Review: "Wiener-Dog"

Talk about black comedy. "Wiener-Dog," the newest from quirky writer/director Todd Solondz ("Welcome to the Dollhouse"), makes even his earlier work some bright and cheery.

The title refers to a cute little dachshund who acts as the film's MacGuffin, getting passed around from owner to owner through a series of unlikely happenings. The story isn't about the dog, though, rather than the dysfunctional people into whose lives she enters and impacts in often odd ways.

It's an ensemble piece starring the likes of Greta Gerwig, Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn and Julie Delpy, each playing characters who are in some way bitter or sad. The dog's presence doesn't necessarily make them happier or more despondent, but serves as an impetus to them acting upon their situation, taking the next step in their pitiful lives.

They may not grow, but at least they're in motion.

For instance, DeVito plays a has-been screenwriter still eking out an existence as a film school teacher, where he's derided by the students and faculty as criminally out of touch. He's (in)famous for his old-school Hollywood "What if" approach to storytelling -- what if your girlfriend dumps you? What if you're mistaken for a spy?

His agent has just dumped him, the replacement seems eager to pass him off too, nobody wants to even read his new script, and the school's dean literally uses him to fill seats at a Q&A with an incredibly snotty alumni who just made a hit film -- where he's insulted from the stage, because who knew the old fossil was still rambling around?

He ends up with a novel use for the dog as the ultimate middle finger to everyone who's put him down.

The comedy in this portion is the most biting, especially the bile directed at know-nothing youngsters who deride the professor's approach but have nothing to contribute themselves. I especially liked the interview with a prospective student who is completely unable or unwilling to name a specific movie that inspired him. "Just name a movie!" he finally thunders.

(No doubt these scenes are inspired by Solondz' own tenure teaching at my alma mater, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. After watching this film, I would tremble to speak up as a student in his class...)

Other sequences are less compelling, like the opening one which provides the title. The dog is given that name by a young boy, Remi (Keaton Nigel Cooke), whose father buys his son a pet as part of his recuperation process from cancer. The parents (Tracy Letts and Delpy) employ the pup as another front in their ongoing war against each other. But the whole piece feels stiff and constructed.

Better is a strange meeting between an elderly woman (Burstyn), bitter and lonely, who gets a visit from her wayward granddaughter, played by Zosia Mamet. Their tenuous relationship is spotlit in just a few marvelous minutes of screen time -- the girl only shows up every few years when she needs money, with her latest all-wrong boyfriend in tow. This is followed by the grandmother's encounter with her own mortality that is both amusing and harrowing.

Another portion of the canine's journey is being dognapped by a veterinary assistant (Greta Gerwig, in frump mode with big glasses), who nurses him back to health after almost being euthanized. She bumps into an old tormentor from high school (Kieran Culkin) whom she secretly had a crush on, and the two begin a spontaneous road trip to Ohio. Along the way they pick up hitchhikers -- surely the most morose mariachi band that ever existed -- and the bully has an unexpectedly heartfelt conversation with his brother.

Sometimes the dog's transition is made explicit, such as the dognapping, but other times he just appears, Zelig-like, in the midst of the next chapter.

"Wiener-Dog" is an odd, odd film. That seems to be an ongoing thing nowadays, with films like this and "Swiss Army Man," that embrace weirdness for its own sake. The humor is bone-dry and wry, the sort of thing that produces a grimaced smirk rather than a guffaw.

I can't say I really enjoyed it in its totality, but it has interesting stops along the way.

Video review: "The Age of Adaline"

A bit of romantic trifle with a science fiction twist, “The Age of Adaline” is most hurt by its main star, and most helped by a late-arriving supporting player.

Blake Lively isn’t given enough to do by the script, which posits her as a San Francisco woman whose strange, electrified car crash in 1929 prevents her from aging any more. She wanders through time, trading identities every decade or so to prevent suspicion, her only permanent connection being her daughter, who today has become an old lady played by Ellen Burstyn.

Still, Lively’s performance is drab and emotionally unaffecting. She becomes a Zelig-like figure, someone who shows up everywhere but leaves little trace of their passing.

