Time Saver Usually when people make movies they do that for a specific reason. To entertain, to tell a tale, to make a point. This movie has none of those.Although labeled a comedy, not one scene in this movie is funny or even amusing. On the contrary, the majority of scenes are sad, dull and even disturbing. Not only that this movie isn't about dogs; this movie even isn't about the people. There is no specific story or plot, as if the scenes are randomly piled upon each other, giving the impression that something is going on but nothing actually happens.In the end, one would think that there should be an epilogue or any kind of explanation for this confusing story. There isn't. Except in case that the director's idea was actually to put the audience into a state of deep depression and psychosis.This is truly a sad and deranged creation and shouldn't even be called a movie.

D_Burke "Year of the Dog" is a quirky yet poignant comedy. It's not memorable for its laugh-out-loud moments (the few there are), but more for Molly Shannon's terrific and seemingly effortless performance as a woman who has spent her whole life trying to please everyone around her. It's when she finds a cause she believes in that she gradually learns that it's impossible to please herself and everyone else.Shannon is Peggy, a single, milquetoast, unassuming office worker who lives a quiet existence with her dog. You see from the beginning of the film that she has acquaintances, not friends. The camera shows people talking to her in the direct center of the shot, and therefore her eyesight. When the camera cuts back to Peggy, you normally see her just politely smiling and nodding, not responding.Peggy does not seem to mind this style of living. It's only when her dog dies of apparent ingestion of rat poisoning that her life spins out of control.You see Shannon crying a lot during these scenes, and she's very believable. Any person who has ever had a dog for a pet can understand how heartbreaking it is to move on from such a tragedy.From there, the story progresses well as Peggy finds herself going on a date with slovenly next door neighbor Al (John C. Reilly), only to find an open bag of rat poison in his garage that look like a dog went through it. She then gets to know Newt (Peter Sarsgaard), an animal shelter worker who keeps three misfit dogs at his home because he didn't want them to be put down. One of those dogs, by the way, rendered a smaller dog paralyzed. He, however, just doesn't want to see another dog die.Peggy apparently agrees, and begins a self-administered quest to live a vegan life. She brings vegan cupcakes into her office, has fellow workers sign petitions to ban lab testing, and even adopts every dog that is to be put down at her local pound.This film tells very little, and shows a lot, which gives it a lot of depth. The camera shots that represents Peggy's vantage points work amazingly well, considering how simple they really are. When Peggy, while at Newt's house, silently ponders photographs of Newt, one where he is with a woman, and one where he is with a man, no words really need to express what she is thinking. After all, the audience wonders the same thing.You also really feel for Shannon as her well-meaning acquaintances (Laura Dern, Regina King) gradually react to her newfound poli-social stance as if she's on drugs. You also understand the feelings of those who are not quite as sympathetic, such as her boss Robin (Josh Pais).In fact, Pais plays this role with a permanent sneer on his face, as if he's smelling something awful throughout the entire movie. He's one of those actors whose name is not well known, but you've seen him in other things. Still, after seeing this film, you will not be able to get his facial expression out of your memory.The extremes to which Shannon's character goes to protect as many animals as possible are just that: extreme. You can't help but feel for her as she tries to do as many right things as she can, only to find her life falling apart around her. The tragic irony surrounding this film is that she's not an alcoholic or a drug addict, but suffers similar consequences as a result of adopting too many dogs at one point.Of course, you don't blame her for wanting to save those dogs. After all, I'm a dog lover, and I hate to think about dogs dying simply because no one has adopted them. Then again, one dog is a responsibility, and the pet population, as you've probably heard Bob Barker say, needs to be controlled.The film does well balancing the empathetic with the slightly insane, as screenwriter Mike White tends to do with his more independent films ("Chuck and Buck" (2000), "The Good Girl" (2002)). White makes his feature directorial debut with this movie, and provides a great story with images that tell more than most CGI special effects. Even if you don't like dogs, you can't put this film down.

