entirely because it felt a little superficial as a documentary. The giant words put up on the screen while Lauryn Hill read them didn't help. I also felt like it could have given a more complete picture had it been updated to the state of things in 2014, when the documentary was made. Instead, we hear the words Fanon wrote in 1961 set to images from the 1960's through the 1980's.

With that said, there are so many damning moments over the nine segments of the documentary, including:

• The interview with Tonderai Makoni of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in 1970, after he had been imprisoned for five years, where he speaks of institutionalized racism and torture, followed by an interview with a white settler expressing indignance over black people wanting to own cars and houses. He also believes colonists have a better chance in South Africa, where the Native to Colonist ratio is 4 to 1, than in Rhodesia, where it's 34 to 1.

• The interview with Robert Mugabe before he became president of Zimbabwe, who says altruistically that privileges based on color will no longer exist, and society will be integrated. Here I would have been more impressed had the film given us up an update on Mugabe's 37 year corrupt dictatorship that committed its own atrocities.

• In response to workers striking in Liberia in 1966, the Swedish-American mining company LAMCO in cahoots with President William Tubman getting leaders jailed and threatening workers with weapons. The images of Robert Jackson and his family being driven out into the middle of nowhere with all of their possessions after he's been fired for leading the union are devastating.

• The white missionary couple in Tanzania that had been there since 1952 answering questions blithely while black workers toiled away in the background. They state that building the church is more important than building schools or hospitals. They degrade native customs and are like deer in the headlights when asked whether or not the values they preach, like monogamy, are based more in European culture than the Bible. It's clear that they view the natives as having no redeeming values in their customs and beliefs.

• The guerrillas in Mozambique in 1972 who say they asked for liberation from the Portuguese peacefully, but were laughed at and massacred, the planes provided by NATO terrorizing them with napalm. Aside from disturbing images of a girl, crying baby, and nursing mother with limbs blown off, it's clear that the Portuguese committed war crimes by deliberately destroying crops, houses, schools, and hospitals.

• The interview with Amilcar Cabral, pushing for independence in Guinea-Bissau after 500 years of Portuguese subjugation. Here we see Portuguese wounded but there is very little of the context given, before or afterwards, e.g. That Cabral was assassinated, that independence was attained, but that since then the country has been mired in instability and poverty. (Though I'm certainly not pointing this out as a defense of colonialism.)

• The interview with Thomas Sankara, President of Burkina Faso, in 1987, when he explained the rejection of food aid from the IMF because it created a "beggar mentality." We are informed that five months later, he was killed in a coup with the aid of France and America, but nothing else of what's happened there over the last four decades.

Sartre had it right, Fanon's text is a justification of violence in reaction to violence, and a requirement to "decolonize" the various nations of Africa. I think in general it's true, as those in power very seldom relinquish it voluntarily. I would have been impressed if the film had addressed the cases where non-violent movements have worked, however, like Gandhi's in India. And as a last note, I have to say, there was absolutely no good reason for the documentary to include the cows being brutally shot from helicopters by the rebels in Angola, with a close up of blood pouring out of one's nose. Overall, it is a compelling window into colonialism and the writing of Frantz Fanon though.

The fifteen minutes that Zora Neale Hurston captures of a church service really puts you into the congregation, and it's not an issue at all that the audio isn't synchronized, because you certainly get the feeling of being there. We get musical performances with guitar and drums, a preacher putting energy into his performance, and people being moved by the power of their faith. The reason for the lack of synchronization - that the church had no electricity - is telling in its own right. Hurston was quite a field worker when it came to cultural and anthropological work, and if you're looking for a little window into the culture, this will be for you. While I didn't find it as riveting as others, it was worth seeing.

In the Afterword to Hurston's book Tell My Horse about voodoo culture in Haiti and Jamaica, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Describes Alice Walker's attempts to find Hurston's unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery, a story which was published in 1975. Hurston had died poor and was largely forgotten as an author, and the idea of Walker wading through waste-high weeds in a snake-infested cemetery to try to find her grave is moving to me. That's the kind of thing that makes me even happier to know this little film is preserved.

The three minutes we see of rural life amongst an African American logging community in the south is pretty limited, but it was fascinating to think that this was among Zora Neale Hurston's trips to collect folk tales, and more importantly, to interview the last surviving African brought over in the last slave ship to America, which was the Clotilda in 1860. (I highly recommend the book Barracoon that came from it, which will put you right on the porch with the 86 year old Kossola (Cudjo Lewis), listening to him tell his life story.) Oh, if only that had been captured on film! But it was nice to hear Hurston's voice, singing a couple of songs, while looking back at workers, all now long gone.