Adaline has been careful to avoid romantic entanglements for obvious reasons, but now a new beau (Michiel Huisman) has wandered into her life and knocked over some emotional furniture. Soon they’re an item and making long-term plans together – longer, perhaps, than he knows.

It’s a pretty straightforward story, with some flat, dry narration to make things even duller than they might already be.

Then Harrison Ford turns up about halfway through the movie as Adaline’s boyfriend’s dad, and suddenly the movie takes off. Ford, not exactly known as an overly emotive actor, shows us all kinds of vulnerability and doubt that we don’t usually see from cinema’s most reliable heroic everyman.

I won’t give away the details of what transpires, other than to say some old painful memories are dredged up.

Despite the slow start and the underwhelming protagonist, “The Age of Adaline” eventually finds its footing.

Director Lee Toland Krieger provides a feature-length commentary for the special features, which are the same for both DVD and Blu-ray editions. There are also deleted scenes and three featurettes: “A Love Story for the Ages,” “Style Throughout the Ages” and “Discovering Young Harrison Ford: Anthony Ingruber, An Online Sensation.”

Note: Ingruber gained notoriety for his YouTube impressions of Ford and other famous actors, which eventually led to this gig. He is indeed eerily reminiscent of a 1970s Harrison Ford.

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Review: "The Age of Adaline"

"The Age of Adaline" is a movie with a little going for it.

It wants to be a lush romantic tale with a science fiction twist -- beautiful young woman suffers a strange accident and remains young and beautiful forever. Like Dorian Gray and Orlando, Adaline Bowman wanders the decades, eschewing love but eventually drawn into entanglements that inevitably end with pain.

Emotionally, though, it's a remarkably staid film, with neither lead actress Blake Lively or the story providing much in the way to cause our hearts to go pitter-patter.

Until, that is, Harrison Ford shows up in the second half and almost rescues the picture with his raw, naked vulnerability.

Which, I'm aware, is a strange thing to say. Whatever else you think of Ford's thespian skills -- I happen to believe he's been gravely underestimated over his four decades of acting -- he's never been known as a particularly emotive performer. Gruff, hard everymen who occasionally let their veneer slip is more his line.

So to see him stripped bare, stammering with eyes that seem just on the edge of tears, is quite a thing to experience.

The rest of the film picks up on his tragic energy, and concludes with a great deal more emotional momentum, even if the plot is a bit predictable. It's like the movie suddenly remembers to get out of its own way.

Lively plays Adaline, born to a wealthy San Francisco family in 1908. She led a pretty normal life, we're told -- the strangely flat, precise narration is a pure bust -- until the age of 29. During a rare California snowstorm, her car crashed into an icy river, where she went into hypothermia and was then revived by an electrical current from lightning.

All this caused her DNA to undergo "electron compression" and ... actually, don't bother trying to figure out the science-y gobbledy gook; it all just means that she stopped aging. She soldiered on with her life, raising her daughter, until it became clear that she could no longer fool others with talk of miracle Parisian face creams to explain her unaging appearance.

Adaline went on the lam, taking up a new identity and existence every 10 years. And never let her guard down, we learn, except once.

Flash to 2015. Adaline, now going by the name Jenny, celebrates her 107th birthday with her daughter, Flemming (Ellen Burstyn), who is now quite elderly, and her only confidante. She's preparing to spend her next decade on a farm in Oregon, until she runs into an effusive man named Ellis, played by Dutch actor Michiel Huisman, who pronounces his name as "Alice."

He isn't a particularly interesting or engaging character. He's that tiresome cinematic canard, the charming guy who got fabulously rich at a young age but doesn't make a big deal out of it because, y'know, it's just money.

(Axiom: the only people who say they don't care about money are those who already have gobs and gobs of it.)

Ellis/Alice woos Adaline/Jenny with a fierce urgency bordering on creepiness. She eventually succumbs, of course, because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie. They go on a trip to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his parents, played by Ford and Kathy Baker ... and there I'll have to stop, to prevent giving away too much.

