Wiener-Dog (2016) - Solondz's incisive and funny dog saga dramedy

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+ Most Under-Appreciated Movie of the Year + Best Dramedy of the Year + Best Dog Movie of the Year

A wiener-dog's butt features prominently on this pastel-colored poster for Todd Solodz's Wiener-Dog

We follow a wiener-dog, who incurs a nervous stomach from living with an overly modern, clean family and gets rescued from a lethal injection by a young woman, Dawn Wiener, who eventually gives it away to a couple who both have Downs syndrome. After a short break, the film moves to screenwriting teacher Dave Schmerz in New York, who also owns a wiener-dog. The last story concerns an old, untalkative woman, who has named her wiener-dog Cancer.

Master writer-director Todd Solondz (Happiness (1998)) returns with something worthwhile here after years of works of lesser quality (Palindromes (2004), Life During Wartime (2009) and his most negligible effort to date, Dark Horse (2011)). Wiener-Dog is a darkly funny, cinematic salute to peculiarly shaped, sausage-like wiener-dogs everywhere.
As usual, Solondz satirizes and spikes his country and its unintelligent, superficial, indifferent, greedy, selfish and joyless populace, (as seen from Solondz's perspective.) Here he does so with a strong cast of Tracy Letts (The Lovers (2017)), Julie Delpy (Sunny Side Up (1994)), Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha (2012)), Kieran Culkin (The Cider House Rules (1999)), Zosia Mamet (Bleeding Heart (2015)) and Ellen Burstyn (The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2004, TV movie)) all giving sound, fine performances. Also good are Keaton Nigel Cooke (American Masters (2016, TV documentary) as the boy of the first family, Connor Long (Actor Martinez (2016)) and Bridget Brown (LOL (2012)) as the lovely couple with Downs and Danny DeVito (Drowning Mona (2000)), who is a standout as Dave Schmerz, a man who gets ridiculed and shoved towards early retirement along with his priceless 'what-if; then-what' teaching dogma.
Wiener-Dog also has a wonderful country song about its title animal, (The Ballad of Wiener-Dog, sung by Eric Morris (Blue Bloods (2011-12, actor)), lyrics by Marc Shaiman (Hairspray (2007, composer)) and Scott Wittman (Smash (2012, TV-series, composer)). It is an acidic, harsh gumball of a dramedy, constructed by Solondz at his most hostile towards modern Western society, which he derides as if from a great distance. His hostility towards the way the modern world and its people function, as he sees it and them, is quite unique. The characters throughout Wiener-Dog are fairly well drawn, and I would have followed them for longer. For a film about a notoriously elongated dog also known as a dachshund, Wiener-Dog, regrettably, is a bit short.

Related post:

2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 726k $
= Uncertain (but most likely a huge flop)
[Wiener-Dog premiered 22 January (Sundance) and runs 88 minutes. The film ties to Solondz's second film, the great Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) in that it reconnects us to the lead character of that film, Dawn Wiener, who is now portrayed by Gerwig, (original star Heather Matarazzo declined to star in Wiener-Dog.) The story is intended to be about one dachshund's journey from owner to owner, although I didn't realize this during watching it. Filming took place in 30 days from June - July 2015 in New York on an undisclosed but low budget. Brie Larson filmed a scene for the film, which was cut out. At the film's Sundance premiere, some audiences booed and walked out SPOILER by the film's end, in which the wiener-dog suffers a violent death. Some of these 'animal lovers' also subsequently attempted to spoil the film online, proving, perhaps, that Sundance can also be a ridiculous venue for opening a film. Amazon bought the distribution rights for the film for an undisclosed 7-figure sum. It opened #44 to a 24k $ first weekend in 2 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #34 and in 73 theaters (different weeks) and grossed 470k $ (64.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 112k $ (15.4 %) and Russia with 111k $ (15.3 %). Only 5 foreign markets have their grosses made public; the film had a few more, but they may have had too insignificant grosses to be posted. If assumed made a a very small 1 mil. $ budget, the film would count as a huge flop. Solondz is in pre-production with his next film, Love Child (2018) starring Penélope Cruz and Edgar Ramirez. Wiener-Dog is certified fresh at 77 % with a 6.7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Wiener-Dog?

Before Midnight (2013) - Linklater, Hawke and Delpy's Before trilogy comes to a tender, incisive and chilling end

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Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy by the Mediterranean Sea on the poster for Richard Linklater's Before Midnight

QUICK REVIEW:

Jesse and Celine of the two previous films in the Before trilogy, (Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004)), are now a married couple with two lovely twin daughters, who have just spend their summer together on the Greek Peloponnese peninsula. But as Jesse is sending his teenage son back on a plane to his ex-wife in the States, he feels that perhaps it is time that they should move with him over there.

