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      ‘Dog Gone’ Review: He Let the Dog Out

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      In this Netflix family movie, based on a true story, a yellow Lab disappears on the Appalachian Trail, and Rob Lowe is tasked with finding him.“Dog Gone,” a family flick that offers as much nutrition as a rubber bone, follows the true-life misadventures of a yellow Lab named Gonker in the 1990s. Adopted by a bohemian college senior, Fielding Marshall (Johnny Berchtold), whose irresponsibility is telegraphed by a wardrobe of tie-dye shirts and an accusation that he reeks of patchouli, the pup spends his youth lapping from beer bongs before he’s haplessly unleashed on the Appalachian Trail and disappears.The dramatic conceit is that this is a tale about two lost souls: the slacker, who begrudgingly comes to respect his uptight father (Rob Lowe) as they walk the trail handing out missing-dog fliers, and the dog, whom the veteran director Stephen Herek (“Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”) films tiptoeing through the woods under rumbling storm clouds. Give the dog a wig of blond ringlets and he could do a passable lampoon of Lillian Gish.Nick Santora’s screenplay is a loose adaptation of the author Pauls Toutonghi’s nonfiction account of the 1998 search. (Toutonghi married into the Marshall family, making Gonker his pet-in-law.) The film makes an unconvincing attempt to update its quest to the present. Fielding and his ’90s peers are reconfigured into anticapitalist mouthpieces for Gen Z; his mother (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) endures a patronizing arc about learning to use the internet while suffering clumsy flashbacks to her childhood Akita.Even viewers with a tolerance for this kind of saccharine cinema — oversaturated green grass, slow-motion sprinting, kindly biker gangs, and a fleeting bar squabble in which the nastiest insult is “Idiot!” — will likely say their favorite part is the end credits, which feature photos of the cast and crew members with their own dogs (and, yes, three cats).Dog GoneNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      How the Creators of ‘M3gan’ Designed the Doll’s Costumes