It may seem an odd comparison, but this movie reminded me in some ways of "Funny People." That 2009 Judd Apatow comedy started out very strong, but then about halfway through we stumbled upon a new character and storyline that knocked the whole movie off its rails.

"The Age of Adaline" is the opposite: it wanders the wilderness for nearly an hour, then Harrison Ford rides in like a white knight. Neither film winds up a total success, but it's better to gain vigor than watch it dissipate.

Reeling Backward: "Harry and Tonto" (1974)

Jack Nicholson did not win the Best Actor Oscar for "Chinatown." Nor did Al Pacino for  "The Godfather Part II." Or Dustin Hoffman for "Lenny." Or Albert Finney for "Murder on the Orient Express."

No, the golden statuette went to stage and TV actor Art Carney, then best known as Jackie Gleason's dimwitted sidekick Norton on "The Honeymooners." He played elderly ex-teacher Harry Coombes, evicted from his rent-controlled New York City apartment, briefly ensconced at his son's middle-class suburban home and then off on a destination-less journey westward accompanied only by his tabby cat, Tonto.

In keeping with the tropes of the road picture, there's not much rhyme or reason to Harry's journeys, other than discovering new places and people. The plot is more or less determined by his encounters, some of them profound, some of them merely amusing, a few depressing. Carney carries the picture as a man of structure who finds that he's grown tired of his confines, and yearns to ramble.

(I do feel compelled to point out that Carney was actually only 55 when the movie came out, playing 70-something Harry. As a result, he became one of those actors, like Alec Guinness and Wilford Brimley, who was actually much younger than the populace thought the was. Carney rode the success of "Harry and Tonto" to a couple more decades of busyness in Hollywood in "old man" roles.)

Director and co-writer Paul Mazursky (with Josh Greenfeld) made movies that were largely about the in-between spaces that most films skip over. He seemed less interested in the big clanging events in life than what happens right before, or after.

His recent passing, along with that of Robin Williams, prompts me to recall the lovely "Moscow on the Hudson," about a gentle Russian who defects to the West. Mazursky was a strange species in Hollywood, an animal who could effortlessly swim in the intersecting tides of sadness, drama and laughter without ever seeming like he was stretching for an emotional crescendo that wasn't there.

His films also eschewed easy stereotypes and simplistic characterizations. Take Harry's eldest son, Burt (Phil Bruns), who takes in his dad after he is forcibly evicted from his apartment so it can be torn down for a parking garage. Normally this sort of guy is used in the  movies as a demonstration of middle-class desperation, the hard-working "family man" who finds himself estranged from his loved ones and bereft of his youthful passions. But while clearly high-strung, especially about the fates of his own young adult boys, Burt is portrayed as a loving son who looks out for Harry and genuinely cares about him, even if he can't fathom his motivations.

I also admired the depiction of Harry's grandson Norman (played by Joshua Mostel, Zero's boy), a gentle young man who is experimenting with various aspects of youth culture, including a vow of silence and mild-altering drugs. Harry, forced to share a room with the boy, is entirely non-judgmental about Norman's choices, even asking to borrow the books he's reading so he can better relate to the younger generation.

But ultimately Harry decides it's time for him to move on, especially after his best (only?) friend dies, a Polish radical, Jacob (Herbert Berghof), who angrily dismisses everyone he dislikes as a "capitalist bastard" -- even his own father. Harry's only real social structure was going to the store for groceries and treats for Tonto, good-natured banter with his fellow senior apartment dwellers and park bench conversations with Jacob.

Harry plans to visit his daughter in Chicago (Ellen Burstyn), but refuses to go through security at the airport when they want to X-ray Tonto's pet carrier. Similarly, a bus drive ends abruptly due to more Tonto troubles, so he buys an old jalopy for $250 and commences the road portion of the trip. Along the way he picks up a teen runaway (Melanie Mayron), who embarrasses him by revealing her breasts upon emerging from their hotel shower.

Other adventures include meeting a man who sells New Age-y medicinal health food (and blenders); a drunken stroll through a Las Vegas casino, where he brings an epic win streak to an end; a night in jail with an American Indian healer (Chief Dan George) who admits to practicing both good and bad medicine, depending on how he feels about the patient; reuniting with a long lost love, now wasting away from dementia in a  nursing home; a road quickie with a hooker; and bursting through the bluster of his other son (Larry Hagman), a failed real estate broker in Los Angeles.