"The difference between a movie and a memory is that movies are always false. One scene follows after another. But memories mix truth and lies. They appear and vanish before our eyes."

Some impressive visual and technical moments, but I didn't get much out of the story, so this ambitious effort from auteur Bi Gan fell a bit flat for me. The mix of a possibly unreliable narrator, shifting from past to future, and surreal dream events, all told with a painfully slow pace, made this feel more pretentious than profound. Even the 59(!) minute long take over the second half felt more like style than substance, artificially extended at times by following people up and down stairs, etc when cutting to a new scene would have made for a more enjoyable viewing experience, at least for me. On the other hand, there is an undeniable sense of being haunted by guilt over a friend's death and obsession over a lover that slipped away, so if you can switch your left brain off and not try to thoroughly decode the movie, you'll probably enjoy it more than I did.

"But I was thinking, maybe instead of houses we could live in tepees. Because it's better in many ways."

Both an homage to and a spoof of 1950's B-horror films, Tim Burton's Mars Attacks dials up the camp from the very beginning. There's obviously no attempt at having this make sense, I mean, who would believe that the violent species homo sapiens wouldn't approach an alien race with weapons fully drawn? The cast is incredibly deep, including Sylvia Sidney nearly seven decades after her debut film, and I liked how Burton gleefully killed some of them off. The effects are deliberately crude but there is enough playfulness here to make it not matter. What stopped me from loving it was that for me it got too cute with all of its various antics, and I would have preferred a satire that retained some elements of seriousness. The cast also almost becomes a liability because the subplots get spread mighty thin. Endearing in how silly it all is, but a little hollow for me.

I liked the Great Dane and how this film showed how dogs grieve the absence of an owner, but it wandered around in so many other ways that it felt all over the map, and the dialogue which was meant to be touching just felt shlocky to me. The pace is slow and many characters aren't fleshed out, but the most disappointing thing was how cheesy it was. The dog responding to the content of what's being read out loud, the ease with which the woman kept her apartment, the tortured confrontation scene between Naomi Watts and Bill Murray that takes place in her mind, the 'surprise' scene at the end, etc. Were all groaners. Murray has absolutely no charm either, making it hard to believe him in the role of a ladies man. This felt very much like a Hallmark movie, with a script that didn't live up to its emotional potential.

Whatever your beliefs are for an afterlife, I thought this film's embracing of reincarnation at a time when it wasn't that well known in America was a positive thing, particularly since a sizeable fraction of people around the world believe in it. It's probably a cursory take, but to explain how death shouldn't be feared and to show the footage of a funeral in India were nice touches. It's also got a fine performance from Anthony Hopkins before he hit it big, and holding up her end was Marsha Mason, who despite having a rather weepy character, got a great scene in after her character's husband had been out drinking with a work client.

Unfortunately, in addition to its spiritual statements, this also wanted to be a horror film, and that's where it failed hard. Despite the creepy potential in Hopkins' character stalking the young family, there was never any doubt that his character wasn't legitimate. The danger the child is in is also a little bit sketchy - she has nightmares, sure, but it felt like the "soul damaged in transfer" business was just a schlocky way of trying to get her into a position ala Linda Blair in The Exorcist. You'll also have to suppress your disbelief over things like Hopkins' character finding her out of billions all over the globe via a couple of clairvoyants, the child somehow burning her hands on a window, and a scene where she bizarrely crawls towards a fire instead of away from it, which was compounded by its only being seen by the nun inside the building when so many others were nearby. I hate to say it, but the performance from the child actor wasn't very good either.

Where the film really misses, however, is when it transitions into a courtroom drama, where it was absurd to see the "reincarnation defense" being allowed despite the things Hopkins' character had done. How the parents behave and how visible they are in the story is inconsistent, especially as the film gets into a ridiculously long hypnosis scene. The conclusion, with Hopkins beside the child instead of her parents, and then how it was accepted - despite what the film had said about reincarnation, bolstered with the quote from the Bhagavad Gita - didn't feel justified, because the foundations of torment never felt properly laid. It's not a terrible film by any means, but it felt like it could have done so much more with the premise.