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      The titular star of the horror film “M3gan,” released last week, had to try on several outfits before finding a signature look.A doll’s clothes can be as memorable as any worn by a human, especially if that doll has a taste for blood.Talky Tina, the demonic toy made famous by “The Twilight Zone,” had her plaid dress with a dainty lace-trimmed collar. Annabelle, the sinister doll that first appeared in “The Conjuring,” has her white gown with leg-of-mutton sleeves. And even those who have not seen “Child’s Play” (or its sequels) probably know of Chucky and his blue overalls.The titular star of the horror film “M3gan” stands to be another murderous doll recognized for a killer outfit. Not least because M3gan, whose name is pronounced like Megan, for most of the film wears a striped, silk twill scarf tied in a pussy bow — a sartorial choice that tends to elicit strong reactions.M3gan, which stands for Model 3 Generative Android, is a life-size artificially intelligent doll designed to provide companionship and emotional support — until a programming glitch turns her into a Terminator-esque killing machine. There are parts of the film where the doll is played by a high-tech puppet, but in most scenes, M3gan is played by the actress Amie Donald, 12, wearing a mask.M3gan, who has wide eyes with long dark lashes and dirty blonde hair that falls below her shoulders, wears the pussy-bow scarf with an inverted-pleat shift dress layered over a striped long-sleeve shirt, white stockings and shiny black Mary Janes. Gerard Johnstone, the director of “M3gan,” described the doll as having clothes that evoke the mod fashion of the 1960s and “long, flowing hair” like the “Mod Squad” actress Peggy Lipton.“I wanted her to be classy and elegant and unexpected, almost like the toy equivalent of those automotive shows from the ’60s, where the car would appear on the turntable and everyone’s minds would be blown,” Mr. Johnstone said.Three of the possible outfits for M3gan that ended up on the dressing room floor. Universal PicturesThe film’s original script, written by Akela Cooper, only referenced M3gan wearing children’s clothes, Mr. Johnstone said. Putting her in a loose-hanging shift dress was both a stylistic and practical decision.“M3gan has to move quickly and unencumbered. She’s got to run on all fours. She’s going to attack people,” he said. “With the shift dress, I could see the possibilities.”About 25 versions of the dress were produced by the film’s costume and wardrobe department. “They lasted through all of the dancing, all of the killing,” said Daniel Cruden, the film’s costume designer. Lizzy Gardiner, an Oscar-winning costume designer who created M3gan’s main outfit with Mr. Johnstone, said the pussy-bow scarf was also painstakingly reproduced.“We needed so many perfect replicas that each one had to be cut and hand sewn with the stripe in the silk in exactly the same place,” she wrote in an email. “It needed to be fluid without being bouncy. Large but consistent with a young, tiny girl. Doll-like but fashion forward.”While developing M3gan’s wardrobe, many other possible outfits ended up on the dressing room floor. “Initially I wanted her to have a bunch,” Mr. Johnstone said. But by giving her a signature look, “that one costume can be really the focus,” he added. “People could dress up as her for Halloween.”Dressing M3gan in a shift dress was as much a stylistic as a practical decision. “She’s got to run on all fours,” Mr. Johnstone said. “She’s going to attack people.”Universal PicturesWhere did you look for inspiration for M3gan’s clothes?GERARD JOHNSTONE I was on Pinterest every night looking at fashion, trying to figure it out. Originally it was just me and my wife, for a female perspective. I kept going back to the ’60s because of the detailing and the fabrics. Everything was so rich. And Gucci kids’ dresses ended up being a big inspiration. I loved a yellow one with red ribbons that I saw online, but we couldn’t physically get our hands on it.If Gucci was such an inspiration why isn’t M3gan wearing the label?JOHNSTONE I wondered if we could get them on board. But you have to get approval and it takes a long time, especially when you’re making a horror movie, so we went our own way. We hadn’t proved ourselves. The hope now is that it wouldn’t be too hard to get some designers if we do another film.DANIEL CRUDEN If a toy from a film gets licensed and there isn’t clothing approval, it could be seen as replicating for a profit. Even if I’d found a pair of vintage Gucci sunglasses, we’d have put them through clearance to make sure they were OK to use.When viewers see M3gan commit her first murder, she wears a different outfit — a black cloak with gold buttons and a fur collar, black stockings and leather gloves. What inspired that look?JOHNSTONE It was kind of a subversion of Little Red Riding Hood. I also thought of her as a bit like Damien from “The Omen.” The black gloves were a practical consideration because the gloves made the hands feel more robotic. And she’s a doll — she has to have some accessories.The all-black look worn by M3gan when viewers see her commit her first murder “was kind of a subversion of Little Red Riding Hood,” Mr. Johnstone said.Universal PicturesSpeaking of accessories, in another scene M3gan wears a pair of purple sunglasses. Why?JOHNSTONE I really fought for her to have that moment. It felt like it could either be great or ridiculous. I was worried some people might think, “Is this going to diminish the scares?” But once everyone saw her really rocking the look, they started to get on board.CRUDEN We had a real hunt for the sunglasses because we knew they were going to be a statement.JOHNSTONE I wanted Prada.CRUDEN We ended up with a brand called Minista, they came from a children’s boutique in Auckland, New Zealand.From left, M3gan’s equestrian, Audrey Hepburn-inspired and sporty looks designed by Mr. Cruden for a scene that was cut from the film.Universal PicturesWhat are some of the outfits that didn’t make it into the movie?CRUDEN There was a scene that showed different M3gans on a turntable wearing looks I created for her. One was French-inspired, with a black beret, black turtleneck and high-waisted flared silk pants. We had a beach M3gan with a peasant blouse, beach hat and espadrilles. Equestrian M3gan had jodhpurs and riding boots. Sporty M3gan looked like she was ready for tennis.JOHNSTONE Daniel did a very Audrey Hepburn look with a scarf and sunglasses. But the looks were on a dummy M3gan, and she didn’t look alive. If we’d been able to do it with our main M3gan, it would have worked. It was a shame.Interviews with Mr. Johnstone and Mr. Cruden have been edited and condensed. More