The cyclical, episodic nature of the story lends a sense of deep perspective and sanguine wisdom gained. Harry flitters from here to there, seeing what each new day brings, and maintaining the same optimistic (but discerning) mood no matter what nature it may hold.

The ending is a little abrupt, and tends to prompt thoughts along the lines of "Well, what was that all about?" In the end, Harry is still Harry, if now in a different zip code and with a broadened outlook on life.

If "Harry and Tonto" doesn't have a big overarching Something Important statement to make, it's out of design rather than happenstance. This is a beautiful tale about following wherever your feet and heart take you, and accepting what you find for whatever it is, rather than what you'd like it to be.

Review: "Draft Day"

"Draft Day" has a reliable veteran star (Kevin Costner) and an old-hand director (Ivan Reitman) but a pair of rookie screenwriters, and it shows.

Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman fall into the newbie trap of thinking more is more. They've got a great, uncomplicated premise: the general manager of the Cleveland Browns football team is desperately scrambling to make a splash on NFL Draft Day, furiously working the phones and making seemingly desperate trades as the minutes tick by.

Made with the full cooperation of the National Football League and ESPN, plus the participation of dozens of football luminaries and media figures, it has the authentic feel of a peek behind doors than remain largely closed to fans. Now, that's an intriguing enough premise out of which to milk plenty of drama, laughs and tears.

But the screenwriters keep going, and going ... and then they go a little further. They pile challenge after interpersonal challenge atop the head of their protagonist, Sonny Weaver Jr. (Costner). It's supposed to ratchet up the tension, but the story ends up with so many distractions it's hard for the main narrative to gain traction till the end.

Start with the fact that he's got an overbearing team owner (Frank Langella) who'd like nothing better than to can his GM if the day doesn't play out right. And Sonny's dad, the legendary coach of the Browns, died last week ... after Sonny fired him the previous season. He's got his brittle mother (Ellen Burstyn) butting into his affairs. Plus he's been having an affair on the sly with an underling (Jennifer Garner), and now she wants to be more than the secret girlfriend ... oh, and they've just learned they're having a baby, too.

And that's before we even get into the minutia of the actual football draft, with the various potential players, their parents and agents, and assorted intrigues.

Sonny suspects the sure-fire #1 quarterback (Josh Pence) is a bust. He's rather pick the lower-profile defensive player of proven character (Chadwick Boseman). There's also pressure to choose a sleek running back (Arian Foster) who's the son of a favorite Browns player.

The movie finally comes through after a very slow start, and the last 45 minutes or so are extremely engaging as the actual draft drama plays out. Just when you think he's done, Sonny whips out another card from up his sleeve.

Frankly, Costner is probably about 15 years too old for this role. (A maverick guy in his mid-40s contemplating fatherhood and putting down roots is fascinating; pushing 60, it's just pathetic.) But he brings a well-worn, no-nonsense solidity to the role. His Sonny feels put-upon and doesn't carry a big ego, but there's a well-tended fire in his belly. He's a naturally cautious guy desperate to throw one long bomb and hope for the best.

I also enjoyed Denis Leary as Vince Penn, the new-ish coach of the Browns who's constantly knocking heads with his boss. Puckish and manipulative, a guy who clearly thinks he's the big fish in what he considers a small pond, Vince has his own ideas about who to draft. And if that means throwing his GM under the bus to get his way, then that's what winners do.

Reitman, better known for comedy and lacking a genuine hit for 20 years, hits his stride just when the material does, when the actual draft starts. You've got that built-in pressure of having to make your pick before the time runs out or getting leapfrogged by other teams, a tension that Reitman uses well to his advantage.

(That made sound like showbiz hooey, but it's actually happened a couple of times in recent years.)

This movie would have been much better served, though, by winnowing down the side characters and subplots and focusing on the meat of what is a really compelling story. That's playing to your strengths, something every good veteran should know.