Review: 'Strays' puts R-rated words in the mouths of talking dogs — and that's the only trick it knows

It’s clear from the beginning what “Strays” is trying to do — to spoof heartwarming animal movies, but with the human voices superimposed on dogs saying the most profane things possible. And though it sometimes succeeds in provoking laughs, that doesn’t happen often enough to compensate for all the cringing a viewer will do the rest of the time.

The hero and, for a time, the main narrator of this story is Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell), a perky little terrier mutt who thinks his human, Doug (Will Forte), is the best human a dog could have. We, as outside observers, know otherwise — that Doug is a perpetually masturbating stoner who hates dogs, and kept Reggie only because his girlfriend wanted to have the dog during their breakup. Reggie delights in playing fetch with Doug, not realizing that Doug keeps driving further and further from home to ditch Reggie.

When Reggie is left in the big, bad city, he still thinks Doug is just playing fetch with him. It takes a tenacious Boston terrier, named Bug (voiced by Jamie Foxx), to explain to Reggie that he’s been abandoned — and he’s now a stray. Bug proceeds to show Reggie the joys of living independently, like being able to claim anything you pee on. Reggie also meets Bug’s dog-park friends: Hunter (voiced by Randall Park), a Great Dane who continues to wear a cone to calm his nerves, and Maggie (voiced by Isla Fisher), an Australian Shepherd with a bloodhound’s sense of smell.

Reggie, finally realizing how poorly he was treated, resolves to find his way back home with a mission to destroy the thing Doug loves most: His willy. Bug, Hunter and Maggie agree to join Reggie on the road.

So these four dogs are on a quest, like “Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey,” if the voice actors were allowed to say words that would make Walt Disney’s ears bleed. The gags target the tropes of the talking-dog genre — like the all-wise “narrator dog” (think “The Art of Racing in the Rain” and others) — or the dog-centered view of the world. (Example: Bug offers his theory on why humans obsessively bag up their dogs’ poop.)

Many of the jokes are about poop or about humping things, and it feels like director Josh Greenbaum (who made the far superior “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar”) and writer Dan Perrault came up with “an R-rated talking dog movie” and thought that was enough.

The weird thing about “Strays” is that the few really good jokes aren’t reliant on poop or penises or profanity, but good solid dog humor — like when Maggie tries to tell a knock-knock joke, but her companions instinctively start barking after the first knock. Those jokes are themselves strays, lost and in need of a good home.

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‘Strays’

★★

Opens Friday, August 18, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for pervasive language, crude and sexual content, and drug use. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: 'Aliens Abducted My Parents...," made in Utah, is a teen comedy with warmth and heart

Restoring one’s faith in family-friendly movies, the made-in-Utah teen comedy “Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out” is as funny and as charming as its very long title.

Itsy Levan (played by Emma Tremblay) is decidedly unhappy about her parents’ decision to leave the big city for the small town of Pebble Falls. While Mom (Hailey Smith) and Dad (Matt Biedel) are busy renovating their new fixer-upper house and dreaming of being the next Chip and Joanna Gaines, Itsy tries to avoid her bratty younger brother, Evan (Kenneth Cummins), and fit in at her new high school.

When the school’s queen bee, Heather (Landry Townsend), tells Itsy there’s a high school journalism contest that could send her to study in New York, Itsy jumps at the chance. The prompt for the contest is to write about the weirdest thing in one’s hometown, and Heather has the perfect candidate in mind: Calvin Kipler (Jacob Buster), who comes to school in his own homemade space suit.

Itsy soon learns that Calvin is tracking the imminent arrival of Jesper’s Comet, which passes by Earth once every 10 years. The last time the comet passed, Calvin was six (and played, in flashback, by Cummins’ little brother Thomas), and his parents disappeared — and Calvin maintains they were taken by aliens. Calvin believes that when the comet returns, he will be reunited with his parents, and possibly join them on their interstellar travels.

Director Jake Van Wagoner, a veteran of BYUtv’s sketch-comedy series “Studio C,” and screenwriter Austin Everett put Itsy and Calvin through the expected teen comedy hoops — including a sweetly chaste romance and some serious moments involving Calvin’s parents (Will Forte and Elizabeth Mitchell).