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      Producers Guild Awards Nominate Several Blockbusters and Omit Films by Women

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      ‘Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Top Gun: Maverick” made the cut. “The Woman King” and “Women Talking” were snubbed.After a hectic few days of guild nominations and awards shows, the Producers Guild of America announced the 10 nominees for its best feature film award on Thursday, and this list may be the most consequential yet when it comes to predicting the strongest Oscar contenders: Over the last four years, only three movies made it into the Oscars’ best-picture lineup without first being nominated for the PGAs.Here is the producers’ list of feature-film nominees:“Avatar: The Way of Water”“The Banshees of Inisherin”“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”“Elvis”“Everything Everywhere All at Once”“The Fabelmans”“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”“Tár”“Top Gun: Maverick”“The Whale”The producers guild has historically been inclined toward blockbuster product, and this list includes several big-screen success stories, including three of the highest-grossing films of 2022 — “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” — and two other box-office hits, “Elvis” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”But the exclusion of epic-scaled projects like the glitzy “Babylon” and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s action drama “The Woman King” may doom those films’ chances at making the Oscars’ best-picture lineup: When academy voters replace a PGA pick with one of their own choices, they typically substitute an indie or international film instead.Another notable snub was the Sarah Polley-directed drama “Women Talking,” which debuted at the fall film festivals with plenty of buzz but has struggled since its theatrical bow during the crowded Christmas holiday. None of the films on the PGA list were directed by women, and if “Women Talking,” “The Woman King” and Charlotte Wells’s acclaimed “Aftersun” fail to make the Oscars best-picture list, it will be the first time the category has excluded female filmmakers in four years.Only three films earned nominations from the producers, directors and actors guild this week: Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical “The Fabelmans,” the sci-fi hit “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and the dark feuding-friends comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin.” That trio should be considered the strongest Oscar contenders as voting for the Academy Awards begins Thursday.The winners will be announced in a ceremony on Feb. 25. Here is the rest of the Producers Guild list:FilmAnimated Feature“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”“Minions: The Rise of Gru”“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”“Turning Red”Documentary“All That Breathes”“Descendant”“Fire of Love”“Navalny”“Nothing Compares”“Retrograde”“The Territory”TelevisionEpisodic Drama“Andor”“Better Call Saul”“Ozark”“Severance”“The White Lotus”Episodic Comedy“Abbott Elementary”“Barry”“The Bear”“Hacks”“Only Murders in the Building”Limited Anthology Series“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”“The Dropout”“Inventing Anna”“Obi-Wan Kenobi”“Pam & Tommy”Television Movie“Fire Island”“Hocus Pocus 2”“Pinocchio”“Prey”“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”Nonfiction Television“30 for 30”“60 Minutes”“George Carlin’s American Dream”“Lucy and Desi”“Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy”Live, Variety, Sketch, Standup and Talk Show“The Daily Show With Trevor Noah”“Jimmy Kimmel Live!”“Last Week Tonight With John Oliver”“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”“Saturday Night Live”Game and Competition Television“The Amazing Race”“Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls”“RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars”“Top Chef”“The Voice”Sports Program“Formula 1: Drive to Survive”“Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Detroit Lions”“Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers”“McEnroe”“Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Come Off”Children’s Program“Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock”“Green Eggs and Ham”“Sesame Street”“Snoopy Presents: It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown”“Waffles + Mochi’s Restaurant”Short-Form Program“Better Call Saul: Filmmaker Training”“Love, Death + Robots”“Only Murders in the Building: One Killer Question”“Sesame Street’s #ComingTogether Word of the Day Series”“Tales of the Jedi” More

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      ‘The Seven Faces of Jane’ Review: One Movie, Eight Directors