johnnyboyz Year of the Dog is another one of those films attempting to get under the skin of the notion that comedy and one's potential to fall into madness, at least cinematically, are closer than you initially think. As a matter of opinion, comedy and madness, or the idea that a character can loose control of their surroundings after having existed within the realms they occupied for so long, can indeed go hand in hand; they can play out in a balanced fashion, particularly when there's something especially biting or satirical about it, resulting in pieces from recent years along the lines of Verbinski's The Weather Man or Harron's American Psycho. Take this, and sprinkle in a little bit of sub-text to do with contemporary suburban America and the oddballs one would seemingly encounter within such an environment, and you have what people like to describe as an "off beat" film trying to cover some serious ground, albeit getting tangled up somewhat in the process.Year of the Dog's lead is Molly Shannon's Peggy, a middle aged American woman living alone in a nice American neighbourhood, on a nice estate, in a decent house and with her pride and joy in the form of her pet dog she names Pencil. To say she loves Pencil understates things somewhat; she all of adorns him, lavishing attention on the thing no end – even allowing it to sleep with her on her bed come the nighttime which, to some, would be the beginnings of madness before all the strife has really begun. The pair of them are so attuned to one another, and she to the species in general, that during walks in the park, Peggy cannot help but stare lovingly at all the other pooches owned by all the other people doing as she does now, while Pencil is even granted some brief screen time of his own when he agonisingly watches her back out of the driveway to get to work thus, he is tragically left all be himself. Peggy's life is what it is: single, but more than happy with her pet. Where her boss has his work and Peggy's brother Pier (McCarthy), plus his wife Bret (Dern), have their very young children, Peggy has her dog.Her boss is Robin (Pais), a largely inanimate gentleman with a reservedly cold tone. He outlines certain harsh realities in his office that morning at work, the background of his composition busy with a motorway in the distance plus traffic charging in either direction; hers, in comparison, is the rest of the office: a stilted and quieter set of items on show highlighting respective positions in life as specific facts broadly linked to ability and qualifications are mercilessly outlined. Her work colleague is the busier Layla (King), an African-American woman with a penchant for films; a cheating partner and some pretty lousy advice for our heroine when things get tougher later on. Those things arrive when poor Pencil dies, a mysterious death at a relatively young age when he is heard yelping and yapping one summer's morning out in a neighbour's back garden. It is Al's (Reilly) garden in which Pencil is found, dialogue with the man revealing he too lost a dog when he was very young and helped combat it by maintaining an interest in hunting. Briefly, the film' hypothesis rears up and it is no mystery as to why the scenes with Al work as well as they do, with this idea of grief, and ways in which to deal with grief, simmering beneath a surface while never fully blooming out into a constructed whole.What follows is a film essentially showing to us why it is that, at least socially, our Peggy could never quite hit it off with humans and found such solace with animals. She comes to occupy lonely places peppered with bright hues of colour; breaks at work scored with music you'd more than likely hear rolling out over a baby's crib as a parent attempts to get them to fall asleep, very much instilling a certain child-like sensibility about her. We observe Peggy effectively begin her life anew, the death of Pencil the upsetting of the established norm and systematically launching her out onto a slide downwards in psychological well-being when she is forced from beginning again at the bottom in acquiring a new dog and rebuilding. Trips to family members Bret and Pier feel unnecessary; the mutual affiliation she has with Newt (Sarsgaard), a pound working animal specialist, are tied up in there somewhere while a sub-plot to do with co-worker Layla's man having an affair known only to Peggy is dropped in for good measure.On the overly positive side, Shannon does well to carry the film; doing so with that look about her face, that expression which constantly suggests a deeper, more unremitting sense of tragedy and pain beneath an exterior which you could be told is one of a joyous person, and yet still be moved to ask questions. She has something going about her alluding to stark emotion just waiting to explode out of her that has, so far, been repressed. Things connect and link up with one another uneasily in Year of the Dog, and the electricity is only sporadic in its arriving to the forefront; the idea of the grief and confusion born out of the death of a pet not working quite so well as other ideas did in the aforementioned examples, but making for a film straddling a line between blackly comedic urban drama and a flat-out tragedy asking us to just break down at get seriously upset. Over it looms the ghost of Jeunet's 2001 film Amélie, and while at times its politically imbued content gets the better of it, often forcing it to come across as a Vegan convert video or a self-aware animal rights promotional film, it holds up its end neatly enough.

kbdbabeb This movie goes absolutely nowhere in an hour and a half. No substance at all. Do you really think after making a movie like this and then watching it that everyone involved actually thought they made a decent movie. Blah! If i had paid for this I definitely would have asked for my money back.No imagination ruins this movie from the beginning. A dog dies and that is the most exciting part of the movie. Then you get watch an hour of mindless acting.Just when you thought something might happen that would add to the story it died just like the dog. How people can rate this movie high must have been high.