A Dog's Purpose

A Dog's Purpose is all about the finding the meaning of life for dogs, yes really. It is based on the book by W Bruce Cameron.

Our canine star is first a homeless puppy on the streets who is caught, taken to the dog pound and euthanised. Nice start. He is then born into a second life where initially it doesn’t look like he’s going to fair much better when a couple of bin men leave him to cook in their vehicle. He is rescued by a young boy called Ethan (Bryce Gheisar) and his mother (Juliet Rylance). It is at their house that our hero, now called Bailey, makes his home despite the reluctance of the boy’s miserable and alcoholic father (Luke Kirby).

With his paws under the table Bailey (voiced by Josh Gad) has a good long life while all the time trying to work out why he’s here and how entertaining he can be with a flat leather football.

Of course his owner Ethan (now played by KJ Apa) has to go and self destruct as people always do in this sort of film. Ethan’s football career goes awry due to injury so he thinks why not make myself even more miserable by sacking my girlfriend, the lovely Hannah (Britt Robertson), for no good reason. Oh go on then. We can always get back together at the end of the film.

Bailey sadly dies of old age and be warned, by the very nature of its plot there's an awful lot of doggie death in this film.

Then Bailey, or whatever he’s called now, is back again and again. Each time as a different breed, sometimes with a different gender but always with the same off-camera voice. He becomes a police dog before being owned by a lonely student, neglected by a young couple and then as a faithful companion to a farmer.

Each rebirth is with decreasing effect, cheesier jokes and shorter storylines. Ultimately this makes the film a complete mish-mash as there is never enough time spent in each of the dogs’ or humans’, not that you'd want to. However, none of this is important because the whole point is to take the dog eventually back to the beginning. 

So eventually he returns to Ethan (now Dennis Quaid), who still has the same flat leather football in his garage, and surprise surprise he is still down on his luck. I might as well spell it out because you will, no doubt, have already gathered what this particular dog’s purpose is. Namely to get Ethan and Hannah (now Peggy Lipton) back together.

Mission accomplished then. Many tears will be shed and not just over such a terrible plot, holding onto your lunch may not be so easy.

A nice idea for a film maybe, but poorly executed and to be honest a bit of an insult to dogs and their owners.

Lady Macbeth

So, our second sex film of the week.

‘Lady Macbeth’ is an adaptation of Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 novel which was itself inspired by Shakespeare’s own Macbeth. It has also been adapted by Shostakovich in 1934 as an opera and by Andrzej Wajda in 1962 as a film. However, nobody has before moved the setting from a bleak Russian landscape to an equally bleak one in the North East of England.

Katherine (Florence Pugh) has been sold by her father as part of a package deal with some land to wealthy mine owner Boris (Christopher Fairbank), who marries her off to his middle-aged son Alexander (Paul Hilton). 

It is an arranged marriage that goes awry right from the off. Alexander, who seems less than enamoured with Katherine, totally fails to understand the concept of the wedding night, preferring to tell his new bride to strip and face the wall while he jerks off rather than consummate the marriage in the traditional way.

It is clear that Boris is in charge and he insists that Katherine is an obedient wife who will remain indoors at all times and isn’t allowed to lift a finger around the house as this is purely the job of the servants. So, she becomes bored very quickly and feels very much a prisoner in the secluded manor house.

When both Boris and Alexander are called away on business, Katherine sets about drinking the wine cellar dry but also takes the opportunity to get out more. At which point she stumbles across the stable hands stringing up the maid (Naomi Ackie) naked in the barn. Despite this, Katherine seems quite taken with one particular stable hand called Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis) who appears to be the instigator the maid’s assault.

Clearly expecting this to have serious consequences for him, I guess he figures he might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb, so later he forces himself into Katherine’s bedroom and then onto her. She resists his advances for all of thirty seconds before submitting enthusiastically and suddenly the marital bed is finally seeing some action but, oh dear, suggesting that women like to be overpowered by forceful men isn’t very PC.

So now Katherine has something to be less gloomy about, not only is she Lady of the Manor by default while her menfolk are away she has sex on tap as well. Until Boris returns.

Not willing to give up her newfound status, a murderous dodgy batch of mushrooms does for Boris but then Alexander returns. He says he knows all about her whoring ways and Katherine doesn’t deny it. In fact, she wheels out Sebastian to give her husband a demonstration first hand. After which things don't end well for Alexander either.

Peace at last or perhaps not. Out of the blue a woman appears with a child she claims is Alexander's, so he did know what to do after all. Oddly Katherine lets them both move in but soon gets fed up of her new lodgers and, if the film wasn't already un-PC enough, she suffocates the child to death.

So, this is no when Katherine met Sebastian romance, and by now he’s starting to realise it and tries to come clean but Katherine will have none of that.

It’s a fascinating film which causes you to rapidly shift allegiances. At first, it's impossible not to sympathize with Katherine, saddled in a life with two horrible older men. Until it becomes clear that Katherine is just as heartless once she gains a position of power, to the extent that she betrays the very servants she once had sympathy for.

Excellent stuff and Florence Pugh makes a magnificent psychopath.