Movie Review: A Dog's Way Home

A Dog's Way Home (2019) 

Directed by Charles Martin Smith 

Written by W. Bruce Cameron, Cathryn Michon

Starring Ashley Judd, Edward James Olmos, Alexandra Shipp, Bryce Dallas Howard

Release Date January 11th, 2019 

Published January 12th, 2019

 A Dog’s Way Home is a movie for kids. I had to keep telling myself that so that I would go easy on this otherwise tacky and manipulative melodrama. This is not a movie intended for an audience capable of seeing through its mawkishness and pushy sentimentality. A Dog’s Way Home is meant for yet to be fully formed intellects that won’t recognize the cheap dramatic tricks on display.

A Dog’s Way Home features the voice of Bryce Dallas Howard as Bella, a dog born living underneath a fallen house. Bella grows up alongside the sweetest group of feral cats in history until animal control grabs most of them and Bella’s mother and brothers. For the next part of her life, Bella is raised by a cat that she calls Mother Cat. Seeing a dog feed on a cat is a new experience and one I am not quite sure I am comfortable with.

Bella’s life is changed forever when she meets Lucas (Jonah Hauer King), a young man who has been working to rescue the cats living in this otherwise destroyed neighborhood. When he finds Bella, Bella falls immediately in love. Lucas takes Bella home even though his landlord doesn’t allow for him to have a pet. Lucas lives with his mother, played by Ashley Judd, an Iraq war vet with the lightest touch of PTSD, she gets a little sad sometimes.

This is the status quo for some time until Lucas crosses the developer trying to raze the building where the cats have been living. The developer sics animal control on Bella and because she is part Pitbull, and Pitbull's are apparently outlawed in Denver, where the film is set, Bella is taken away. Lucas decides to take Bella out of town until he and his mother find a new apartment outside of Denver.

Unfortunately, Bella doesn’t understand that she’s only temporarily going to be away from her owner and when she gets the chance, Bella flees the home in New Mexico and goes on a run through the woods and towns and some 400 miles to get herself back to Denver and back to her beloved owner. Along the way, Bella makes pals with a sweet hearted gay couple and a cougar that she calls Big Kitten.

You know how I said this is a kids movie? Well, there is at least one part that probably doesn’t belong in a movie for kids. In a subplot that left me utterly bewildered, Bella befriends a homeless man on her journey, played by Edward James Olmos, literally slumming for this role. The homeless man, like all of the supporting characters in this film, is a veteran dealing with PTSD. He keeps Bella tied to him until he is close to death when he decides to chain Bella to himself and then he dies.

Yes, this kiddie flick about a heartwarming dog’s journey home, features our hero dog chained to the corpse of a homeless veteran. It’s a scene as bewildering as it is bleak. I get that Bella needs life threatening crises for dramatic purposes but this one goes way too far, and we’re talking about a movie where a dog befriends a cougar and fights wolves. Bella nearly dies until two kids find her and the body because the trauma needed more witnesses I guess.

A Dog’s Way Home will, despite how tacky and cheap it is, still appeal to animal lovers. Much like the classic cheap child in danger plot, audiences can’t get enough of cute animals in danger plots. Add in a cutesy voiceover, as if the dog has a narrator trapped in its skull and audiences go crazy for it. Our love for animals runs so deep that we often give a pass to even the most trashy of cute animal movies and no doubt many audiences will give a pass to A Dog’s Way Home. I won’t but that’s just me.

Movie Review: Crossing Over

Crossing Over (2009) 

Directed by Wayne Kramer 

Written by Wayne Kramer 

Starring Harrison Ford. Cliff Curtis, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd

Release Date February 27th, 2009 

Published February 28th, 2009 

I'll give director Wayne Kramer this, he doesn't do things half way. His The Cooler thrived on heavy duty sexuality and grit. His follow-up, Running Scared was an adrenalized, hyper-caffeinated action movie that traded soully on style, zero substance. He's back at another extreme with his third feature; an immigration drama called Crossing Over.

