Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog (2004)

A scene from "Quill: The Life
of a Guide Dog."

Most dogs are born into this world to eventually become pets, treasured members of the family who provide enthusiastic loyalty and unbridled love to their owners while asking for very little in return. But Quill, the yellow Labrador retriever at the center of the bright and engaging “Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog”—a Japanese film directed by Yoichi Sai, adapted from a novel by Ryohei Akimoto and Kengo Ishiguro, and based on a true story—is poised for a lifetime of important service in helping a blind person to gain a measure of independence.

We follow Quill from puppydom, when it is determined that his distinct curiosity and capacity for individual thought separate him from the pack. The idea is neatly established in a scene in which Quill resists running along in sequence with the rest of his litter; instead, he stays by himself seemingly in quiet contemplation. Along with natural patience, Quill seems to have a unique desire to learn, a couple of integral components in becoming a guide dog.

Quill is born in Tokyo but his first year is spent in Kyoto with a pair of “puppy walkers,” who provide a loving home, care and safety, and lots of exercise for prospective guide dogs. It is the puppy walker’s responsibility, the narrator explains, to teach a dog to trust and feel comfortable around humans, which probably doesn’t sound like much of a challenge to anyone who has ever encountered a lab.

After Quill turns one, he leaves for a training facility to be taught the intricate points of being a guide dog—like knowing when to stop his master at a street curb, letting the owner know when there are obstacles blocking his path, or even when to disobey a master’s command if it puts him in danger (such as crossing a street against the traffic signal).

When Quill is ready to be on his own, he is put in charge of a blind journalist named Mitsuru Watanabe (Kaoru Kobayashi), a mild curmudgeon who gets around using a cane and doesn’t much care for dogs at first. But labs, in addition to being intelligent, are one of gentlest and most affectionate of all breeds, and soon Quill and Watanabe become inseparable friends.

Along with some sad and unapologetically sentimental moments, there is humor in the movie, especially during scenes when Quill is at play. Indeed, he loves his work, because his work involves people. Still, the moments when he is just being a regular dog, getting into childish mischief—like he does at one point in a scene with Watanabe’s young son—are fun to watch and provide an intriguing contrast to the “on the job” scenes.

When you consider this film and how many other things dogs are capable of doing—beagles and bloodhounds sniffing out bombs and drugs, border collies keeping herds of cows and horses in check, German Shepherds doubling as police dogs—it’s not surprising how far ahead they are in the hierarchy of domesticated animals. By being a story of one special dog, “Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog” pays tribute to all of them.

Populaire (2012)

Romain Duris and Deborah Francios in "Populaire."

Speed typing contests—using those quaint, erstwhile antiques called manual typewriters—were apparently popular enough during the 1950s to fill up a grand ballroom roughly the size of Radio City Music Hall. At least that's the case in "Populaire," the ponderous and formulaic but ebullient and irresistibly charming French romantic comedy by first-time director Regis Roinsard.

These days, the contest would be usurped by speed texting drills and dominated by gossipy high school freshman with quick trigger thumbs. In Roinsard's film, the participants tend to be eager, attractive young women angling for a career in the competitive world of professional secretaries. What can you say, things were different back then.

The story introduces us to Rose Pamphyle, a twenty-something French girl who hears about one of the contests and decides to travel to compete. Desperate to escape her small, provincial town and working in her father's nondescript retail store, she sees it as a chance for a big break. Also, she just happens to be able to type really, really fast.

Rose finds employment as a secretary at an insurance office run by Louis Echard (Romain Duris), a smooth operator who quickly discovers Rose's potential for typing greatness as she hammers away at the keys—initially using the dependable two-finger method—with fluid dexterity and lightning speed. Thinking she has the stuff to be a future world champion, he convinces her to move from his office to his sprawling mansion so she can practice full time.

Their relationship remains platonic at first—like a trainer and an athlete, cute workout montages feature Louis cycling while Rose jogs, borrowed from the "Rocky" movies—but romance is bound to bloom sooner or later between this handsome teacher and pulchritudinous protégé.

The movie lurches along during its last half hour, moving through a checklist of tedious romantic comedy clichés—the couple suffers the obligatory break up followed by the inevitable reconciliation—and nearly losing all the lighthearted comic momentum that sustained it as far. "Populaire" recovers in the end by the time Rose finds herself in New York at the silly yet surprisingly entertaining speed typing world finals.

