Friend a testament to the power of pets
I don’t have to tell those who have dogs as pets how wonderful their canine companions are. Studies have shown having one increases the owner’s life expectancy and helps relieve stress, while their presence is like having a live-in therapist. If you own one and your response to the question “Do you ever talk to your dog?” is “No,” you’re lying. Despite the occasional mess, the shoes you love being chewed up and the constant hair, they become an invaluable part of our lives. They’re the family member we can always rely on, the one who doesn’t hold back in showing us, whether we’ve been gone five minutes or five weeks, how badly they’ve missed us.
So, when they leave – always too soon – the pain is genuine. Pity those who say in response to your grief, “It was only a dog.” They’ve never been lucky enough to experience the special bond that can exist between man and beast.
This sort of loss is at the center of Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Friend, an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s poignant novel. A massive Great Dane by the name of Apollo (Bing) is the catalyst, a majestic animal who affects everyone he meets, his massive body belying his gentle nature, his mere presence drawing even the reluctant towards him.
He was once the companion of Walter Meredith (Bill Murray), who revels in telling the tale of how he and Apollo met, a story that’s become more hyperbolic over the years. Though they respect and love him, the college professor’s friends have come to look at him askance as he relates meeting the noble beast while out jogging one day. Abandoned, the dog is first seen atop a hill, his distinct profile against a clear sky, striking a pose suggesting he’s perfectly capable of caring for himself. Without hesitation, Walter takes him in.
Now, having committed suicide, Walter is gone. His widow, Barbara (Noma Dumezweni), claims that he requested his colleague and former student, Iris (Naomi Watts), take care of Apollo. Not a dog person, she resists this request, reasoning that her tiny, rent-controlled apartment is hardly big enough and she certainly doesn’t have room in her life for a 150 pound four-legged companion. Yet, she agrees to take Apollo in until she can find a better placement for him.
Suddenly living in close quarters together, it becomes apparent the two new roomies are each grieving the loss of Walter and both will travel different paths in coming to terms with this event. As an author, Iris begins to write about her experiences with her friend and mentor, flashbacks filling us in on their complex relationship. Equally important are her interactions with Walter’s daughter, Val (Sarah Pidgeon), as well as his ex-wives, Elaine (Carla Gugino) and Tuesday (Constance Wu). Iris’ interactions with them, as well as her constant writing about him, force her to contend with incidents involving Walter she’d rather forget, as well as her anger over his suicide.
To their credit, McGehee and Siegel are very deliberate in their pacing, Iris’ cathartic journey towards reconciliation and healing not an overnight occurrence. The complexity of grief and the hold it takes on us is handled respectfully, the process of healing seen as a “one-step forward, two-steps back” endeavor that takes time, for both people and canines.
The veteran cast is aware of the delicate nature of the material, their performances grounded and sincere. And much like the titular character in The Penguin Lessons, Apollo is never presented in an overly cute, cloying manner, which goes a long way toward contributing to the film’s reverent tone.
Apollo and Walter are friends of a very different but necessary sort for Iris. While the former provides reliable companionship, as well as inspiration, the latter was able to anticipate just what she would need to heal and survive. Leaving her his best friend proves to be her salvation. In theaters.
Appearances win out in dull Holland
You can’t help but admire Nicole Kidman’s work ethic. Since 2021, she’s appeared in five television mini-series and seven feature films, with two more TV projects to be released before the year is out. Not sure what is compelling her to work at such a pace, but more power to her regarding getting her passion projects up and running. I just wish she were a bit more discerning in the projects she chooses, as their quantity is adversely affecting their quality.
After 2024’s Babygirl and A Family Affair, both in-your-face projects produced with the sole purpose of showcasing the actress’ body and sex appeal, comes Mimi Cave’s Holland. This lackluster affair is limp foray into David Lynch territory, but lacking in panache, imagination and quality. Taking place in the titular Michigan town, the script by Andrew Sodroski contains nary a surprise, except how deadly dull its hackneyed plot turns out to be.
According to Nancy Vandergroot (Kidman), Holland is the perfect place to live and raise a family. She certainly does her part to make it so, teaching home economics at the local high school, all the while projecting the sort of insincere positivity that just makes you want to punch her in the face. This is a woman who draws a heart with ketchup on her meatloaf. She’s the type of person who says, “I’m going to have an attitude of gratitude!” She’s also bored out of her mind.
