‘Heart of a Dog’ is experimental in a compelling way

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Heart of a Dog (NR)

Starring Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Archie, Jason Berg, Bob Currie, Jenni Muldaur, Julian Schnabel

Directed by Laurie Anderson

“Experimental Documentary” is a phrase loaded with such negative experiences that to avoid scaring audiences away, film festivals have started using code phrases like “menagerie of sensual stimulation” to describe these docs. This is unnecessary with Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog. On the surface, it’s a story of the profound bond Anderson has with her rat terrier, Lolabelle. However as anyone who shares their lives with a pet already knows, a critter’s life expectancy is much shorter than we humans want it to be. So this rumination of the past 15 years includes its share of loss (even more so, since Anderson’s singer/songwriter husband, Lou Reed, died in 2013), but it also offers a creative, quirky, joyful and very personal appreciation of life.

4 pieces of now for something completely personal toast.

Love the Coopers (PG-13)

Starring John Goodman. Diane Keaton, Olivia Wilde, Ed Helms, Amanda Seyfried, Alan Arkin, Marisa Tomei

Directed by Jessie Nelson

They have been making “family returns home for the holidays” movies for decades, so the template is pretty well established. Mom and dad are still living in the old homestead where rooms are kept as mini-shrines to their children’s former glory days. We drop in on those now grown-up kids as they prepare for the dutiful annual visit to nest around a table and/or tree and revert to their well-practiced, sniping siblings routines. Sometime during the day, the kids will gather out of earshot of their parents for heavy discussions about how the old-folks are “losing it,” and “something needs to be done.” The “somethings” vary in line with each particular child’s own wants and needs. Simultaneously, the parents are huddled together trying to decide when to break “the news” (this time it’s their impending separation/divorce). Each of the kids has a secret (alcoholism/drug use, lost job, financial failure, transfer/deployment far, far away from home, coming out as some form of LGBT, or pregnancy - either another one or the continual struggle to get knocked up). This time, it’s a lost job, shoplifting and bringing a complete stranger picked up at the airport bar home for dinner. You can fill in all the other blanks, and correctly assume that the final egg-nog-fueled scenes will extol the virtues of a loving family. One note, for some reason the movie has the Ed Helms character being completely unlikable and downright mean.

2 1/2 pieces of formulaic holiday fare toast.

The 33 (PG-13)

Starring Antonio Banderas, Cote dePablo, Bob Gunton, Juliette Binoche, Gabriel Byrne

Directed by Patricia Riggen

Anyone who has been underground (and I include Carlsbad Caverns and the Oregon Caves) knows the unsettling feeling of being separated from sunshine and starlight. You probably saw the frantic rescue attempts to save the 33 Chilean miners trapped 2,300 feet down. Possibly because of the pressures from all sides (miners, mine-owners, families, bureaucrats, politicians and journalists) to portray everyone working together to save the miners, this film has become a stylized, formulaic, movie-of-the-week. Apparently, not all of the 33 men deserve more than 30-seconds of screen time, so the film quickly focuses on only a half-dozen of the miners underground and their families up above. The final scene, with the 33 real miners gathered together on a sunny beach, is the most dramatic part of the movie. Too bad. Those guys deserved a much more creative way to tell their story.

2 pieces of formulaic buried underground toast.