SHEPHERD: The Story of a Jewish Dog
JDog Films
Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten
Director: Lynn Roth
Writer: Lynn Roth, Based on Asher Kravitz’s novel “The Jewish Dog”
Cast: August Maturo, Ken Duken, Ayelet Zurer, Ádám Porogi, Viktória Stefanovszky
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 5/21/21
Opens: May 28, 2021

If you have even been owned by a dog or two, if you have felt the reciprocal love that comes from this lucky break, prepare to shed a tear. “Shepherd: The Story of a Jewish Dog,” tells of the separation and the ultimate reunion of a 12-year-old boy Joshua (August Maturo) and his German Shepherd Caleb (Hebrew for “dog” also connoting “as if it understands”). But if you are the kind of person who, when told by a friend that her dog got lost, or died, and you respond, “So what? It’s a dog and you can get another,” you might miss the emotional impact evoked in this film or, who knows…you might see and feel the tragedy when dog and human are separated.

The idea of a Jewish dog may be ironic, or maybe not, but in any case Lynn Roth, who directs and co-wrote, adapted Israeli Asher Kravitz’s novel “The Jewish Dog” translated into English by Michal Kessler, which on Amazon states that it is meant for people fourteen years of age and up. It is, I believe, meant for the entire family, if you overlook its basic simplicity (meant as a compliment because it is kid-friendly) and the fact that everyone speaks good English—the Germans played largely by Hungarians, the folks playing Yugoslav partisans, and to a lesser extent the American actors.

Surveys have found that forty percent of Americans have no idea what the Holocaust was all about, certainly true of the “Proud Boys” and Oath Keepers who are sure that it was all made up by Jews who pushed for the creation of Israel, and who spread the fake news via the “worldwide Jewish control of the media.” There is a direct line from the movie “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” and “Life is Beautiful,” made largely for teens, so you don’t have to worry that your adolescent girls and boys will hear any curse word stronger than the “damn,” or that any dog would have the bad manners to pee and poop for the camera, or even to sniff another canine butt. But you will see the phenomenal brutality of the Nazis save for one guy, Ralph (Ken Duken), who adopts “Shepherd” with the job of chasing runaway Jews, calls him “Blitz,” and gives him love. Never mind that he is ready to kill young Joshua, a resident of the Treblinka concentration camp, for stealing crumbs meant for the camp animals.

The tale opens on the Berlin of 1935 when Jews are increasingly oppressed by signs on stores “No Jews allowed.” Joshua’s mother Shoshonna (Ayelet Zurer) and father Samuel (Ádám Porogi) break the news that Jews have been forbidden to have pets and that all their dogs were impounded. Shepherd is adopted first by the housekeeper’s husband Frank (Miklós Kapácsy), who calls him “Wilhelm,” and is henpecked by his mean wife Greta (Lois Robbins) who uses the opportunity to tell Frank how worthless he is.

Shepherd runs away, finds his way home, sees that his family is missing, and is caught on the street by the dogcatchers. In short order, he’s chosen by Nazi Ralph (Ken Duken) who now tells the dog his name is Blitz. Blitz is so brilliant that he learns to give the Heil Hitler salute, ingratiating him with the German officer corps who assign Ralph the job of training him to cut down anyone wearing a yellow star.

Life as shown in the Treblinka barracks is neither “Stalag 17” nor “Escape from Sobibor.” Little Joshua is assigned to feed the camp’s ducks, chickens, pigs and dogs, at which time Shepherd/Wilhelm/Blitz excitedly sees the boy and Joshua excitedly sees “Shepherd/Wilhelm/Blitz. The rest follows the tenets of historical fiction, though the movie ends before the book does so we do not see the death of the dog or Joshua.

The key conversation in this film takes place early on, as Joshua’s family tries to sell Caleb in the park. They are confronted by a potential sale, but the interested gentleman takes a pass because he cannot get the dog’s papers and therefore may not be pure. Call this a subtle dig at the show dog world, but more important, the passerby has internalized the absurd idea of the purity of blood. As sixty percent of Americans know, Jews, gypsies, even Jehovah’s Witnesses went to death camps because of the so-called impurity of their red stuff in a film which avoids graphic scenes like prisoners hanging (though a few get electrocuted on the camp fence, but that’s a distant shot).

