YEAR OF THE DOG (US, Mike White)
My wife Miki is a vegan chef; because of this, I'd say that 90-95% of my meals are vegan. So I've learned to sympathize with her whenever I see a vegan character in a film - rare as it is - because usually said vegan is seen as pretentious, buffoonish, misguided and annoying. Many real-life vegans actually are all these things, but for this growing subculture who certainly isn't doing the world any harm by not eating animal products, it's become tiring to see vegans continually serving as the butt of stupid jokes by meat-eaters. So it was with great interest that we both went to see writer/director Mike White's Year of the Dog, knowing not only that some of its characters are openly vegan but that White himself is vegan - Miki and I have seen him dining, often alone, at a local vegan restaurant on several occasions. The downside of knowing White's veganism is that it at first biased my perceptions about his purposefully ambiguous film. The story is about Peggy (Molly Shannon, whose depths as an actor come as a real surprise after her "Saturday Night Live" shtick), a horribly lonely executive assistant in a soul-sucking suburban officeplace whose only joy in life comes from her little dog Pencil. When Pencil suddenly dies, a friendship with a vegan animal hospital worker (Peter Sarsgaard) inspires Peggy not only to become vegan herself, but to travel down an increasingly unhinged path of animal rights activism. Those expecting a frothy comedy filled with cute doggies will surely be disappointed by Year of the Dog, but it is a timely, highly original story that discusses things that most American films avoid. Not just animal activism and veganism, but the paths that some lost souls take in order to give their lives a purpose, whether it's misguided or not. This could have been an inflammatory, more divisive film had it been about Peggy's journey into the Pro Life movement, militant Islam, or even evangelical Christianity. That White chooses an arena close to his own heart makes Year of the Dog a highly personal and even personally revealing film. (Apparently the story was inspired by White's own search for self after the death of his cat.) Whether most moviegoers will see any of that is doubtful; mostly I fear people will go to the film expecting something along the lines of Must Love Dogs, and will squirm in their seats as Peggy shoves animal rights down the throats of everyone around her, including the audience. This, then, is the true return of the Mike White who wrote (and starred in) the discomfiting Chuck and Buck, after several years of writing frothy Jack Black vehicles (School of Rock, Nacho Libre, et al). I didn't think much of this film after it was over - I felt it ended abruptly, needed a third act, and I wondered if White was pushing his own vegan agenda on viewers. But its open-endedness has since grown on me, and now I'm rather thrilled that a film this unusual could get a theatrical release.

YI YI (Taiwan, Edward Yang)
One of the more idiotic rules at the Oscars is that countries who want some of their cinematic output to be considered for Best Foreign Film may only submit one film each. I suppose there's some lame sense of fairness to this rule, but we're seeing the glum side of it this year, for Taiwan, sensing a clear winner with the phenomenon that is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, selected that film as their nominee, even though frankly it could and should have been submitted for Best Picture, period. Especially as their choice shuts out Taiwan's other great - indeed, even greater - film of 2000: Edward Yang's humanistic family drama Yi Yi.

No matter: Yi Yi (aka A One and a Two) still wouldn't have caught on with American audiences like its more exotic competitor. There are no martial arts here, no period costumes, no mystical swords. Just the lives and loves of an ordinary family living in contemporary Taipei. Yang also boldly stretches out the length of his film to a whopping three hours, and although the film is never once boring, sitting through the entire affair can tire out a viewer's bottom. But it is so worth it. Taking this family (particularly the father, who is silently suffering through a mid-life crisis) and finding parallels between their individual lives through their relationships with their "first loves" - recently established or rediscovered - Yang concocts an overwhelmingly touching and clear-eyed portrait of Life As We Know It. Elegantly shot with great restraint (Yang avoids close-ups, preferring to frame his characters within their cluttered environments, and he doesn't move his camera very much), we become, during those three hours, fully involved in the details of these characters' strained, quiet lives. And in the end Yang suggests that every family, even "ordinary" ones like yours or mine, deserves epic treatment.

YOU CAN COUNT ON ME (US, Kenneth Lonergan)
Lovely chamber piece about a single mom (Laura Linney) living in upstate New York and the men in her life, specifically her son (Rory Culkin, Macauley's younger brother), her boss (Matthew Broderick) and especially her troubled brother (Mark Ruffalo), whose return to the empty family home (their parents were killed in a car crash when the siblings were children) opens up a lot of wounds, old and new.

Don't be fooled by the feel-good sound of the film's title: You Can Count On Me is an unsentimental, keenly-felt drama that examines the tenuousness of family ties, especially when weighed upon by the years of abandonment and rootlessness set off by the tragic loss of their parents. In fact, I'd have to say that this is more or less a perfect film: the performances are superb across the board; the characters are fully realized; Lonergan's writing and direction has a pure, unselfconscious warmth; the story is intelligent and emotionally real; hell, even the country songs on the soundtrack are good! So while this film didn't quite haunt me as more flawed but more unusual films have in the past, I can't imagine this not having universal appeal. If you want to experience that rare treat of a thoughtful, meaningful night at the movies, then rush out to see You Can Count On Me. It's the kind of film I wish I'd made, which is just about the highest praise I can heap upon anything.