With a great deal more substance than Running Scared, Crossing Over goes to another extreme as Kramer attempts to tell more stories than any one movie can stand.

Harrison Ford leads a wide ranging cast as immigration officer Max Brogan. With his partner Hamid (Cliff Curtis), Max leads raids on sweat shops and other underground locations where a large number of immigrants are centrally located. In one of these raids Max busts a young woman named Maria. She has a small child being cared for by a friend and she begs Max to find him and make sure he is cared for.

Meanwhile, running parallel to this story, all of which emanate in Los Angeles, for the most part, is the story of Gavin (Jim Sturgess) an Israeli immigrant on a visa soon to expire. Though an atheist, Gavin has managed to stay in the country posing as a religious scholar. He is in love with an Australian actress and immigrant named Claire. While his scam is vaguely plausible, she is going the fake documents route.

That path leads her to man named Cole Frankel (Ray Liotta) a bureaucrat at the immigration office who can help her. Help her he does after she agrees to have sex with him regularly for two months while he pushes her paperwork through. Cole is married to Denise (Ashley Judd) an immigration lawyer who defends people trying to stay in the country.

She is involved in the case of an Iranian family in which the teenage daughter incited a terror threat with a speech in her high school class saying she understood the 9/11 hijackers. Several more characters bounce in and out of frame but fail to register as well as the recognizable stars.

There is a worthy and moving drama somewhere in the morass of Crossing Over. Unfortunately, it's buried between too many subplots that crash (HA, Crash get it, multi-plotted Oscar winning drama crash) into one another but don't really connect beyond a very basic characteristic, all of them involve immigrants. For instance, one plot strand involves a Korean family who happen to be Max Brogan's regular dry cleaner.

Ashley Judd is a wonderful actress but her plot and that of the young Iranian girl are extraneous beyond belief. Kramer uses the girl basically to make a point about freedom of speech and thought and about post 9/11 paranoia. That's a powerful topic but it has little to do with the rest of the movie. Each of the character connections are tenuous at best, but Judd is beyond tenuous, she's in the movie for marquee value and little more.

Now, though I find fault with much of Crossing Over, especially Director Kramer's indulgent point making and lack of narrative focus, there are some powerful moments in Crossing Over. A standout is Ford's confrontation with his partner over a murder investigation. Ford's charisma and powerful emotional connections create and convey this scene beyond what it might be in the hands of a lesser actor.

Curtis himself has a powerful moment involving a convenience story robbery that gives him and the movie a moment of real depth and heart. Ray Liotta shines ever so briefly opposite Alice Eve's Claire in a scene where he drops the con man bit and reveals his true pain and hope for salvation. Her response is brave and shocking and if there were more to the plot behind it, it would have had some serious emotional repercussions.

Sadly, as happens throughout Crossing Over, good work gets lost amid the jumble of too many characters and too much plot.

Crossing Over is a valiant attempt to shine a light on the heartbreaking bureaucracy that is at the center of our immigration debate. It's a drama of great depth and emotion. Unfortunately, it's also indulgent bit of Oscar baiting aimed at capitalizing on the wave of big ensembles with big ideas. First it was Soderbergh's Traffic, all about drugs. Then it was Crash with racism. Now comes Crossing Over about immigration. The formula still has some juice but without the skill of a Soderbergh or a Haggis, the results are muted, reflecting the glory of those movies without earning any of its own.

Movie Review: Bug

Bug (2007) 

Directed by William Friedkin

Written by Tracy Letts

Starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr. 