This is a compelling enough movie, an effective Holocaust 101 course, entertaining enough for the big fry and likely absorbing the teens and prepubescent. The show’s star, the title character, is uncredited in the IMDB may be played by more than one dog.

93 minutes. © 2021 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – B
Acting – B
Technical – B+
Overall – B

UTAMA (Our House)

Kino Lorber
Reviewed for FilmFactual.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten
Director: Alejandro Loayza Grisi
Screenwriter: Alejandro Loaya Grisi
Cast: José Calcina, Luisa Quispe, Santos Choque
Screened at: Critics’ Link, NYC, 10/6/22
Opens: November 4, 2022 in New York’s Film Forum

Nowadays in the U.S., people are divided between those who like Republicans and others who favor Democrats. That’s not the only split. Folks are either owners of iPhones who spend their leisure time on the sidewalks buried in their messages or others who think (as I do) that the mostly youthful people should spend more of their time appreciating the beauty around them. On the other hand, there may be millions who do without iPhones, carrying on with the traditional trades of their ancestors. Similarly, in “Utama,” there are young Bolivians who are tech savvy and prefer to live in cities like La Paz and Sucre, and others who prefer to farm on the countryside. The major theme of the Bolivian entry to our Oscar competition is this: should grandpa listen to his grandson and leave his desolate rural home in favor of moving to the city, or should he obey his own heart and stay where he is—without electricity or running water—herding his llamas as his ancestors have done.

In one of his movies, American comedian Chevy Chase was asked what he did for a living. “Shepherd,” he replied, a response meant to be a joke (albeit a lame one), because in highly industrialized U.S., would such a category exist? Now director Alejandro Loayza Grisi, in his freshman film, wants to show you just how different a place can be when a shepherd, or in this case one a llama-herd, would be far from anything you’d see in the States. That’s just what is there for us to appreciate in “Utama,” which is Aymara for “our house.”

It’s not the kind of house that any of us would live in or aspire to, yet inside a shack on a part of a mountain 12,000 feet above sea level reside Virginio (José Calcina) and his wife Sisa (Luisa Quispe). They are old people, yet they are far from retired. In the parched area that had seen no rain in ages where there is no water in the couple’s local well, Sisa’s job is to trudge with a couple of buckets to a lake that seems like a mirage—that’s how out of place it looks—and fetch. Meanwhile Virginio grazes the llamas, though the poor flock of animals seem to have nothing growing to eat, but there’s enough to drink. (By the way llama farming exists in the U.S., a lucrative trade as the animals are used for making wool clothing of a material that contains no lanolin and therefore causes no itch.)

Their young grandson Clever (Santos Choque) is a city cat who visits from La Paz and occasionally looks at his iPhone, trying to encourage the old man to leave the hell-hole habitation and go with him to the city, especially since his chronic cough means he may need medical care. But the elderly guy simply will not move, and he will not go to a hospital in La Paz to die. Really, though, the countryside people, who look out for each other, would probably refuse to leave as well, given their camaraderie. Clever speaks Spanish, Virginio and Sisa speak Quechua. The rurals and the urbans do not have even the same language, which could be true in the U.S. as well, given the hostility of the Red states and the Blue states.

Barbara Alvarez photographs the beauty of the area, the endless plains and the morning sun, in a country that should beckon travel-happy Americans whose South American tourism may be limited to Brazil and Argentina. The principal actors had to be convinced to take part, and Calcina and Quispe do quite a good job of expressing themselves without the extensive training that professional actors go through. If there were an Oscar for ensemble acting, the llamas would walk away with it, a dignified looking bunch of animals except for the unfortunate one that gets sacrificed so that the gods who reign will produce rain. (They do.)

Bolivia’s entry to the Oscar competition is in Quechua and Spanish with English subtitles.