Even though set in the 50s, “Populaire” has some of the appeal of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the 1940 “His Girl Friday,” or the Astaire-Rogers musical act of the 1930s. The formula is usually the same, a mismatched couple who exchange sarcastic quips but stick together just long enough to fall in love.

By far the best thing going for "Populaire" is its engaging heroine. Rose is played by Deborah Francios, a Belgian actress with an easy charm and instant likability. A plucky, adorable presence with strawberry blonde hair and a soft smile, Francios makes Rose so easy to root for that it forgives the screenplay's weaker, more predictable moments.

Grizzly Man (2005)

“Grizzly Man” is the 2005 documentary directed by the great German filmmaker Werner Herzog (“Nosferatu the Vampyre,” 1979) about the late adventurer Timothy Treadwell, a Long Island, N.Y. native who made annual trips to Alaska to live among and document bears during the summer months. In 2003, during a rainy and windswept day near the end of one expedition, Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were viciously mauled and gruesomely killed by a bear. It is captured on audio, but too horrifying even for Herzog to consider sharing with his audience here.

A cursory research reveals that an adult male grizzly bear can stand over nine feet tall on its hind legs, weigh almost one thousand pounds, and have claws up to four inches long. They usually will not attack a human unless they feel threatened, or are surprised at close range. Amazingly, little to none of this information is learned from “Grizzly Man,” despite the fact that Herzog went through 100 hours of film that Treadwell shot during his 13 summers spent observing bears at Katmai National Park on the Alaskan Peninsula.

Indeed, the movie has far less to do with bears than it has to do with Treadwell, who comes across as a deeply troubled man, whose disillusionment with the world and failures at life drove him into the wilderness to the only place left where he thought he could reign supreme. He tried college, but dropped out after losing an athletic scholarship; he almost made a splash as an actor, but quickly washed out after apparently losing out (to Woody Harrelson) a chance to be on the TV show Cheers. If people let him down, he seemed to believe the bears wouldn’t.

So he journeys into the wild to be with the bears under a half-baked, delusional guise of being their protector from things like poachers (even though Katmai is a federally protected national park where poaching is illegal). Many times during “Grizzly Man,” we encounter him walking up to bears, talking to the huge animals using a silly, high-pitched, infantile voice—the way that people sometimes talk to their dogs or cats or babies. At one point, he answers some of his critics with an angry, rambling, expletive-laced harangue into the camera, vowing to keep returning and fighting for bears. Treadwell’s level of condescension and narcissism is almost as astonishing as the details of his death are lurid and ironic.

Still, Herzog’s film is well made and consistently fascinating. As baffling, delusional and unlikable as Treadwell is as a subject, his story remains a strange and twisted cautionary tale of madness and obsession that spilled over into macabre tragedy.

Dark Horse (2012)

“Dark Horse” is another look at alienation and aimlessness in contemporary suburbia by New Jersey filmmaker Todd Solondz. This one centers on thirty-something Abe (Jordan Gelber), a depressed, slovenly, overweight man-child still living in the room he grew up in—complete with walls and shelves decorated with posters and lined with countless toy collectibles, an obsessive hobby carried over from childhood—at his parent’s house.

Selma Blair and Jordan Gelber
in "Dark Horse."

Abe's typical day involves working for his father (Christopher Walken) at a boring office job he hates, taking life advice from a mousy secretary (Donna Murphy) who transforms into a seductress during a bizarre dream sequence, and sneaking out to the local toy store where he argues with supercilious retail clerks. But Abe's world changes when he meets his possible soul mate in the waifish Miranda (Selma Blair), a similarly moribund introvert still living at home, and announces plans to marry her.

As romantic partners go, the awkward moments between Abe and Miranda generate about as much spark as a wet book of matches, so when Solondz unleashes a cringe-worthy third act twist—Miranda reveals she has hepatitis B and may have passed it along to Abe—the results seem like a desperate reach for sympathy.

Solondz became a kind of poet of the odd after his masterful debut “Welcome to the Dollhouse” (1995), a brilliantly caustic and surprisingly moving coming of age satire about a lonely, outcast girl struggling with family and school and the cruel vicissitudes of growing up in a world that never seems to understand her. The characters are somewhat similar, if older, in “Dark Horse,” but the new movie is a disappointment, dreary and lifeless—lacking the sardonic wit, razor sharp edge and heart that made a movie like “Welcome to the Dollhouse” special.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Sheila Vand plays a vampire in the visually striking
Iranian film, "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night." 