YOUNG ADULT (US, Jason Reitman)
After delivering the crowd-pleasing dramedies Juno and Up in the Air, Jason Reitman re-teams with Juno scribe Diablo Cody (blessedly eschewing the idiosyncratic slang dialogue that made her such a polarizing screenwriter) to deliver a bleak, crowd-numbing anti-comedy. Charlize Theron stars as Mavis, a bitchy former prom queen and now author of several disposable "young adult" novels (think Sweet Valley High, which Cody herself has been hired to adapt for the screen) who returns to her small town Minnesota home for precisely one reason: to win back her old high school boyfriend (Patrick Wilson), who's now a contented husband and father. From the get-go, it's clear to the audience, all the other characters, and everyone but Mavis that her quest is one of insanity. Why this self-conscious narcissist embarks on this outlandish endeavor without considering how ridiculous she must look is never believably established. The only answer is that loneliness, combined with a fundamental shallowness, has caused Mavis to lose her mind. So once you go with that, you get the movie, even if it doesn't have much else to offer. The plot is paper thin: It's obvious that Wilson's character, who's got a cool wife, an adorable baby, and an ordinary life with no complaints, will never cross over to the dark side. So Young Adult is essentially a wallow in 21st century thirtysomething misery. Mavis's fictional hometown of Mercury, MN is hardly the cozy small town that typically appears in Hollywood movies: filled with national chain stores (residents are thrilled that a Chipotle has just opened up) and housing tracts, it's an accurate depiction of the soulless Middle American landscape of today. But Mavis's life in the "big city" - Minneapolis - is a joke as well, with a messy apartment in a prison-like highrise and fast food lunches (Mavis and a friend drinking coffee out of cups labeled "McCafe" is one of the film's subtler jabs at her pretenses of success). With her poorly-received book series coming to an end, a growing problem with alcohol, and a lack of real friends, there is no hope in Mavis's life, and Young Adult doesn't bother with giving her any. It's hard to tell just what Diablo Cody must think of her protagonist. Surely the sort of queen bee that Mavis represents was thoroughly detested by the teenage Cody, back when she was the awkward Brook Busey. But this storyline is hardly a nerd's revenge. Coming down from her own early peak (an Oscar for Juno) and subsequent disappointments (her script for Jennifer's Body was soundly trashed; her Showtime series United States of Tara was cancelled after two seasons), it's possible that Cody identifies a lot with Mavis's predicament, if not necessarily her character.

With Reitman's usual flair for unflattering visual authenticity and a fine cast of mostly unknowns - though Patton Oswalt is very impressive as a geek who was so reviled in high school that he was beaten by jocks within an inch of his life and today walks with a cane - there are a lot of interesting things about Young Adult. But for me, the film itself never jells. The scenes quickly become repetitive, the drabness never lets up, and the emotions flat-line, even during Mavis's climactic confrontation with, well, everybody. In short, watching Young Adult is a deadening experience. If Reitman and Cody were aiming for an Alexander Payne-like examination of a modern American lost soul, they have instead landed squarely in Todd Solondz territory. Only without the ick factor.

Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN (Mexico, Alfonso Cuarón)
I feel like I should have more to say about this film than I do. But my reaction to it is as simple as its story (about two oversexed teenage boys who decide to take a road trip to a nonexistent beach, and invite a sexy older woman, who is unhappily married to one of the boys' cousins, to come along for the ride): I liked it, didn't love it. I wish more films could be as good, but if more films were as good, this would be a very average film. (Does that make sense? To me it does.) The film has a lot going for it: fresh, realistic, and very brave performances by the three leads; rich cinematography that evokes the grit and dusty beauty of the Mexican rural landscape; some steamy sex scenes (which made it the number-one hit in Mexican box office history); and even a bit of introspection: as we follow our three freewheelin' heroes across the back roads of sun-baked Mexico, we are treated to a God-like (or, more frankly, Godard-like) sonorous voiceover that places the characters' rather insignificant adventures in the context of their unspoken thoughts, social issues happening around them, and recent (as well as future!) Mexican history. Some people might go for this distancing device, some won't. I appreciated it, as by itself, the story is predictable (you know there's going to be sexual tension between all three of the characters, and when it's finally brought out in the open, there are no real surprises), and it's good to see a Mexican film that addresses the often-unspoken class issues that permeate Mexican culture. Y Tu Mamá comes close to making such serious statements - there's a terrific aside that says everything about the two boys' differing and ultimately incompatible social backgrounds by revealing how they flush the toilets in each other's houses - but I wasn't as blown away as much as just modestly impressed. Go see it. You might even love it (I know many who do). But there must be a Mexican film out there that matches it in both entertainment value and resounding depth.