Heart of a Dog (2015)

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Heart of a dog is one of the most moving and interesting art movies I have ever seen. The story seems to be about the rat terrier Lollabelle but when the story begins there is that absurd tale of Laurie giving birth to the dog after surgeons have implanted the dog in her uterus and when it ends you realize that is really about a mother/daughter relation. The poetry in the movie is beautiful and absurd as ever and the images are stunning. You get really drawn into the story. Like her mother said in her last words; "Take care of the animals". Laurie did take care of her animal.

Well, I am pretty sure that Laurie Anderson created the movie she intended to.That may sound like faint praise, but if you appreciate Anderson's work (as I do) it will make you want to see it. I will let you know up front, though, that despite the blurb not a very high percentage of the movie is really about her dog, so if you are looking for a dog movie per se this isn't really it.It will not surprise anyone who knows Anderson's musical work that this work can't really be described as some kind of narrative or clearly spelled out philosophical message. It is more like a collage, if you will, including some stories or descriptive language about the dog, about episodes in Anderson's life, about deaths and instances of the danger of death, about New York after 9/11, about Tibetan Buddhism and its view of death. This all sounds rather grim, but it isn't. After death (in the Tibetan Buddhist view) there is a 49-day period or process called the "bardo" in which the soul prepares to enter a new form. It seems to involve a reprocessing and re-recognition of experiences somehow, and in fact the movie itself may be sort of a picture of the bardo. The collage is displayed on a background of images and sounds including Anderson's own creative work.I really don't think I can say much else that would enable you to better predict whether you would like the film or not. I didn't watch it and have epiphanies and come away feeling that I understood my place in the universe much better, but I don't feel as if I wasted my time; Anderson is a brilliant and interesting person, and spending an hour and a half with her thoughts is well worth it - to me anyway.

Heart of a Dog, a movie by Laurie Anderson is one of the most nourishing movies I have seen in a long while. I loved her drawings, the abstract and nostalgic imagery and mostly her storytelling voice. The film content - love, memory and mostly loss - filled a personal need for intensity that only few other art works, books, and movies, have been able to do. At times my emotions could barely stand absorbing what I could only call its beauty. Laurie should have just been a story teller, all the other trickery she has used through time distract from the real source of her art. Of course if the viewer expect a story about dogs, this is not the movie for them, but I can list HoaD to very few other movies that seem to be about nothing and they are about everything.

"Heart of a Dog" (2015 release; 75 min.) is a non-fiction movie by musician/performance artist Laurie Anderson. As the movie opens, we see a cartoon-animated Laurie Anderson inform us that "this is my dream body" and that in her dream she gives birth to an adult dog whom she calls Lolabelle. It's not long before Laurie starts reflecting on her dying mother, 9/11, SIDS, and a bunch of other things.Couple of comments: Laurie Anderson, best known for her minimalist music such as "O Superman" from the early 80s, is no stranger to movie making. Here she takes two particular tough periods in her life, the decline and death of her rat terrier Lolabelle and the decline and death of her mother, to weave a collage of images and montage of sound, supplemented by Laurie's spoken words in which she explores "the connection between love and death" (Laurie's words) and everything in between. One might call it a stream of consciousness, except that Laurie is not rambling in the least. Let me tell you. it makes for one amazing movie experience. It's like being in a dream. if not a trance, where things somehow become a lot clearer. Let me also mention that I was vaguely aware of the movie, along the lines of: "that's the documentary about Laurie's dog", and I almost did not watch the movie for that reason. As it turns out, the movie devotes only about 10-15 min. to the dog, and the movie is not even a documentary. So it was a complete misconception on my part what this movie was about (and to be honest, the movie's title only reinforced that misconception). Last but not least, Laurie's husband Lou Reed (who passed away in 2013) isn't mentioned a single time, but an excellent song of his, "Turning Time Around", does play over the movie's end titles. Please note: you don't have to be a fan of Laurie Anderson to appreciate this movie (but it certainly doesn't hurt if you are)."Heart of a Dog" showed up out of the blue and without any pre-release buzz or advertising at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati last weekend. The early evening screening when I saw it a few days ago was not attended well (three people, including myself), and I noticed that it will drop out of the theater after today. That's a shame, as this is a remarkable movie in many respects, and by all means deserves a wider audience. If you are in the mood for something very different, all the while realizing that is a deeply personal essay and film from Laurie Anderson, I encourage you to check it out, be it in the theater, on VOD or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray. "Heart of a Dog" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!