This is quite watchable and impressive as Christopher Nolan's first film, especially given its limited budget. I liked the casting, how it was shot in 16mm black and white, and how lean it was at just 70 minutes. The story is pretty standard noir fare, with a guy getting in over his head after coming into contact with a burglar and one of the women he robs, but it's put through a bit of a blender with Nolan's signature out of order storytelling. Some of that is effective in heightening the intrigue while we piece together what's happening, some of it seems like a gimmick. Pretty cool to see that Batman sign on the door though.

"I'm not crabby. I'm pensive."

There is genuine sweetness in the relationship between a working-class mother and her prodigy son, but the story is pretty average, populated with thin characters, some melodramatic moments, and without a very deep exploration into what it means to be identified as gifted as a child. I loved the poetic bits like when Fred's responds to the question of Van Gogh's painting, "I wonder why he only painted one iris white" by simply saying "because he was lonely" much more than the insane math problems the kids solve in seconds, sometimes to cheesy visual overlays of numbers swirling about. The tension between the mom and the woman who runs the institute for gifted kids had potential, but it felt a little cartoonish, especially with how stiff Dianne Wiest's character was. The ending, which magically erased issues between them, between the boy and going to such a school, and the boy's solitude felt contrived and artificial. But it's not a bad watch, and helped significantly by the performance from 9-year-old Adam Hann-Byrd.

There are so many heartwarming aspects to this ceremony of the Karuk tribe in Northern California, which celebrates a young girl's transition into being a woman when she gets her period:

• The fact that it was revived after 120 years, having been interrupted in the 19th century during the genocide in California.

• How much thought and care goes into preparing by the entire community, including making a dress out of natural materials and building a shelter for the forest.

• The young man saying the most important thing for men is to listen.

• The support from the girl's friends, including joking that going to the DMV was the real rite of passage, but at the same time understanding how meaningful the ritual was, and how it must be carried forward.

• The old-timer's poem to his mother, hence the title of the documentary.

• How being blindfolded and fasting for four days was likened to feeling like the earth.

I would have loved to have seen the young woman after the four days had ended, to hear her experiences and how it changed her, but maybe those things were private. Regardless, this is a nice window into the culture.

"The priest always found a way to punish you, he was without mercy, that priest. Then he built a church here. These young ones, young girls, thirteen and fourteen year old girls of age, he befriended them. He would be the first to take pleasure from them. This is how he was."

For the first half hour or so, it was hard for me to connect to this documentary, much as I wanted to. The elder's origin story for how the Hopi people had arrived where they were is undoubtedly priceless as cultural history, but in this context it seemed to ramble, not helped by accompanying images like the kids playing with the lantern until they broke the glass. It really picked up during the elder's simple but harrowing description of how the Spanish treated them, however. Using the teaching of Christ as a mask for greed and cruelty, they put the Hopi to forced labor, raped young girls, and committed genocide. To hear this described in the ancient language, passed down from many generations, is beyond chilling. The scenes of the Hopi preparing food and performing ceremonial dances that follow are much more powerful as a result. We know what you did to us, they say, but we're still here.

The sketch of the multigenerational Native American family behind the Tiger T-Shirt Company we get in this short documentary has poignant, tragic moments, but it could have used fleshing out and more cohesive storytelling. It's a tribute to the people in the spirit world now and dedicated to the next generation, giving it an intimate feeling, and I liked looking up the company afterwards, which has resumed making meaningful artwork.

"It was not a night for work. The moon was at the full, high over the sea, erotic and disturbing."

Such a dreamy film, beautifully shot and chock full of wonderful little touches. Ava Gardner in the role of Pandora, a femme fatale, has never looked lovelier, and James Mason as the mythical Flying Dutchman is no slouch either, perfectly forlorn and romantic. Pandora plays with men as if they were puppets: early on we see an alcoholic kill himself over her, which hardly phases her, and then she has a race car driver (Nigel Patrick), bullfighter (Mario Cabré), and the Dutchman, a sea captain sentenced to immortality alone aboard a ghost ship, with the chance to search for a woman who will sacrifice herself for him every seven years. It goes on a little long but if you like fantasy/romances, you'll probably like it.

The film had me from the beginning with a flamenco performance, and that was followed with things like ancient Roman statues on cliffs, a fabulous chess set designed by Man Ray, and people doing the Charleston on the beach at night in bathing suits. We also get race car driving on the beach (shot at Pendine Sands in Wales), beautiful shots from a castle (at Tossa de Mar, Spain), and bullfighting (at the ring in Girona), the latter of which is unfortunate from my perspective, but I must admit was beautifully shot and skillfully done. Let's also not forget Ava Gardner in that stunning green dress, or James Mason looking dapper in a 16th century outfit. Great stuff.