Release Date May 25th, 2007 

Published August 10th, 2023 

Legendary director William Friedkin died on Monday, August 7th, 2023. On the next episode of the Everyone is a Critic Movie Review Podcast, we will be talking about the remarkable career of William Friedkin including his well known classics, The Exorcist, The French Connection, Sorcerer, and Cruising, as well as his underrated gems, The Hunted and the movie I am writing about today, Bug, starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon. Bug is a brilliantly paranoid thriller that takes advantage of Ashley Judd's innate sympathetic qualities and Michael Shannon's talent for skin-crawling creepiness that you can't look away from. 

At one time, in the late 1990's Ashley Judd seemed on the verge of becoming one of the top stars in the industry. After the twin successes of Kiss The Girls and Double Jeopardy, Judd was the in demand female star of the moment. Sadly, those pot-boiler mysteries that made her a star also lead to her type casting as the heroine of ever more ludicrous mystery thrillers which reached their nadir with the unwatchable, alleged thriller Twisted in 2003. Of course, what really happened to Ashley Judd's career was less about type casting and more about Harvey Weinstein's blacklist of actresses who refused to sleep with him. 

Nevertheless, after taking nearly two years away from the movies, Judd returned in a remarkably different role in the small scale, buzzy thriller Bug. Helmed by maverick director William Friedkin, Bug offered Ashley Judd a career remaking performance as a drug addicted woman sucked into the insanity of the first man to offer her positive attention in years. This is a brave and bold, full bodied performance that should have brought Judd back to big time stardom. She did keep working after Bug, but not nearly in the kind of challenging roles that a performance like this one should have earned for her. 

In Bug, Ashley Judd stars as Agnes White a waitress at what is likely the only honky-tonk lesbian bar in all of Oklahoma, though Agnes is not a lesbian herself. She has in fact survived a horribly abusive marriage to Jerry (Harry Connick Jr) and the loss of their son who was kidnapped. Jerry is recently out of jail which may explain a series of hang up phone calls to Agnes's room at a flea pit motel, appropriately named the Rustic Motel. Into Agnes's lonely desperation comes an odd, somewhat creepy, but gentle stranger named Peter Evans (Michael Shannon). Peter is a gulf war vet who attached himself to Agnes's friend R.C (Lynn Collins) and was invited to Agnes' hotel room for a night of drinking and drugs, though he does not partake.

The encounter leads to Peter spending the night, he sleeps on the floor, Agnes on the bed. Soon the two are getting close and things do eventually get physical but soon afterward bad things start happening. A seemingly inconsequential bug bite begins a paranoid delusional breakdown that quickly leads the schizophrenic Peter and the lonely desperate Agnes to a heart stopping denouement. Friedkin's talent for nasty visuals, honed on The Exorcist, is on full display in Bug. As Shannon and Judd begin to feed each other's madness, Friedkin fearlessly plumbs the depths of that madness with skin crawling, stomach turning visual touches that make Bug a visceral fright. 

Movie Review: Twisted

Twisted (2004) 

Directed by Phillip Kaufman

Written by Sarah Thorp 

Starring Andy Garcia, Samuel L. Jackson, Ashley Judd

Release Date February 27th, 2004

Published February 26th, 2004

I recently read a blind item in the trades about a producer who showed his new film, a thriller with A-list cast, to a group of friends. The producer was worried the film wasn't any good and hoped the friendly crowd could deliver some constructive notes. The crowd, including at least one professional critic, laughed derisively throughout the film. The suggestions the director was given about the film included dropping the film’s dramatic score and adding a voiceover that establishes the film as a parody rather than a thriller.

Now I'm not saying that that blind item referred to the new Ashley Judd serial killer movie Twisted, but being that the film is a laughably bad thriller with an A-list cast... Hmm…

Judd stars in Twisted as Jessica Shepherd, a newly promoted homicide cop. With help from her mentor and surrogate father, Lt. John Mills (Samuel L. Jackson), Shepherd moved up the ranks quickly but deservedly. As good as her life might seem Shepherd has issues that include heavy drinking and a penchant for one night stands with strangers. Her troubles likely stem from her father, a former cop who went on a killing spree just after Jessica was born. A killing spree that ended with her father taking his own life after killing her mother.

