I think No Sudden Move might be great. Like, Chinatown great. I’m hedging with the “might be” – one of the worst sins a critic can commit, I suppose – because I’ve only seen Steven Soderbergh’s new noir-inflected heist movie once. As with Chinatown and The Big Sleep, the most famously convoluted noir plot in film history, No Sudden Move’s first half is so opaque as to be frustrating on first viewing. Once things started to click into place, though, especially in the climax and denouement, I began to suspect that a second viewing of the film would pay substantial dividends. Even if that’s not the case, what’s easy to see upon first viewing is Soderbergh’s masterful auteur cinematic style and the flawlessly calibrated performances from the brilliant ensemble cast.
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Director Todd Solondz has a really sick sense of humor. In 2014, he must have laughed heartily when The Hollywood Reporter described his next film as “several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading comfort and joy.” The article doesn’t make clear whether or not Solondz was the one who supplied that synopsis, but I like to imagine a ghoulish grin spreading across his face when he read it. There’s very little comfort to be had in Wiener-Dog, the quasi-sequel to Solondz’s breakout debut film Welcome to the Dollhouse, and almost no joy at all. There are plenty of laughs, though, in the quiet, sardonic chuckle variety.
Solondz is noted for exploring the blackest of comedy through his suburbanite characters, and Wiener-Dog is no exception. The Hollywood Reporter was right in one aspect – the picture consists of four separate vignettes, all linked by a stoic, little lady dachshund who is known by her various temporary owners as Wiener-Dog, Doody, and Cancer. If there is a theme shaping up for the year 2016 in filmmaking, it seems to be cruelty to animals, particularly dogs. The depiction of the wry and stomach-churning fate of little Wiener-Dog/Doody/Cancer makes the dog abuse in The Lobster seem easy to take by comparison. The penultimate scene of Wiener-Dog is a gob-smacking end to a movie that’s one-quarter brilliant, one-quarter inspired, and one-half just above what you might find at a student film festival.
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