87 minutes. © 2022 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – B+
Acting – B+
Technical – A-
Overall – B+

THE QUEST FOR SLEEP

Abramorama and Osmosis Films
Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten
Director: Rachel Mills
Screenwriter: Josh Adler
Cast: Olivia Spencer (narrator); Andre Iguodala, Emma Coburn, Rick Lynch, Dayna A. Johnson, Meeta Singh, Michael Grandner
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 4/12/22
Opens: March 16, 2022

We may not be a nation of shepherds, but a lot of sheep are being counted in our country, and the wooly animals are not doing much good. Many of us are getting by on four hours sleep, although getting by is an exaggeration. Some of the folks discussing their sleep problems in director Rachel Mills’s “The Quest for Sleep” are fully aware of the dangers they are creating for themselves and others, particularly by falling asleep at the wheel. And college students, under great pressure to succeed in our competitive society, may pull all-night study sessions, not taking the advice of one professional in this documentary; that sleep consolidates memory and that presumably if you get your eight hours before the test and have prepared days in advance, you’re more likely to score high.

One of the director’s previous contributions, “The Magnitudinous Illuminous,” is about a 66-year-old bartender-philosopher in Brooklyn who would give his customers lessons on how to live a creative life, but she may have fallen asleep after filming for twelve minutes. This time Mills is up to seventy-three minutes, knocking out a doc that some viewers will itself consider a remedy for insomnia—especially if they do not manage to complete the watch. Others (like me) may note that there’s nothing in this soporific documentary that you don’t already know if you were as interested in the science of sleep to choose to attend this movie, though there are cool picture of the brain where things are going on—in most people.

The principal gem of wisdom that overlooks the project is this: that human beings like other animals need three things in life: oxygen, food, and the “s” word. Sleep. As the talking heads note, that you simply cannot do a competent job if you consistently enjoy fewer than six hours, which may explain the problems facing this country under the leadership of a man whose mornings were taken up with watching “Fox and his Friends.” (This point is not made in the doc, for some reason. Must have slipped the mind of the creative people like writer Josh Adler.)

So we hear from a military man, a night club singer who tries to stay aware enough to keep his day job; a beautician who notes that it doesn’t matter how well she does women’s hair, that it’s her relationship with customers; and a fellow who moved to Costa Rica, married a local, and works on wind tunnels when he’s not feeding the adopted dogs.

The usual solutions are listed. Meditation (but not yoga?); turning the lights down when you’re ready for bedtime and putting them back up when you arise; drugs, include caffeine drinks, which may cause dependency and solve the insomnia problem only sometimes.

There’s not a helluva lot of enlightenment here and what’s more, the intrusive, tinkling music that seeks to drown out the performers’ words of wisdom can drive some viewers crazy. Is this movie a concert or a treatise on the zzzzs? The movie premiered as a live Facebook performance on March 16th.

73 minutes. © 2022 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – C
Acting – B
Technical – B
Overall – C+

THE CARD COUNTER

Focus Features
Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten
Director: Paul Schrader
Screenwriter: Paul Schrader
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, Willem Dafoe
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 12/4/21
Opens: September 10, 2021. September 30, 2021 streaming.

If you’ve ever had to pay a price for something you did while the person above you who coaxed you to do it gets away, you will empathize and sympathize with the plight of William Tillich (Oscar Isaac). Tillich’s plight is told in “The Card Counter,” directed by Paul Schrader, known for such films as “American Gigolo” (1980) about a Los Angeles escort catering to rich, older women, who is arrested for a murder he did not commit.

Tillich, who goes by the name William Tell, served in the infamous division in Abu Graib prison in Iraq, where American soldiers went beyond what is normally acceptable using the technique of enhanced interrogation.” To gain information from alleged terrorists which would presumably save American lives, the torturers would kick prisoners, waterboard them, sic German Shepherds on them (the Arabic culture does not look kindly on dogs), strip them for presentation to women soldiers. He was trained by Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe). When the press got hold of the procedures, showing ghastly pictures to the American public, the army cracked down (as though the perps were not directed to do this), and the public was shocked by the degradation and corruption. Tillich was arrested and sent to Leavenworth Prison for eight and one-half years, while his superiors, who ordered the violence, went scotfree.

During his time in a prison, which seems from this film to be not so bad—a clean private cell for each convict—he learns to like reading for the first time and trains himself to count cards. The latter skill would allow him to profit, to make a good living, in fact, by traveling the casino circuit playing blackjack against the house and poker against the competitors. He meets people who will change his life: La Linda (Tiffany Haddish) who wants to introduce him to a stable of poker tournament people who will bank his bets for a fifty percent cut; and Cirk Baufort (Tye Sheridan), a younger man who would hang out with the card counter and whose mounting debt and estrangement from his mother would lead the title character to redeem himself by helping the innocent kid.