Jessica's first murder case is a real doozy, a serial killer whose signature is a cigarette burn on the victim’s hand. With her new partner Mike Delmarco (Andy Garcia), Jessica investigates a killer who happens to be murdering men that Jessica has slept with. Interestingly, on the nights that the murders happen, Jessica spends the night passed out after drinking. After the third or fourth time this happens, people begin to suspect Jessica is the killer.

Director Philip Kaufman is a pro who directed Quills, The Right Stuff, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Here all of the skill that he brought to those films is completely missing. In Twisted, he merely translates Sarah Thorp's weak script from paper to film. The script is an amalgam of serial killer clichés including, as Roger Ebert has dubbed it, the talking killer who reveals the evil plot, going on just long enough for the cops to arrive to arrest them.

There is also a twist, which I guess is required of a film called Twisted. Then again, the twist may be the only reason the film is called Twisted, nothing that happens in the film would lead you to calling the film by that name otherwise. Of course, they had to call it something and the titles Double Jeopardy, Kiss The Girls, and High Crimes were already taken.

When people complain that Hollywood has run out of original ideas, they can point to Twisted as the prime example of a film without an original one.

Movie Review: DeLovely

De-Lovely (2004) 

Directed by Irwin Winkler

Written by Jay Cocks

Starring Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd, Jonathan Pryce 

Release Date July 2nd, 2004

Published July 1st, 2004 

The last time director Irwin Winkler and Kevin Kline worked together they turned out the dreadful melodrama Life As A House. So when I heard they were teaming again I was less than thrilled. Honestly I have never been a fan of Mr. Winkler's work, including The Net and At First Sight, a pair of less than stellar efforts. For Mr. Kline, I have always liked him but his recent career showed a career in decline. It seemed the last thing Kevin Kline needed was to work with Irwin Winkler again.

That may be what makes Kline's performance in De-Lovely so remarkable. Even as Mr. Winkler is delivering a rather compromised musical effort, Kline floats through effortlessly showcasing the wit and wisdom that won him an Oscar and the admiration of so many critics.

De-Lovely is the life story of one of the 20th centuries finest songwriters, Cole Porter. In the film, Kevin Kline plays Cole Porter from the time he met his wife Linda (Ashley Judd) in 1918 to his death in 1965. The film’s structure however is not a straightforward biopic. The story is told as Cole is being visited by an angel named Gabe (British character actor Jonathan Pryce) who takes Cole back through his life as though it were a Broadway production.

Cole Porter met Linda Lee in Paris while recovering from his first failed attempt at Broadway. It is Linda who draws Cole out of his temporary creative funk and drives him to create again. She is his muse but his love is not exactly aimed toward her. One of the worst kept secrets of Cole Porter's life was that he was gay. Though he was married to Linda for 38 years, the two had an understanding that never achieves proper depth in De-Lovely which seems too concerned with pop stars to truly dramatize Linda and Cole's unusual relationship. More on those pop stars later.

The film takes Cole and Linda from Paris to Milan and then New York where on Broadway; Porter made his greatest successes. Finally, the film goes to Hollywood where Cole was never comfortable with his big screen treatments. Louis B. Mayer, played in a cameo by Peter Polycarpou, wanted Porter to tone down his wit and deliver sappy romantic songs that play well to mass audiences. In one of the film’s better moments the cast breaks into Porter's playful "Be A Clown" to illustrate acceptance of his compromised Hollywood persona.

It was in Hollywood where Linda and Cole's relationship would go through its biggest trials. Cole may not have enjoyed the film business but he did love the Hollywood nightlife that offered many discreet, and not so discreet meeting grounds of Hollywood's gay community. The film has a minor blackmail subplot but like many other dramatic developments in Porter's life in the film, the subplot is quickly shoved aside for another pop star performance.