What makes “Aliens Abducted My Parents…” transcend its predictable plot points is the humor level, neither dumbed down or too cynical, and the sincerely charming performances by Tremblay and Buster — two teen actors who could break out into bigger things.

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‘Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, August 18, at the Megaplex Valley Fair (West Valley City), Megaplex Legacy Crossing (Centerville), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan) and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Not rated, but probably PG for some mild peril and thematic content. Running time: 87 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this website on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Passages' delivers passion and raw sexuality, in its portrayal of a self-centered filmmaker burning through relationships

A very good movie about a very bad person, director Ira Sachs’ “Passages” is a raw portrait of two relationships and the self-destructive narcissist who’s the fulcrum for both of them.

Tomas (played by the German actor Franz Rogowski) is a film director who has just wrapped production on a movie in Paris. At the bar, Tomas tries to get his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), to dance with him, but when Martin begs off and goes home, Tomas starts dancing with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a schoolteacher who’s friends with some of the movie’s crew. When the party moves to someone’s apartment, Tomas and Agathe have sex.

Tomas is eager to tell Martin all about it the next morning, and Martin tries to dismiss the affair as Tomas’ usual post-production dalliance — a release of sexual tension, nothing that will destroy their marriage. When Tomas insists he’s really in love with Agathe, the marriage starts its slow disintegration, even as Tomas tries to continue his life with both partners.

Sachs — who has probed the fragility of romance, gay and straight, in such movies as “Love Is Strange,” “Keep the Lights On” and “Forty Shades of Blue” — isn’t shy about showing the nitty-gritty of Tomas’ relationships with either Martin or Agathe. Tomas’ interest in both of them is primarily sexual, so it’s the sex scenes (which initially earned the movie an NC-17 rating, which Sachs’ producers returned) where Tomas’ passion is most abundant. Tomas connects with each of them best when making love; when he has to talk to them, not so much.

The performances are what cement the emotional weight Sachs and his regular writing partner Mauricio Zacharias try to convey. Whishaw (known to American audiences as Q in the Daniel Craig Bond movies and the voice of Paddington Bear) portrays Martin as a homebody but no wallflower, while Exarchopoulos (best known for “Blue Is the Warmest Color”) gives Agathe a down-to-earth quality that Tomas can’t quite fathom.

But it’s Rogowski, so compelling in Christian Petzold’s “Transit” and Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life,” who fascinates here. His Tomas is a rat bastard at times, self-centered and seeking pleasure at all costs, but there’s a bruised soul inside that bad behavior that makes “Passages” a must-watch. 

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‘Passages’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 18, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably NC-17 for explicit sex scenes, and language. Running time: 91 minutes; in English, and French with subtitles.

Review: 'Landscape With Invisible Hand,' a social satire hidden in an alien-invasion comedy, has more ideas than it can handle

Writer-director Cory Finley’s satire “Landscape With Invisible Hand” is so overflowing with ideas — about class and race divisions, the commodification of emotion, and the soft fascism we bring on ourselves through capitalism — that it doesn’t entirely know what to do with all of them.

It’s 2036, a few years after a race of aliens, the Vuvv, have arrived on Earth. It was an invasion, not by force but by generosity — the Vuvv, who one character describes as “gooey coffee tables,” gave humans their advanced technology, making most human jobs obsolete. The rich have moved up to the Vuvv’s floating vessels, while the rest of the humans are unemployed or underemployed, trying to live on the scraps and junk dropped on us from above.

Adam Campbell (Asante Blackk, formerly of “This Is Us”) is a 17-year-old aspiring artist, living in a house with his mom, Beth (Tiffany Haddish), an unemployed lawyer, and little sister Natalie (Brooklynn MacKinzie), who’s growing vegetables in what used to be their pool. At least the Campbells have a house, because others don’t. The new girl in school, Chloe Marsh (Kylie Rogers), lives in the family car with her dad (Josh Hamilton) and brooding older brother Hunter (Michael Gandolfini).