A beautiful and mysterious female vampire roams the dark and desolate streets, satiating her strange thirst for blood while avenging crimes in “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” the stylish and often scintillating black and white debut feature from Iranian director Ana Lily Amirpour. Screened at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and cleverly billed as a Persian vampire western, the movie is a visually striking and irresistibly entertaining amalgam of horror, film noir and dark comedy.

The movie was filmed in Taft, California near Bakersfield but takes place in a fictitious town called Bad City, distinctly imagined by Amirpour as an industrial wasteland of sorts, with cold, deserted streets lined with hazy, orbed streetlamps casting harsh, high-contrast light and shadows. Such visual details, along with oil rigs and power plants belching clouds of smoke in the background, evoke the Mexican border town of Orson Welles’ masterful film noir “Touch of Evil” (1958). There’s even a deep ravine running along one lonely road, perfect for dumping the occasional corpse.

“I’ve done bad things,” the main character, known only as The Girl (Sheila Vand, dangerous and radiant, like an archetypal femme fatale), confesses at one point. She’s not the only one. In Bad City, a variety of denizens—prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts—ensure the place lives up to its name. Our lone vampire often appears sad-eyed and taciturn, at once mournful and vulnerable, yet eerily capable of quick, scary bursts of violence.

But the movie is not strictly atmosphere and dread. One night, after frightening a small boy, the vampire ends up with the kid’s skateboard and a bit of dark, almost farcical comedy follows as she is seen incongruously speeding down the street like a teenager, the toy’s wheels whirring obliviously underneath. Another funny moment—when the vampire emotionlessly mimics a man, stalking him as he walks on the opposite side of the street—is reminiscent of the Marx brothers. The way Amirpour finds oddly ingenious ways to insert humor into the story without violating the integrity of the characters recalls some of Jim Jarmusch’s work, like the deadpan classic “Stranger than Paradise” (1984).

The interesting use of lenses and focal depth also make “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” consistently stunning to look at. Amirpour is fascinated with lighting and shifting focus between foreground and background characters, leading to some luminous, Tarantino-esque imagery. The way the director goes from a close-up of a cat’s eye to the shape of the vampire seen from behind—thematically linking woman and beast—plays like an elegant homage to Jacques Tourneur’s brilliant noir “Cat People” (1942).

There is the slightest premonition of romance when the protagonist meets the morose, tortured but basically good-hearted Arash (Arash Marandi). But whether the vampire can leave the demons of Bad City behind long enough to escape with the handsome hero is better left unsaid. “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” might sound like a lot of parts that don’t quite make up a whole, but that said, those parts are pretty good and Amirpour’s unquestionable artistry is worth watching.

Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)

Adele Exarchopoulos stars in "Blue Is the Warmest Color."

Thanks in no small part to a few extended scenes of explicit sexual intercourse between its young, attractive female protagonists, “Blue Is the Warmest Color”—the unanimous winner of the prestigious Golden Palm at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival—is easily, for better or worse, one of the more challenging and divisive movies to come along in quite awhile.

Luckily, it’s mostly for the better. This epic, lush and wondrous three-hour long French film—directed by Abdellatif Kechiche and based on a graphic novel of the same name by Julie Maroh—exploring themes of self-discovery, self-identity and first loves, should endure as one of the most honest, intelligent and rapturous coming of age stories in the cinema for years to come.

The movie chronicles a few years in the life of Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos, in an eloquent and brilliant performance), who opens the film as a wide-eyed, articulate 15-year-old beginning to encounter the nuances of her growing sexuality while negotiating the choppy social waters of high school. Adele’s first sexual experience with a boy leaves her feeling empty and confused; but when she catches a glimpse of Emma (Lea Seydoux, also very good), a sensitive and talented artist with short streaks of baby blue hair, stronger feelings begin to stir.

They meet again at a gay bar and have the first of many long talks, smart and inquisitive. Something refreshing about “Blue Is the Warmest Color” is that other than a scene involving Adele’s classmates, who cruelly chide her about walking home with Emma, the movie shines a light on social tolerance without being heavy-handed. Kechiche simply regards Adele and Emma as two people who plunge into a deep, genuine and true love—just like any other couple. Another moment, featuring the young lovers marching and dancing joyously in a Pride Parade, unfolds with similar, and lovely, understated grace.