The final act of the film and of Porter and Linda's lives came after Porter was nearly paralyzed in a horse riding accident. His legs were crushed and he was advised to have them amputated. It was Linda who said no and because of her, Porter was able to continue composing music despite years of pain and surgery. He would return to Broadway with his biggest hit, Kiss Me Kate.

Thankfully, Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd don't need much depth from Jay Cocks' script to communicate the depth of feeling between Cole and Linda. The unconventional nature of their relationship is communicated by Kline and Judd in subtle ways, in the way she looks so longingly at him and the way he appreciates her love but cannot fully reciprocate it. Kline's Cole is full of the charm and charisma that made Porter a legend in his time. Still, there is always a hint of sadness or guilt when Cole looks at Linda. He can see her love and devotion and deeply wishes he could return it in some way.

The only way Porter could show Linda his appreciation was through his songs, many of which are dedicated to her. But even those love songs had a hint of Porter's capricious wit and many have read more into those songs and their innuendo-laden lyrics. Certainly not all of the songs can be attributed to Linda.

The film’s biggest problem is it's unusual structure, a gimmicky flashback style that may have seemed clever on the page but never comes together onscreen. As Cole and Gabe look back over Cole's life with Linda and his music as if the were directing a Broadway play, Winkler can't seem to commit to whether the film is a surrealist musical or melodrama. De-Lovely isn't a musical like Chicago where the songs are perfectly enmeshed in the story. Rather, De-Lovely wants it both ways. Flights of fancy where people just insanely break into song backed by an unseen orchestra, as well as staged performances where Cole watches from the audience, as he would have in real life on opening night.

Porter's music is performed by both Kline and Judd who acquit themselves well; that is to say, they don't embarrass themselves. Many of the songs are performed by pop superstars like Alanis Morissette (Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love), Sheryl Crow (Begin The Beguine), Elvis Costello (Let's Misbehave), and Robbie Williams (the title song De-Lovely). While they are game performers, there is a glaring difference between pop songs and show tunes. That difference is brought home by Broadway performers like Caroline O'Connor (Anything Goes) and John Barrowman (Night And Day) who's belt it to the back of the theater style steals the show.

The decision to use the well known pop stars is clearly a commercial decision to sell soundtracks and not an artistic decision to do what's best for the film. I love Alanis, Sheryl and Elvis but they are performing show tunes as stand alone pop songs and they don't quite find the right notes. Once you make that commitment to commercialism you have compromised the integrity of the story and I for one and drawn away from the story.

As many problems as I have with De-Lovely, I am right on the cusp of recommending the film because Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd are so terrific. This is an amazing return to form for Kline who hopefully will seek out more quality material in the future. Ashley Judd is absolutely radiant even as the movie leaves much of Linda's life on the cutting room floor. The depth of the character comes from Judd's eyes, which show the pain of unrequited love and unending devotion in ways the script can't seem to communicate in words.

These are Oscar nomination-worthy performances in a film that is far from the same quality. The two are difficult to separate but if you can do it you may find a reason to enjoy De-Lovely the way I enjoyed it. The joy of watching two great actors show how difficult a job acting can be and how easy great actors can make it look.

Movie Review High Crimes

High Crimes (2002)

Directed by Carl Franklin 

Written by Yuri Zetser

Starring Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, James Caviezel, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet, Michael Shannon

Release Date April 5th, 2002 

Published April 5th, 2002 

The team of Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman is a strong one. In Kiss the Girls their chemistry made what could have been a mundane suspense thriller into an entertaining suspense thriller. Thankfully. Judd and Freeman bring that same chemistry to High Crimes.

As we join the story Claire Kubik (Judd), is rolling out of bed and searching for her husband Tom (Jim Caviezel). The two are trying to have a baby. Claire is a lawyer; her most recent case has gotten her on TV and dangerously raised her profile. After getting her client off on a technicality her house is broken into. The next night as she and her husband are walking home and the FBI jumps out of nowhere and arrests them. It seems that as the police were investigating the break in her husband’s fingerprints came up as a match with a man wanted by military justice for the execution-style killings that took place during a military raid in El Salvador.