Her husband, Fred (Matthew Macfadyen, having fun), is also gratingly optimistic but more sincere. A successful optometrist, he loves his work, his son Harry (Jude Hill) and his wife. While his habit of building elaborate towns for his model trains to run through might seem odd to some, he’s a well-respected guy. The only hiccup in the marriage is that he travels often to conferences, something Nancy becomes suspicious of.
A parking ticket from a far-off town and a credit card number she doesn’t recognize, both found in Fred’s office, turns our heroine into Nancy Drew. She’s convinced he’s having an affair, something she confides in Dave Delgado (Gael Garcia Bernal), the high school shop teacher she’s having an emotional affair with. Before you know it, the pair is breaking into Fred’s office and following him about, intent on catching him with his pants down. Little do they know…
What’s striking about the film is how disengaged it is regarding its characters and the audience. Despite having a potentially intriguing premise, this is strikingly dull movie. It’s not dark enough to be an exercise in film noir, not sharp enough to offer up any social commentary and not original enough to surprise us. Sodroski has all the pieces in place to tackle a wide variety of topics from various angles, yet he’s not daring enough to push the story in any one decisive direction. As a result, the movie just lists along.
The three principals are good, though you get the sense they too aren’t quite sure what tone to strike. Their characters are never treated seriously, their pasts never explored in any depth. Had Nancy’s loneliness and paranoia been taken seriously, I might have had some sympathy for her, while Fred’s character is in dire need of further exploration. As it is, they come off as cyphers, all they do seeming anticlimactic or unimportant.
Holland wants to be a story about dark secrets lurking beneath a glossy veneer. Unfortunately, it falls into the trap of being all about appearances and nothing more. Streaming on Amazon Prime.
Vile Working a heinous, lazy exercise
In 2012, David Ayer released End of Watch, one of the great police procedurals of the last 20 years. Focused on the toll patrolling our dangerous streets has on the men and women who wear the badge, the film was far better than standard action fare and served as a calling card for the writer/director. His most recent effort, the Jason Statham actioner A Working Man, shows how far Ayer has fallen. Lacking in imagination, sloppily made, at times nonsensical and offensively violent, this is the sort of film in which everyone isn’t just going through the motions, but blatantly show they just don’t care about what they’re working on.
The story, such as it is, is told in the broadest strokes, wasting no time on character development as Ayer and Sylvester Stallone are fully aware they are using archetypes and a hackneyed premise. I know this will likely come as a shock, but Statham’s character, Levon Cade, is a man with a violent past. Ex-military, he simply wants to live a quiet life, fighting to get custody of his daughter from his bitter father-in-law.
Wouldn’t you know it, Jenny (Arianna Rivas), the daughter of the kindly couple he works, for gets kidnapped by a duo who work for a white slavery network. While he’s reluctant to put down his hammer and pick up an AK-47, circumstances force his hand and Cade wreaks havoc on the mean streets of Chicago, looking for Jenny.
The story is simplicity itself, yet Ayer and Stallone purposely sidetrack Cade so he can blow stuff up real good and snap necks with impunity. It doesn’t take him long to figure out who’s behind the abduction, yet our anti-hero inexplicably begins a cat-and-mouse game in which he embarks on buying drugs from the bad guys and dumping them. I’m clueless as to why this occurs, as these acts do nothing to help him save the girl.
But I’m thinking about this far more than Ayer and company, as all they are concerned with is staging one heinously violent act after another. If your idea of a good time is seeing people cut in half by machine gun fire, others cut navel to chinbone with a bowie knife or witnessing a woman throttled to death, then this is your fetid cup of tea.
Pithy lines of dialogue like, “I can see you guys coming a mile away,” “It’s not who I am anymore,” and “You’ve killed your way into this, you’ll have to kill your way out,” are par for the course. The script is a collection of cliches and leftovers, while the production design is also slipshod. The presence of an abnormally large full moon in nearly every night scene, all obviously shot on a sloppily dressed soundstage, sums up the lazy way the film was made, making its title even more ironic.
No one worked on Man. All involved clocked in, clocked out and collected a check. It’s a callous, offensive exercise that prompted me to take the hottest shower I could afterwards. That this would be accepted as “entertainment” by millions left me more depressed than I have been in quite some time. In theaters.
This article appears in Visitor 2025.