Oscar Isaac plays Tillich with a quiet voice, a good looking fellow who raises his fists and his voice in Abu Ghraib and once again in a domestic scene, but throughout “The Card Counter” shows him to be a man who detests violence. (This will not last.) We hear several narrations of his thoughts, which tell us much about his mind set since, after all, movies are not as good as book in that respect. A noirish movie, with most scenes in dark nights and basic motels, “The Card Counter” will suit an audience that prefers high melodrama to be a small segment of a story and which concentrates more on the inner workings of its characters than on plot.

There really are people in the real world who would sacrifice almost everything to relieve their guilt, so Tillich stands in for the sort of person who is willing to give up the pleasures of life because of a high degree of morality. A serious, well-acted story, Dostoevkien if you will.

110 minutes. © 2021 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – B
Acting – B+
Technical – B
Overall – B

FIRE WILL COME (O Que Arde)
Kimstim
Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten
Director: Oliver Laxe
Screenwriter: Santiago Fillol, Oliver Laxe
Cast: Amador Arias, Benedicta Sánchez, Inazio Abrao, Elena Mar Fernández, David de Poso, Alvaro de Bazal, Damián Prado
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 3/3/20
Opens: October 30, 2020

If you are a dedicated film goer especially one who attends highbrow film festivals like NYFF, you might compare Oliver Laxe to Terrence Malick. Malick’s movies, e.g. “Tree of Life” which is about a young man struggling through conflicting parental teachings, have sometimes been compared with watching paint dry. Laxe, who was born in Paris and filmed “Fire With Come” in northwest Spain in a rural area near Lugo, may informally compete this year for directing the most glacially-paced picture. Glaciers notwithstanding, “Fire Will Come” features the hottest, real blazes you are likely to see in the movies this year. The film, which is surely not plot-centered, is not even character-focused but more to the point is nature-dominated. Forest scenes involve three cows, each with its own name, led around the woods to graze, Amador (Amador Arias) leading the pack of three bovine creatures, his German Shepherd Luna bringing up the rear. Laxe, in his third feature following up his movie “Mimosas” (a dying Sheikh wanders about the the Atlas Mountains), wants us to feel the rhythms of rural life a few hundred miles from bustling Barcelona but so apart in culture you might think he is directing on Pluto.

There is but one melodramatic moment involving human beings in a picture that is not unlike last year’s “Honeyland,” about the last female beekeeper in Europe struggling to defend her turf against some competing beekeepers who are vulgar and pushy. The strongest relationship in “O Que Arde,” which is in the Galician language with similarities to Portuguese, is between Amador and his aging mother Benedicta (Benedicta Sánchez). The other melodramatic moments open the film after a long, blank-screen pause, featuring machines blazing through the forest cutting down large trees as though the construction workers are Brazilians ruining the rain forest to make room for animal grazing.

With the principal actors bearing their actual names throughout the film, we get the impression that the fictional aspects of the story are closely based on real events. Amador has just returned to town after a two-year stint in prison for starting a fire. Though a pyromaniac who is looked upon with fear and loathing by the villagers, Amador conveys the impression that he is a simple farmer whose capital goods are three cows that give milk to support him and his mother. Still, the people of the town who are at all close to the small family, are eager to learn about Amador’s health, while a veterinarian who visits to treat a cow backs away from an invitation to share a drink because she is “busy.”

The image that stays with me is that of Amador’s dealing with a reluctant cow, something like my late terriers who loved to challenge their human companion by refusing to move. Amador pulls and tugs, but simply cannot prevail against a huge animal going on strike after producing milk and gaining no particular reward save for the free grass. The unappreciative cow should thank whatever diety he or she favors for living a life out in the open and avoiding obesity as the cow is not forced to eat corn.

You won’t discover Stephen Colbert’s wit in Amador’s conversations with his mama, but if you want to know why one fella in the musical “Tuscaloosa” prefers New York to a small town, you might come away from this movie happy to live in a teeming city with all of its chaos and to visit the outskirts of Lugo for six hours at most.

86 minutes. © 2020 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – C
Acting – B
Technical – B+
Overall – B-