A few more quotes: "Perhaps you've not found what you want. Perhaps you do not even know what you want. Perhaps you're discontented. And discontent appeases itself by fury and destruction."

"It's as if we were under a spell, outside of time, unending."

Lastly, these wonderful lines from FitzGerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: "The moving finger writes; and having writ Moves on; nor all thy piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it."

"Here we pride ourselves on the tradition of labor, and we allow our shrine to be outraged for its lack of luxury boxes."

An homage to Guy Maddin's family and to his home town, Winnipeg, told creatively, and with a blend of love and hate as well as fact and fiction. Half the fun is detecting when he's embellishing the truth or flat out inventing wild stories which serve to mythologize the rather drab and cold capital of Manitoba. For example, the worker's strike of 1919, "If" day of 1942, demolition of Eaton's department store, and demolition of the old Winnipeg Arena were real events, while the three stories to Sherbrook pool, "man pageants" presided over by the mayor, and herd of horses garishly freezing in the river and then being used as benches were invented. The Arlington Street bridge originally being intended to span the Nile is an urban legend he expands on. Etc. As for his family life, one of his brother's did indeed commit suicide at 16 and his sister was in the Manitoba sports hall of fame for track and field, but it seems he must have invented that story of his siblings threatening his mother with a bird so she'll cook for them, right? By the way, if you're sharper than me, you may recognize the actor playing his mother, Ann Savage, for her role in Detour (1945) and other B-movies in the 40's.

I like Maddin's style, with his fast cuts and surreal images reminding me of another film I loved from him, The Heart of the World (2000). Winnipeg is a city that Maddin seems to want to both embrace and leave at the same time, which may be a common feeling for anyone who's escaped the place they grew up in. The feelings associated with the treatment of the old hockey arena and how the NHL operated are particularly strong and sports fan will identify; happily, Winnipeg got its Jets back four years later.

"Every man is an abyss. You get dizzy looking in."

This film would make an interesting double feature with When the Cat Comes (1963), not because the two have similar themes (and in fact this one is much darker and more serious), but because they're both set in the beautiful little town of Telc in the Czech Republic, which brings back fond personal memories for me. And come to think of it, there are some interesting parallels between the films, aside from the town people parading through its main plaza: the mistreatment of cats (here we see one thrown out a window), the gorgeous surrounding area (a shot of Klaus Kinski walking through a field of unbloomed poppies swaying in the wind comes to mind), and a carnival show with a horse that could be akin to the magic show in the earlier film, albeit much less spectacular. This one also has a beautiful female lead, Eva Mattes, who inflames the heart of the protagonist.

The script unfortunately is a weak point, feeling like a play and asking big questions, but without really digging into them with any depth. For example, we get a drunk in the town hopping up on a table and asking "Why does man exist?" at one point. Stronger is the performance from Kinski, who brings his trademark intensity. His character is strung out on the cruel experiments of a doctor that including eating nothing but peas for three months, as well as his lover cheating on him with another soldier. It leads to a dramatic scene towards the end that goes on too long, but I loved how Herzog closed the film with a devastating, sarcastic final line, that "we haven't had one like that in ages." It's not a great film, but may be worth 80 minutes.

There's a lot to like about this film from the Czech New Wave, but what will always come to mind first is its clever magic show and riotous colors, helped along by simple special effects. The premise has a sunglasses-wearing magic cat revealing the "true selves" of people to each other, well, at least, those in love, those who are liars, and those who are hypocrites, a pretty crude taxonomy. It's a whimsical, family friendly fairy tale, set in the lovely little town of Telc, and featuring the gorgeous Emilia Vasaryova (though her character is a little thin). Bonus points for the teacher explaining to the class that you didn't need to kill animals anymore to study them, as well as that shot of the children walking in the grasslands with the wind gently whipping through the field. The reason for not giving it a higher rating is I thought more could have been done with the concept, even given the element of veiled criticism of the communist state. It was just a little too light for my taste, and while I found myself smiling, there were also times it was tough to stay engaged. A fun film though, and I'm glad I finally saw it.