Claire wants to defend her husband but finds military courts to be far different than the court she is used to. So Claire employs the help of an ex-military lawyer named Charlie Grimes (Freeman). Also on the team is a naive young military lawyer played by Adam Scott and Claire's sister played by Amanda Peet.

Ashley Judd is very strong in High Crimes, her character through most of the film is never predictable. Though at the end she has one of those rather obvious but necessary scenes that you must have in average clockwork thrillers. Judd is better than the material she's given, which you could say about most of the films she has made. One of these days she will get a script as strong as she is.

Not that this script is bad, writer Yuri Zeltser takes what isn't very original and twists it just enough to make it interesting. Though the trailer gives away too much (I rented it already knowing the ending intuitively), there is just enough suspense to make the film entertaining. Of course the film is blessed to have such a sensational cast to carry out its clockwork plot.

High Crimes is indeed another by the book suspense thriller, set apart only by the great acting. Director Carl Franklin wrings just enough good dialogue and suspense out of the thin script to make an entertaining Friday night rental.

Movie Review: Tooth Fairy

Tooth Fairy (2010) 

Directed by Michael Lembeck

Written by Babaloo Mandel, Lowell Ganz, Joshua Sternin, Jennifer Ventimilia, Randy Mayhem Singer

Starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Ashley Judd, Julie Andrews 

Release Date January 22nd, 2010 

Published January 21st, 2010

Dwayne Johnson's unique, to say the least, career path from professional wrestling to honest to goodness movie star is relatively improbable on the surface. On closer inspection however there is a good deal of calculation to how the man once known as The Rock; OK he's still more or less known as The Rock, has crafted his movie stardom.

A balance of high concept comedy and low weight action pics that always play to the strengths of the handsome, hard bodied Johnson make for the perfect mix to make a guy a star in relatively quick succession. “Tooth Fairy” fits perfectly in The Rock's canon. This high concept comedy plays to his strong ability to poke fun at himself while leaving just enough room to display his physicality.

The Rock stars in “Tooth Fairy” as Derek 'The Tooth Fairy' Thompson a hockey thug known for knocking opponent’s teeth out. Derek is beginning to near the end of his career as a new young superstar is quick to point out early in the film. In Derek's personal life he has even more trouble on his hands. Things are good with his girlfriend Carly (Ashley Judd) but when he almost tells Carly's daughter that there is no tooth fairy, of the mythic kind, Carly is ticked.

Someone else is even more cheesed off and that is the head of the real tooth fairy operation. Yes, the tooth fairy is real and it turns out it is run like a tooth collecting corporation by Lily (Julie Andrews). When she hears of Derek's attempted myth killing she summons him to tooth fairy headquarters for punishment and while Derek thinks he is having a psychotic break, the reality is he is being made a tooth fairy until he learns the value of childish myths.

”Tooth Fairy” is a dopey, high concept, family comedy that aspires to be nothing more. As directed by mainstream film carpenter Michael Lembeck the film is assembled from recycled materials, hammered into place with thudding, groaning laughs and smoothed over with soporific clichés about families, acceptance and growing up.

If there is any reason to see “Tooth Fairy” it is the appeal of Dwayne Johnson. While this is not The Rock at his best, the guy has enough star power and charisma to carry off even the cheesiest of cheeseball gags. Dressed in a tutu or in hockey gear, Johnson has the exceptional ability to make himself the subject of the joke without losing his cool. It's a deftness that only those with real star power can pull off.

I can't give “Tooth Fairy” a forceful recommendation; the film is far too mindless for an audience with discerning standards. But, for those in the mood for mindless or for kids who don't yet know any better, you could do worse than the dippy simulacrum that is “Tooth Fairy.”