What’s on TV Wednesday: ‘Dog Lady’ and ‘Megan Leavey’

Photo

Craving some animal affection? Check out “Dog Lady” and “Megan Leavey,” about the bond between women and their dogs. For something tougher, stream Alejandro González Iñárritu’s feature debut, whose title could be translated as “Love’s a Dog.”

What’s Streaming

DOG LADY (2015) on Mubi. In this lovely, low-key Argentine movie, a middle-aged woman (an eloquently silent Verónica Llinás) exists without companionship in a primitive hut at the edge of a forest, save for the pack of dogs that live, hunt and sleep with her. As the movie progresses, it emerges that the directors, Laura Citarella and Ms. Llinás, “are less interested in flexing their cinematic chops and more concerned with solitude, materially and existentially,” Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times. At times, she added, the woman “registers as a castaway, a kind of modern-era Robinson Crusoe, even if it’s never made clear if her isolation is accidental or willful.”

AMORES PERROS (2000) on Tribeca Shortlist and iTunes. Alejandro González Iñárritu intertwines three seemingly disparate stories from Mexico City — about a dogfight entrepreneur (Gael García Bernal) trying to raise enough money to run away with his brother’s wife; a middle-aged man (Álvaro Guerrero) who leaves his wife and daughter for a spokesmodel; and a revolutionary turned assassin (Emilio Echevarría), now living on the streets — and resolves them all with an astonishing car crash. “It’s rare that a director can enter films with this much verve and emotional understanding,” Elvis Mitchell wrote in The Times. “In his very first film Mr. Gonzalez Inarritu makes the kind of journey some directors don’t, or can’t, travel in an entire career.”

Photo

MEGAN LEAVEY (2017) on iTunes and Amazon. Megan Leavey (Kate Mara), a restless young Marine, finds purpose and something like salvation training Rex, a combat dog, who goes on to save lives — including her own — during their deployment in Iraq. Then it’s her turn to save his. The director Gabriela Cowperthwaite lets “this irresistible real-life story tell itself with a minimum of manufactured sentiment,” Neil Genzlinger wrote in The Times. The movie, he added, “presents a somewhat idealized view of military service, especially for women. But the war isn’t really the point here; the relationship between a woman and a dog is. After both return, injured, to the United States, the story turns to Leavey’s battle to be given custody of Rex. If the conclusion doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, you’re way too cynical.”

What’s on TV

Photo

YOUNGER 10 p.m. on TV Land. Things get tense when Josh (Nico Tortorella) and his new girlfriend show up at Empirical’s company picnic. And Liza (Sutton Foster) finds herself becoming more than just an editor for the estranged wife (Jennifer Westfeldt) of Charles (Peter Hermann).

THE SINNER 10 p.m. on USA. Cora (Jessica Biel) struggles to recover missing memories that could help explain why she inexplicably stabbed a stranger to death.

Continue reading the main story