The last Before film so far, (for who knows for sure that this will end as a trilogy?), starts marvelously in an airport and with a long car talking scene. A later dinner scene is perhaps a little long and over-populated with the extremely articulate Before types that Jesse and Celine seem to attract everywhere. - But it ends on a moving note.
SPOILER As the fight between the two breaks out, it is depressing because it is so real and such an accurate depiction of the way couples tend to behave in a midlife crisis situation.
Ethan Hawke (Training Day (2001)) is phenomenal, and so is Julie Delpy (Broken Flowers (2005)), although Celine definitely comes off as the most antagonistic. SPOILER The fight is steered back into romance in the end, but the way the married couple wear down each other's emotional blades, - which is really well captured here, - is still so disheartening that, for me, Before Midnight, though unmistakably great, is the least enjoyable in the trilogy.
In online forums others have attacked co-writer-director Richard Linklater, (who has written the films with Hawke and Delpy), for "trashing" the characters that have moved people profoundly since the first film. But these critics fail to accept that these characters and their relationship merely evolve and change in each 9 year span to some degree, just as real people do. That this change is heartbreaking in some sense is not something the artists are responsible for. This is just the way life turns out for many if not all people.

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A Scanner Darkly (2006) - Dick and Linklater's drug-infested vision of the future 

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 3 mil $
Box office: 23.3 mil. $
=  Huge hit
[Before Midnight was shot in the summer of 2012 in 15 days in and around Messenia, Greece. The film premiered at Sundance, played at Berlin International Film Festival and opened widest (897 theaters) in America on June 14th. It made 8.1 mil. $ (35 % of the total gross) domestically and was Oscar-nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, (adapted since its based on existing characters.) It became the 2nd best reviewed film of the year according to Rotten Tomatoes, only bested by Gravity (2013). It also appeared on a long row of critic's top 10 lists of 2013 and was nominated for and won a slew of awards.]

What do you think of Before Midnight?

Broken Flowers (2005) - Hip search for son and self with Jarmusch and Murray

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+ Best Road Movie of the Year

Star Bill Murray looks unsure of the situation, standing on a doorstep with a bouquet of flowers on this poster for Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers

A former Don Juan, who is now a very domestic aging, single gentleman, gets a letter that says he has a son, and he decides to head out and visit former lovers to learn more about this circumstance.

 
Broken Flowers is written and directed by Ohioan master filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (Permanent Vacation (1980)), based on an idea by Bill Raden and Sara Driver (Sleepwalk (1986)). It is Jarmusch's 9th feature.  

It is an excellent 'little' film. 'Little' because the existential crisis and emotions expressed by its lead character Don (Bill Murray (Hamlet (2000))) are so limited and underplayed.
The film has a stellar cast of women that are all enjoyable, - especially Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under (2001-05)), who has a priceless dinner scene involving Don and carrots. The other women are Jessica Lange (Frances (1982)), Julie Delpy (L.A. Without a Map (1998)), Tilda Swinton (Moonrise Kingdom (2012)), Sharon Stone (Border Run (2012)) and Chloë Sevigny (Mr. Nice (2010)). Also Jeffrey Wright (W (2008)) is a joy as a male compadre to Don, and both the editing by Jay Rabinowitz (Requiem for a Dream (2000)) and the Ethiopian jazz score by Mulatu Astatke (Little Heaven (2011)) are wonderful.
Murray seems throughout the movie to be a fragile, confused man with severe hangovers, and his part is nearly too close to the one he plays in Sofia Ford Coppola's modern classic, Lost in Translation (2003).
SPOILER Broken Flowers' has an open ending seemed unresolved to me, but the film is still a gift.

 

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Watch a trailer for the movie here

Cost: 10 mil. $
Box office: 47.3 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 4.73 times its cost)

[Broken Flowers premiered 17 May (Cannes Film Festival, in competition) and runs 101 minutes. Shooting took place from November 2004 - ? in New York and New Jersey. The film opened #16 to a 780k $ first weekend in 27 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #12 and in 433 theaters (different weeks), grossing 13.7 mil. $ (29 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 9 mil. $ (19 %) and Germany with 4.2 mil. $ (8.9 %). The film won an award at Cannes (Jury Grand Prize), was nominated for a European Film award and an Independent Spirit award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. Jarmusch returned with Raconteurs: Steady, As She Goes (Version 1) (2006, music video) and theatrically with The Limits of Control (2009). Murray returned in The Lost City (2005). Broken Flowers is certified fresh at 87 % with a 7.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Broken Flowers?