Adam connects with Chloe, and soon invites the Marshes to live in their basement, as a teen romance starts to blossom. As love grows, Chloe suggests she and Adam start a livestream of their romance to the Vuvv — because they don’t have “love,” and are fascinated enough by the concept that they’ll pay money to watch humans experience it.

The livestreaming goes well for awhile, and brings money into both households. But as first love fades, the Vuvv notice the difference — and threaten to sue Chloe and Adam for a broadcast they consider “deceitful.” The Campbell and Marsh families, whose relations were already strained, splinter even further when they each try to find a solution to keep the Vuvv from suing them into generations of debt.

Finley (“Thoroughbreds”), in adapting M.T. Anderson’s novel, finds rich veins of social commentary to explore, particularly about the ways humans will divide themselves by class, and how the folks on the bottom will be as resentful of the folks just above them as toward the people at the top. There are also some intriguing threads about how everything that makes us human — our art, our emotions, our relationships — are available for someone to slap a price tag on them.

If only Finley’s command of the visual side of the material — like the comical way the Vuvv communicate by rubbing their paddle-like flippers — was matched by the emotional control. That remains elusive, even with evocative performances by Blackk, Rogers and particularly Haddish, showing the lengths a strong woman will go (and not go) for her family’s well-being.

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‘Landscape With Invisible Hand’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 18, at Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy) and Century 16 (South Salt Lake). Rated R for language and brief violent content. Running time: 105 minutes.

Review: 'The Last Voyage of the Demeter' is a monster story with classic references and old-school suspense

Old-school tension replaces the gore in “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” an entertaining-enough take on one of literature’s most famous monsters.

The opening title cards set the time: 1897, with a sailing ship — the Russian schooner Demeter — crashing on the shores of England on dark and stormy night. No one is alive on board, but one scared young constable brings out the captain’s log, which describes a harrowing encounter with the monster, and the warning “if it finds you, God help you.”

The title cards also let us know the monster’s identity, noting that the Demeter’s log is from a chapter of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula.”

The script — by Bragi F. Schut (“Escape Room”) and Zak Olkewicz (“Bullet Train”) — jumps back four weeks, when the Demeter is getting set to leave port in the Mediterranean, bound for London. Capt. Eliot (Liam Cunningham) and his first mate, Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), hire some new crew members. The one we’re most interested in is Clemens (Corey Hawkins), who trained as a doctor at Cambridge, but has been unable to find work in a hospital because he’s Black. Clemens only gets hired because another new crew member sees the crates being loaded onto the ship and quits, saying the dragon emblem on them is a bad omen.

So with a crew of nine — 10, if we include Capt. Eliot’s 9-year-old grandson, Toby (Woody Norman) — the Demeter sets off on its voyage. But something doesn’t feel right on board, and the feeling is confirmed when the the ship’s dog and the livestock in the cargo hold suddenly die. Wojchek and the ship’s evangelical cook, Joseph (Jon Jon Briones), think there’s a curse. Clemens, a man of science and reason, looks for another explanation.

In the cargo hold, he finds one of the mysterious crates has opened, and amid the dirt there’s a young woman, Anna (Aisling Franciosi, from “The Nightingale”). Once nursed back to health, thanks to Clemens giving transfusions of his blood, Anna tells the crew that something evil from her home country has boarded the Demeter. And after the crew gets winnowed down to the monster, even Clemens comes to believe it.

Director André Øvredal knows how to deliver jump-scare horror — his previous films “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” and “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” are evidence of this. Here, though, he throttles back on the in-your-face horror, opting instead to build up tension and let it snap in measured doses. 

The movie also takes a page from the old Hammer studio horror films, which relied more on character and acting than shock value. Hawkins (from “In the Heights” and “Straight Outta Compton”) is strong in the central role, though he’s often outpaced by Franciosi’s haunted Anna, Cunningham’s soulful captain, and the working-class brusqueness of Dastmalchian — who, with his roles here and in “Oppenheimer,” “The Boogeyman” and “Boston Strangler,” is having quite a year.

