#TIFF19 Going to the dogs, cats and bunny rabbits
Movies: #TIFF19
Animals may only occupy the frame for a few moments at at time, but their presence can define an entire character and slant audience reaction in subconscious ways. Critic Katherine Monk does a head count of the creatures great and small appearing at TIFF19.
Secret Life of Pets 2 regurgitates comic hairballs
Movie review: The Secret Life of Pets 2
Like its predecessor, The Secret Life of Pets 2 proves the people at Illumination Animation pay attention to animal behaviour. So if this collection feels more like a random string of events pulled from strange places, we can find a way to forgive the mess, and love it anyway.
The Biggest Little Farm reclaims a barren landscape with love, labour, and loss
Movie Review: The Biggest Little Farm
When a California couple traded in their Santa Monica lifestyle for an abandoned apricot and avocado orchard, they thought Mother Nature might lend a helping hand. Yet every success brought a new pest, until they found a way to resurrect what industrialized farming ploughed under.
John Wick 3: Parabellum keeps the puppy love alive
Movie Review: John Wick 3 - Parabellum
John Wick may not wax eloquent, but he can fire up a storm in this continuing action saga that lets Keanu Reeves do what he does best: say little, bring elegance to action sequences and create chemistry with cute canines.
Dog Days lifts a leg on Hollywood hydrant
Movie review: Dog Days
A fluffy version of Crash for canines features the lives and leashes of various Angelenos intertwining, without once pausing to smell its own assumptions.
Boundaries Refuses to Keep Its Distance
Movie Review: Boundaries
Shana Feste smashes a piñata full of dysfunctional family cliche and finds enough sweet stuff to keep Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer busy on the road to forgiveness.
Isle of Dogs Marks Wes Anderson’s Territory
Movie review: Isle of Dogs
There’s the heavy sigh of melancholy that defines Anderson’s whole oeuvre in this second stop-motion piece of animation, but as it howls at the loss of childhood innocence, it also recreates a little chunk of magic by hand.
Dog by Dog points a paw at AKC
New doc exposes dogs as cash crop
The American Kennel Club, big agri-business and -- surprise! -- the Amish emerge as chief enemies of the humble and lovable canine in a new documentary aimed at changing how the consumer purchases a pet.
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER – It’s enough to make you burn your VHS tape of Witness and boycott the Westminster Dog show, because according to a new documentary film, the Amish of Pennsylvania and the American Kennel Club resist efforts to curb puppy mills.
“It’s about money. Dogs are a cash crop” says Christopher Grimes, the director behind Dog by Dog, a feature documentary airing on PBS later this year.
“Papering dogs is a big part of the American Kennel Club’s budget… and for the Amish, they will do what is most profitable, and right now, they can get $3000 for one puppy. They have no other commodity that they are raising that can command the same price.”
On the surface, there’s nothing inherently ...