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      Gillian Jacobs’s blank slate protagonist floats through a series of encounters in this feature-length movie made up of short films.A director’s career is often measured by the quality and quantity of their feature films. But short films can offer a chance to experiment with styles and subjects that might not be suited for a wider commercial release. “The Seven Faces of Jane” combines these two modes of production to create an omnibus film; it’s a feature-length movie comprising short films made by emerging directors.At the center of each short story is Jane (played by Gillian Jacobs, who also directs the first of the movie’s shorts), a single mother who opens the movie by dropping off her daughter at summer camp in Malibu. The film’s episodic story follows Jane as she floats through a series of encounters during her week of solitude in Southern California. She begins with a surreal trip to a roadside diner, but her journeys take her to the desert, the beach and the mountains. She connects with strangers, as well as lovers, including a former flame played by Joel McHale, who starred on the TV series “Community” with Jacobs.Jane is a bit of a blank slate as a protagonist, and her flatness feels jarring when she encounters other characters with more depth. One episode introduces Tayo (Chido Nwokocha), an ex of Jane’s who describes feeling alienated from his Blackness and sense of self during their relationship. Another sequence finds Jane teaching the steps of a waltz to a teenager dreading the dances at her quinceañera. Jane acts as a sounding board when these characters describe their feelings about their specific cultures. Yet in her responses, she remains as two-dimensional as a sketch on white paper.The directors — Jacobs, Gia Coppola, Boma Iluma, Ryan Heffington, Xan Cassavetes, Julian J. Acosta, Ken Jeong (another of Jacobs’s “Community” castmates) and Alex Takacs — come from a wide range of creative and personal backgrounds. But the shorts blend together without significant variation. The transitions eschew title cards, subtly eliding shifts by returning to images of Jane in her car.There is continuity in this makeshift road picture‌ — Jane’s costumes and makeup remain cohesive across the shorts, and the film’s segments keep the same cool color palette. But the consistency limits the ability of the directors to lean into their own style, leading to a movie that feels narratively scattered and stylistically inhibited.The Seven Faces of JaneNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Beautiful Beings’ Review: Boys Will Be Boys Will Be Violent Jerks

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      In this brutal Icelandic drama, four teenagers — both bullies and the bullied — struggle and rage against a world that rages back.The bullied and their bullies circle one another restlessly in the brutal coming-of-age tale “Beautiful Beings,” at times coming to catastrophic blows. Set in a shabby corner of Reykjavik, Iceland, far from the usual tourist attractions, the movie focuses on four teenage boys struggling in that sticky, confusing, inescapably unsettling space between childhood and adulthood. At once old enough to know better and too young to be fully in control of much of anything (themselves included), the boys lash out at a world that is all too happy to lash back.The story takes place in what seems like the not-too-distant past and centers on two boys who meet after one, Balli (Askell Einar Palmason), a destitute outcast — a classmate complains that he smells — is viciously beaten by school thugs. The assault lands him in the hospital and on the local TV news, which drones on about problematic Icelandic youth. When Addi (Birgir Dagur Bjarkason), a sweet-faced member of another group of hotheads, watches the broadcast, he voices contempt for Balli. Yet Addi soon shifts course, bringing the needy, understandably wary outsider into his tiny, cloistered circle.What follows is a great deal of adolescent posturing, complete with jutting chins, clenched fists and ostentatiously smoked cigarettes. Along with two other kids — the volatile Konni (Viktor Benony Benediktsson) and the unkind jokester Siggi (Snorri Rafn Frimannsson) — Addi and Balli hang out, run amok, hook up with girls and stare into the distance. Every so often, and usually spurred on by Konni, they mix it up with other guys with exuberant ferocity. Konni is the brawniest, most explosive member of this gang, but it’s Addi who’s the scariest kid because he expresses some regret on his way to the next pummeling.It’s a sad, familiar story of boys being socially constructed, hyper-masculinized, aggressively nasty little jerks, one largely distinguished by the palpable tenderness that the writer-director Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson brings to its telling. Gudmundsson’s feature debut, “Heartstone,” also focused on adolescent boys. Here, with a combination of drifty realism and jolts of the fantastic — Addi has strange dreams and visions, which add unfruitful mystery to the narrative — he persuasively conveys the feverish intimacy of adolescent friendship, with its vulnerabilities and inchoate desires. Konni and Addi’s friendship is especially intense, alternately characterized by teasing, cruelty and moments of erotically charged sensitivity.In time, all these feelings, all this fury and confusion, reach a fever pitch, leading to some unsurprising disastrous violence. It doesn’t add up to much, despite the appealing young cast and the handsome cinematography that brings texture and visual interest to every grubby corner. Gudmundsson obviously loves his characters and wants you to be enamored with them as well, but he doesn’t have much to say about them or their reality. He nods at the larger world, suggests that desire fuels some of the boys’ interactions and floats some dubious deterministic ideas about what makes these kids tick, expressed mostly through bad parenting. He intimates and insinuates, gesturing at deeper meaning that never materializes.Beautiful BeingsNot rated. In Icelandic, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Nanny’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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      ‘The Offering’ Review: A Demon in the Family