Still, one can imagine how much tension might have been had if the audience didn’t know the monster’s identity from the get-go, if landmarks like “Carfax Abbey” had been placed for us to discover. It would have made “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” a more memorable ride.

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‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 11, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for bloody violence. Running time: 118 minutes.

Review: 'Afire' is a comedy-drama with a tone palette all its own — and another stellar performance from Paula Beer

German director Christian Petzold shows with his new film, “Afire,” that he’s not going to go where you think — though those of us who saw his wartime refugee drama “Transit” or his mermaid tale “Undine” already knew that.

Leon (Thomas Schubert) and his friend, Felix (Langston Uibel), are driving to a cabin near the Baltic Sea for a few days of isolation. Leon is a novelist, trying to put the last touches on his second book before showing it to his publisher, Helmut (Matthias Brandt), who’s expected to visit in a few days. Felix is trying to get into art school, and is supposed to be working on his photography portfolio for his application.

Felix is less interested in working and more interested in hanging out, and going down to the beach — though the beach does inspire his creative juices. Leon, trying to do some writing at the cabin, finds himself creatively blocked, in part because he has a sinking feeling his book isn’t very good.

There’s also the matter of Nadja, played by the extraordinary German actress Paula Beer, who worked with Petzold in both “Transit” and “Undine.” Nadja was staying in the cabin before the guys arrived (the owner, Felix’s mom, forgot that she double-booked), and so Leon is annoyed that he has to share a room with Felix, and is kept awake by Nadja’s boisterous lovemaking with Devid (Enno Trebs), a lifeguard — excuse me, “rescue swimmer” — who works on the beach.

When Devid joins the three for dinner one evening, Leon gets snippy, eye-rolling at the idea of being a professional “rescue swimmer.” Nadja, later, calls him out on his snobbery, leading Leon to apologize for his rudeness and stupidity. This becomes a pattern in their interactions, and Nadja puts up with in in part because she recognizes that Leon is using his boorishness to hide his fears about showing the book to Helmut.

While all this is happening, occasionally they talk about the forest fires that are some 30 kilometers away from the cabin — and whether they might get closer.

Petzold, as writer and director, shows a mastery of tone here, but he keeps the audience off guard by not striking the tone one would expect. Leon’s bad behavior, and his banter with Nadja, has the structure of a comedy, but Petzold plays it so low-key that you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a drama. The way you know it’s not a drama is that, at a certain point, real drama enters the room and hits your heart like a freight train.

The ensemble cast is solid, but Beer — the only woman among the main actors — is naturally a standout. A lesser actress, working with a less assured director, would turn Nadja into a “manic pixie dream girl” character, too offbeat and too perfect to be believable. Nadja has some of those qualities, but Beer makes them feel like part of a complicated, very human character. Beer’s charisma is like a wildfire, bright and hot, but she definitely knows how to control it. 

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‘Afire’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 11, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for sexual content and some intense fire images. Running time: 103 minutes; in German, with subtitles.

Review: 'Jules' puts some good actors in service to a slight but sometimes funny story of an alien landing

A whimsical and slight comedy, “Jules” definitely benefits from a trio of veteran players — led by the always intriguing work of Sir Ben Kingsley.

Kingsley plays Milton Robinson, living a solitary life in a western Pennsylvania town, where his main activity is going to the city council meeting and repeating the same complaints during the public comment period. His wife died a bit ago. His daughter, Denise (Zoe Winters), checks up on him so he takes his meds and so on, but is often exasperated by his stubbornness. His son long ago moved to California, and they have little contact.

One night, Milton is awakened by a clatter in his backyard. He goes out and discovers a flying saucer has crashed into his garden, crushing his azaleas. Out of the ship emerges a small, gray, naked, hairless and genital-free humanoid (played by actor and stuntwoman Jade Quon), who needs help. Milton quickly figures out that the creature likes apples, so he buys a lot of them.

He mentions his new alien friend at the next council meeting, but no one believes him. Another frequent commenter, Joyce (Jane Curtin), even complains to Milton that such talk makes the other commenters look crazy. 