A few years pass. Emma’s career flourishes, leading to elegant parties featuring successful, sometimes seductive members of the art world. Adele, who only later becomes a teacher, feels left out, spurring her to commit acts of infidelity. Emma, who remains the moral center of the film, catches her and the couple breakup. Because Kechiche (who co-wrote the screenplay with Ghalia Lecroix) makes us care so much about these characters and the performances are so authentic, this powerfully moving scene between Adele and Emma—as well another near the end when they meet in a café—are so emotionally devastating as to be sublime. Losing this love is as painful as discovering it was blissful.

Some will probably argue if the movie would work just as well without the intense sex scenes. It’s hard to say. While certainly far from subtle, these breathy, aggressive, highly carnal moments define the relationship—indeed the humanity—of the characters. The sex is also consistent with their personalities. There is a quiet scene at the park, for instance, when Adele and Emma stare intently and lovingly into each other’s eyes; you might say they make love with just as much fervor.

“Blue Is the Warmest Color” is destined to become necessary viewing in film schools. Kechiche’s movie works like an essay on the fundamental element of intimacy in our lives. Adele and Emma are both healthy, sexually mature young adults—capable of emotion and passionate love, given to tempestuous desires, smart and also fallible.

The Babadook (2014)

Noah Wiseman (left) and Essie Davis in "The Babadook."

“If it’s in a word or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook,” is the cryptic opening passage in the children’s pop-up book featured in “The Babadook,” the artfully unsettling, unrelentingly frightening and masterfully executed Australian horror film written and directed by Jennifer Kent.

The book mysteriously appears on the shelf of little Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a precocious six-year old with a natural streak of mischief in his wide eyes, a fondness for performing magic tricks, and an increasingly unnatural fear of dread things that may be hiding under his bed. Sam is an only-child who lives with Amelia (Essie Davis), his loving but long-suffering mother, still grieving over the loss of her husband, who died in a car accident taking her to the hospital the night Sam was born.

Although mom and son are essentially happy and normal, the father’s death has led to a subtle disconnect between them that stirs every once in a while. For instance, Amelia, trying to bury painful memories, keeps personal items stored in the basement. But Sam, eager to learn more about his dad, sneaks down and rummages through clothing and pictures. The tragedy has resulted in lingering disquiet in their lives. But it’s about to get worse.

Amelia reads to Sam before bedtime to help him sleep. One night, he selects a red pop-up book called Mister Babadook. The book is about a strange looking figure that meets and then stalks a little boy in his room. At first, the words and illustrations seem disarmingly funny—as if attempting to alleviate a child’s fear of monsters by parodying them—but then it gets scary enough to not only whip Sam into a fit of tears but also palpably unnerve mom.

At this point, “The Babadook” is more darkly comic in tone—closely resembling the mood of Kent’s 2005 short film, “The Monster,” which the new film is based on—but it grows more deeply ominous. After reading the book, Amelia and Sam’s world turns progressively nightmarish.  First it’s Sam, haunted by visions that send him into violent panic attacks; then Amelia, who begins hearing bizarre noises and seeing shadowy shapes skulking in the night.

Pages from the eerie children's pop-up book in "The Babadook."

The home where most of the action takes place becomes a veritable house of horrors, with its icy, washed-out colors, creaking doors and harsh shadows. Kent shows a masterful command of menacing visual flourishes, sometimes using only shards of light and vast swaths of darkness to evoke fear and dread—cloaking the film’s creeping, malevolent terror in pools of inky blackness.

The Babadook himself is the stuff of expressionistic nightmares, cruel-looking and shape-shifting with sharp teeth and long, pointy fingers—he looks a little like the hideous vampire of “Nosferatu,” a movie that, perhaps not surprisingly, is said to be one of Kent’s inspirations. But the shadowy specter isn’t the only source of scares here.

In a sly, psychological twist, the Babadook is also capable of swooping in and taking up residence inside the main characters, where it torments by exploiting fears of loss and pain in their lives, turning them against each other. “You start to change when I get in,” the book warns chillingly, “the Babadook growing right under your skin.” The effect is particularly severe when it comes to Amelia, who turns into a savage, shrieking enemy near the end, causing young Sam to resort to the kind of inventive means of self-preservation that would make the kid in “Home Alone” proud.

The gateway to this Grand Guignol begins with the book. Because “The Babadook” is a resounding masterpiece of horror, it’s a device destined to become one of the iconic references of the genre—as memorable as the flesh-bound Book of the Dead in “The Evil Dead,” the enigmatic puzzle box from “Hellraiser,” or the cursed videotape of “The Ring.”