This is a film that's fully committed to shamanism and the reality of the spirit world (while at the same time, embracing Christianity, not uncommon in Korea). The various rituals, e.g. The cleansing power of a white horse's blood, and the rules governing the shamans, e.g. Never cremating a body on a rainy day to ensure a peaceful afterlife, are things taken as fact by all characters, without a hint of a doubt or cynicism. The film puts you in this world and then lets you feel the horror of messing with powerful, unknown forces, as opposed to a standard horror film that would be full of grisly violence. I liked that about it.

There is also something deeply meaningful in the film being centered on a horror in real life for Koreans: the Japanese colonial period, which lasted from 1910 to 1945, in which Koreans endured forced labor, brutal gang rapes in the girls/women deemed "comfort" for their soldiers, and its culture being suppressed. While those things aren't directly referenced by the film, they wouldn't need to be to Korean audiences; as with the grave in this film, they're beneath the surface but far from settled. We get a small but meaningful hint of the sensitivity early on, when the Korean shaman is confused for being Japanese by a flight attendant, and a little perturbed, corrects her.

In a sense, this is also a film about liminal spaces - between past and present, spiritual and material - and perhaps it's fitting that it takes place near the border between North and South Korea. The film takes its time establishing the characters before getting them into an encounter with one unsettled spirit out at this site, a grandfather angry with his descendants over his burial. We learn that he brought shame upon the family and betrayed his country by joining the Japanese when they invaded. It eventually segues to another encounter, this time with a giant samurai spirit who's in place to guard the site. Why? Because the Japanese are said to have buried spikes throughout Korea to cut off its spiritual energy during the colonial period, and this was one such place. That may be a little hard to decode for foreign audiences, but the reference is undoubtedly clear to Koreans, and while the historical validity of the belief is debated, the national trauma is certainly real.

It's certainly a well-made film, and the attention to detail in the shaman rituals and dances apparently made them pretty authentic, so much so that the Kim Go-eun was concerned she might be summoning forth supernatural forces while making the film. You almost get two films in one, given how one ghostly encounter moves along to the next. I liked the visuals of each, but it became a bit of a detractor, as the film seemed a little long at 134 minutes. Worth seeing, and on another night I might've rated it a little higher.

Love the absurdity in this short film, including the duck from a painting being brought to life by the scientist, a guy being wrapped up and passing for an ancient mummy, and how when his coffin is being dragged along the road, necessitating a stop, the guys hauling him bonk him over the head upon finding he's alive. The absolutely wild nitrate degradation that mars the existing print somehow goes with the energy of it. I also liked the sweetness in the couple stealthily kissing on the sofa. Definitely worth spending 11 minutes, and it's too bad the Ebony Film Company didn't survive for long.

The dog in this is as good an actor as he is adorable, and I appreciated the concept behind questioning whether a dog should be put down for biting multiple people (apparently based on a real case), but what was built around it was too much of a mess to like it. There were lots of attempts to inject comedy and sexual content into the story to make something light and playful out of it, but it was rarely funny, and often creepy. That began right out of the chute when the lawyer's boss talked to her about his favorite blowjob techniques and things like a finger in the butt, the latter of which would be referred to again later relative to the dog. It's just not something you'd think you'd see going into a film about a good boy who's standing trial.

The same thing could be said about the sexually curious 12-year-old's flirtation with the lawyer which includes him referring to something she says as going into his "wank bank" and sleeping over with her because of his abusive parents. Maybe there was a parallel intended between her protective instincts for the boy and how she defends the dog, but it wasn't developed at all. Instead we see him drop by after she's had sex with the animal trainer, where he makes casual conversation with the adults who are still in bed, during which he assumes the man is into bestiality. During an internet uproar over the trial, we also get pictures made by trolls of the lawyer engaged in sex with dogs. It's as if the film wanted to avoid being a tame Hallmark kind of movie and tried to spice things up, but went overboard.

As for the protagonists, the lawyer does things like punch a guy in the face for shouting at her, and says something convoluted about women being closer to dogs because of society, insulting a Portuguese immigrant in the process. Meanwhile, the dog himself has bitten multiple people, including the immigrant in the face which leaves a lifelong scar, and viciously attacks the lawyer in the woods. The film plays up how the prosecution is preying on public fear to stoke this inhuman response (maybe trying to establish a parallel with conservative politicians of the day), but they have a case, especially when you consider instances where people are killed in dog attacks (which the film avoids thinking about).

There is something touching about trying to understand another living creature and being compassionate toward it, but I wish that had been pursued in more meaningful ways. Tonally this is all over the map and its silliness is completely inconsistent with what it tries to do at the end. Even if you're drawn to dog movies, this is one to skip.