Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 4 March

A Dog’s Way Home (Smith, 2019)

So the Oscars happened and I can barely recall any­thing about them. Checking my notes, though, I real­ise there was one thing that I wanted to say in my chat with Emile Donovan last night that I didn’t get to and that was the unusu­al (to me) state­ment by host Julianne Hough at the end of the red car­pet seg­ment – she made a point of acknow­ledging that the cere­mony was being held on indi­gen­ous land (much like the Welcome to Country that you get at most Australian events these days):

We gath­er in cel­eb­ra­tion of the Oscars on the ances­tral lands of the Tongva, Tataviam and Chumash peoples, the tra­di­tion­al care­takers of this water and land. We hon­or and pay our respects to indi­gen­ous com­munit­ies here and around the world.

In the cur­rent envir­on­ment this sort of thing is very wel­come but, of course, not every­one sees it that way. This art­icle on the FoxNews lists some of the backlash.

Anyway, I’ll take my pos­it­ives where I can find them.

Last week had plenty of tough watches – yay for No Other Land win­ning the fea­ture doc­u­ment­ary Oscar yes­ter­day – so I’m going to be a bit gentler on myself, and you, this week.

A Dog’s Way Home isn’t a per­fect movie, by any means, but it will make you feel good. I reviewed it for RNZ Widescreen back in 2019:

Bella is res­cued as a puppy from an evil prop­erty developer who wants to demol­ish some old house without ensur­ing that the stray anim­als who live beneath are safely re-homed. Bella’s own­er, Lucas (English act­or Jonah Hauer-King), works at the loc­al veteran’s hos­pit­al where his moth­er (Ashley Judd) is an out-patient. Bella is a bois­ter­ous and lov­ing puppy but not all that wel­come in the neigh­bour­hood as the evil prop­erty developer leans on the anim­al con­trol author­it­ies to take revenge on Lucas for thwart­ing his con­domin­i­um plans.

Falsely labelled a pit bull, Bella is packed off to Lucas’ girlfriend’s par­ents in New Mexico to escape a fate worse than death. Actually, a fate exactly like death.

Not real­ising that she was in exile for her own good, Bella soon escapes and tries to get home to Denver – roughly 400 scen­ic miles – and on her nearly three-year jour­ney she meets mul­tiple pro­spect­ive new human own­ers and she man­ages to raise a cou­gar kit­ten whose own moth­er has been shot by hunters.

Designed by NASA sci­ent­ists to push all the rel­ev­ant emo­tion­al but­tons in adults and chil­dren, occa­sion­ally A Dog’s Way Home man­ages to break through with some­thing lovely and real (espe­cially the focus on the vet­er­ans trauma), but mostly it is let down by the digit­al manip­u­la­tion of the oth­er anim­als and the cine­mat­ic manip­u­la­tion of its audi­ence. You will feel things, but you will also feel as if you are being taken for a ride. But some­times that’s just what you need.

Also in the cast is the great Edward James Olmos as the home­less vet­er­an Axel.

Where to watch A Dog’s Way Home

Aotearoa: Streaming on ThreeNow (free with ads)

Australia: Streaming on Binge, FoxtelNow or Stan

Canada: Streaming on Netflix or Starz

Ireland & UK: Digital rental

India: Streaming on Netflix

USA: Streaming on Fubo or FXNow (free with cable TV provider)