Yet another commenter, Sandy (Harried Sansom Harris), stops by Milton’s house, and meets the alien — and, after a momentary shock, befriends the creature and gives them the name Jules. Joyce starts spying on Milton’s house, and within a short time is part of the tiny conspiracy to help Jules get their spaceship working again. This, they ultimately figure out, involves cats.

Meanwhile, a secret government agency has detected strange energy waves from somewhere in western Pennsylvania, and is starting to close in on Milton.

Director Marc Turtletaub (who made the 2018 drama “Puzzle,” a minor hit at Sundance) and first-time movie screenwriter Gavin Steckler keep the humor in a calm, quiet register, with one off-putting exception that shows us the range of Jules’ powers. The laughs are mild chuckles, never hearty guffaws.

Kingsley deftly modulates his performance to fit the movie’s low-stress vibe. The standout comic performance is — and this is no surprise to anybody who remembers her “Saturday Night Live” days — is Curtin, who finds the rebel hidden under Joyce’s busybody persona. Her unexpected rendition of “Free Bird” is the movie’s biggest laugh, in a movie that could use more of them.

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‘Jules’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 11, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for strong language. Running time: 87 minutes.

Review: 'Shortcomings' is a funny, smart take on Asian identity, and a sharp directing debut for actor Randall Park

On the blurry line between defending one’s ethnic identity and finding one’s own self lies “Shortcomings,” a funny and thoughtful anti-romantic comedy that’s a strong directing debut for actor Randall Park.

Ben, played by Justin H. Min, runs a failing independent movie theater in Berkeley, Calif., and once harbored dreams of being a filmmaker. As a Japanese American movie snob, he’s particularly incensed about Hollywood movies with mostly Asian casts pandering to the worst impulses of rom-com sentimentality. (The movie opens with such a scene, featuring Stephanie Hsu and Ronny Chieng, that’s a diss clearly aimed at “Crazy Rich Asians.”) 

Ben’s girlfriend, Miko (Ally Maki), works with the Asian American film festival that booked that Hollywood product, so the drive home devolves into the latest in a series of arguments the couple has had recently. Another argument starts when Miko finds porn websites on Ben’s laptop, all of them featuring white women — which, Miko argues, shows Ben’s a hypocrite because he always says his preferences are toward Asian women.

Ben’s olher conversation partner is Alice (played by comedian Sherry Cola), a tart-tongued lesbian college student who can’t seem to go two days without falling in love with some attractive woman — such as the waitress at their favorite diner. Alice is also the only person who can successfully call Ben out on his bullcrap, particularly when he talks about Miko. 

Miko soon tells Ben she’s been picked for a three-month internship — which, she says curtly, is a good time to press pause on their relationship. While Miko’s gone, Ben plunges back into the dating scene, first with Autumn (Tavi Gevinson), a performance artist he hired to staff the theater’s box office, and Sasha (Debby Ryan), whom Ben meets at one of Alice’s parties. Yes, both Autumn and Sasha are white, seemingly bolstering Miko’s case for Ben’s hypocrisy. 

Adrian Tomine’s script, based on his graphic novel, is handled as a series of vignettes that depict Ben’s slow unraveling, and the question of whether he’s a misunderstood defender of Asian American integrity (his P.O.V.) or just a self-centered jerk (everyone else’s view). Director Park — best known for playing the dad on “Fresh Off the Boat,” and FBI agent Jimmy Woo in the Marvel franchise — does Tomine’s story proud, generating a ton of laughs and more than a few insights that upend the romantic-comedy cliches.

Min is outstanding as Ben, which will be no surprise to those who caught him in “After Yang” last year. The supporting cast — which includes Jacob Batalon (from the “Spider-Man” movies) and Sonoya Mizuno (who was the bride in “Crazy Rich Asians”) — is stellar, with Cola shining brightest as the frequently lovelorn Alice. Together with Park’s smart direction, they make “Shortcomings” the AAPI-affirming movie Ben himself might have made if he wasn’t so self-absorbed.

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‘Shortcomings’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 4, in theaters. Rated R for language throughout, sexual material and brief nudity.  Running time: 95 minutes.

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This review first appeared on this website on January 23, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.