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 The Green Hornet

The Green Hornet (2011) 

Directed by Michel Gondry

Written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg

Starring Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Edward James Olmos, Christoph Waltz

Release Date January 14th, 2011

Published Janurary 13th, 2011

Seth Rogen does not exactly cut the figure of a superhero. Luckily, that is kind of the point of this reboot of the old school masked hero “The Green Hornet;” he's not the real hero. Though he wears a mask and rolls around Los Angeles in a seriously pimped out superhero car, “The Green Hornet'' is a make believe hero while his martial artist, super-mechanic pal Kato is the real hero; beating down bad guys with a superhuman fighting sense while the Hornet grabs the glory on the front page.

Faux heroism is played for terrific laughs in the at times uneven but overall entertaining “The Green Hornet 3D.”

Seth Rogen stars in “The Green Hornet” as Britt Reid, a 30 something child of privilege who uses his father's wealth as an excuse to remain a teenager for life. Then, suddenly his father (Tom Wilkinson) is dead and Britt has an empire to run. Dad was the founder and editor of the last family owned newspaper in Los Angeles, The Sentinel and though Britt has never even read a newspaper, it's now his to run.

Meanwhile, Britt meets the man who has made his coffee for the past decade. Kato (Jay Chou) was his father's mechanic and coffee hound, he invented a latte machine, and now he works for Britt. Together, Britt and Kato share a disdain for the late Mr. Reid and a bitch session turns into a night of vandalism and then accidental crime fighting. The night is a life changing moment for both Reid and Kato as after saving a couple from some gang members they get a taste for the rush of the hero biz.

The twist in this hero story however is that instead of being good guys, Britt and Kato will be good guys who pose as bad guys in order to get to the bad guys. Using the editorial power of The Sentinel, Britt creates the persona of “The Green Hornet '' as the ultimate big bad in Los Angeles. Naturally, the current big bad, Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz), is none too happy with some nobody usurping his front page headlines. Chudnofsky has spent the past decade shedding blood and selling drugs to get where he is and he's not about to cede the bad guy spotlight.

That's the table setting of “The Green Hornet,” the meal as prepared by director Michel Gondry is a tweaking of the superhero formula that is both true to the classic adventure hero stories and a sly send up of the same in the casting of comic actor Rogan as the pseudo-hero. Rogen, with writing partner Evan Goldberg, wrote the screenplay for “The Green Hornet” and plays wickedly on his lack of hero traits. Some of the biggest laughs in The Green Hornet come cleverly at the star's expense

and as Rogan and Gondry cleverly twist the hero they give new life to the role of sidekick. Jay Chou's Kato is a rather ingenious invention as he bounces well off of Rogan while being a total badass fighter. Chou is a walking special effect and with Gondry’s artful eye for demonstrating his talent, Chou breaks the mold of not just the sidekick but of Asian American movie stars in Hollywood features. 

Badder than Jackie Chan and more fun than Jet Li, Chou may be a martial artist but he's not so serious about it that he can't bust out a chorus of Coolio's “Gangster's Paradise” prior to whipping out some nunchucks and breaking bad guys faces and limbs. Interesting to note, Chou is a pop star in Asia and has a killer closing rap over the credits. Trust me when I say the song is no mere novelty and even fans who don't speak the language will be hard pressed not to nod along to this groove. 

”The Green Hornet '' is not without issues. Christoph Waltz works hard not to be the same colorful villain he was in his Oscar winning role in “Inglorious Bastards and winds up coming off a little flat for the effort. The final action scene set inside the walls of the newspaper as the bad guys chase the good guys, car and all, through the cubicle lined floors of the newspaper goes on a little too long and doesn't pay off strongly enough. 

That said the good more than outweighs the bad in “The Green Hornet.” Seth Rogen's sense of humor is smartly played against a familiar superhero story turned ever so slightly on its ear. Audiences will have to really like Rogan for much of the movie to work but fans of the “Knocked Up” star will be rewarded with a unique evolution of Rogan's clumsy, good hearted galoot character.

Movie Review In the Time of the Butterflies

In the Time of the Butterflies (2001) 

Directed by Mariano Barroso

Written by Julia Alvarez, David Klass 

Starring Salma Hayek, Edward James Olmos, Mia Maestro, Demian Bechir, Marc Anthony 

Release Date October 21st, 2001 

Published May 5th, 2002 

I had never heard of author Julia Alvarez before I rented In the Time of the Butterflies, a film adaptation of her book of the same title. After seeing the film I'm interested in reading her book which has to be far more and enlightening and textured than the sappy, melodramatic film version of the lives of three martyred sisters.

The story begins in the late 1930's on the island of the Dominican Republic where the Marabel sisters, Minerva (Salma Hayek), Patria (Lumi Cadazos) and Maria (Mia Maestro) have finally been allowed by their parents to attend school. One day during a visit to the school by Dominican dictator Trujillo (Edward James Olmos), Minerva prevents a classmate from attempting to assassinate the dictator. Trujillo promises Minerva he will never forget her and Minerva sets out to make sure he won't.

Flash forward a few years; Minerva and her family are invited to Trujillo's mansion for a party. Trujillo asks Minerva to dance but when he gets a little too fresh with her, Minerva slaps him. Soon after, Minerva's father is arrested and Minerva must once again see the dictator to beg for her father’s freedom.

If you think this plot description is long, wait ‘til you see the film itself that is quite leisurely in pace.

Minerva goes to college and while there meets and falls in love with a revolutionary named Manolo (Demien Bechir). The two begin to try to overthrow Trujillo, fighting mostly on the information front, attempting to educate the Dominican people as to what Trujillo is doing to maintain his power. It's a good idea in theory but as the film later shows everyone is quite aware of what Trujillo was up to they were just to afraid to say anything.

It is informational gaffes like this and odd fast forwards in the timeframe that muddle the film’s narrative and keeps it's characters distant. The movie only gives us the opportunity to get to know Hayek's character while only glimpsing the other characters. From what I've read, the book is focused on all three sisters whereas the film has just one fully fleshed out character - Minerva. This semi-restricted narrative leaves the other sister’s motivations unclear. We the audience are left wondering why they joined the revolution.

Butterflies is surprisingly short at a mere 90 minutes and it's shocking violent conclusion comes almost out of nowhere. If your hoping for some insight into Dominican history and it's most infamous dictator, you won't find it here. The film buries its politics under heaping helpings of melodrama and leaden dialogue. See it for Salma Hayek whose performance is strong, but if your not a fan you can skip this one.