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      In this Brooklyn-set horror film, an evil spirit causes torment at a Jewish funeral home.A serviceable slab of possession horror, “The Offering” unleashes evil in the hallowed halls of a Hasidic funeral home in Brooklyn. When the funeral director’s son, Art (Nick Blood), visits with his pregnant wife, Claire (Emily Wiseman), they arrive at the same time as the body of a scholar who summoned a demon before dying. Art’s fecklessness and the demon’s restlessness lead to trouble.Asked to help prepare the scholar for burial, Art promptly makes a hash of things and somehow releases the demon, Abyzou, known as a “taker” of children. Art is less observant than his kindly, widowed father, Saul (Allan Corduner), and has apparently offered the funeral home building as collateral for debts, but his general incompetence makes the story feel less about lost faith than filial failure.With Abyzou activated, the creepy whispers and ghostly assaults commence (with echoes of “The Vigil”). The director, Oliver Park, dwells on the Old World gloom of the funeral home, shuffling through the deck of a somewhat scattered story by Hank Hoffman (who does have impeccable credentials as a former shomer, or guardian, at a Jewish morgue) and Jonathan Yunger.The horror is most uncanny and effective when it’s using simple yet evocative effects — like Art’s exiting a room only to reappear in the same room — rather than jump scares. Wiseman, as Claire, has little to do but look bewildered (as the sole gentile in the building) and await the demon’s morbid attention. But the goat-headed Abyzou, unlike many supernatural beings in the genre, provides blunt frights that are appealingly less invested in elaborate stagecraft than in pure devastation.The OfferingRated R for violence. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Plane’ Review: Flight, Camera, Action

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      In this thriller, Gerard Butler and Mike Colter have to avoid a hostage situation and deliver a plane full of passengers to safety.Jesters on social media have already begun chortling about this movie’s minimalist title. Where did the snakes go?The movie’s basic designation is not without precedent. Some of you may remember “Airport” and its several sequels. Most of those movies spent the majority of their time in the air rather than in the terminal, so maybe it figures that most of the action in this thriller, directed by Jean-François Richet and starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter (“Luke Cage”), is set on the ground.The twist is that this ground is unsafe in a way that a boarding gate rarely is. Butler plays Brodie, a pilot whose Singapore-to-Tokyo flight — after which he is to reunite with his beloved daughter, because of course — is downed by violent weather. With his co-pilot and fellow family man Dele (Yoson An), Brodie manages a landing on an unidentified island run by “separatists and militias,” whose leader, Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor), has the nasty habit of ransoming, and sometimes killing, hostages. Brodie, determined to deliver his passengers to safety, powers through the jungle in search of a way to communicate with home.If you guessed that the handcuffed convict who’s part of the flight’s manifest is actually a not-wholly-bad guy looking for a shot at redemption, go to the head of the class. Playing that part, Colter makes a good match with the stalwart Butler. Half a world away, Tony Goldwyn clenches his jaw in a kitted-out corporate conference room as the only honest crisis manager in the airline biz.This is a pacey item that can be recommended on the grounds that it’s a January release that’s not even close to awful. “Plane” sinks (or rises, depending on your perspective) to “hell yeah” ridiculousness only at the end, delivering a punchline that lands at the right time.PlaneRated R for bloody violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters. More