In the doghouse 

As someone who's been blessed with the company of canines for my entire life, and who's presently fostering a lovable German shepherd (interested? Drop me an e-mail!), I sat through Year of the Dog (* out of four) seriously wondering if writer-director Mike White has ever owned a pet in his entire life. A grotesque film from a normally accomplished scripter (The Good Girl, Chuck & Buck) also making his directorial debut, this dud is so confused in its intention and execution that it's difficult to know where to begin.

• NOTHING TO HOWL ABOUT: Molly Shannon stars in the misguided Year of the Dog (Photo: Paramount Vintage)

Molly Shannon (just fine) plays Peggy, a lonely secretary who finds comfort in the loving paws of her new beagle puppy, Pencil. One night, Peggy lets Pencil out to do his business, and when he loiters in the unsecured backyard and refuses to come back inside, she irresponsibly elects to leave him outdoors for the night. The next morning, she finds him dead -- poisoned -- on the property of her next-door neighbor Al, a doofus gun enthusiast (John C. Reilly) who seems to take a genuine interest in Peggy. For her part, Peggy is convinced that Al is to blame since Pencil most likely got into a bag of toxic garden material in his garage. Never mind that Peggy allowed her pet to wander onto his property and into his garage -- she (and, by extension, White) ascertain that it's his fault because, well, he's a doofus gun enthusiast.

In real life, Peggy's actions would cause any animal advocacy group to pause before handing her another living creature, but here, an employee at the vet's office, an asexual guy named Newt (Peter Sarsgaard), praises her for being a great pet owner and gives her another dog to raise. Newt also becomes a major influence on her life, convincing her to become a vegan and to always be sensitive to animal rights. Peggy runs with these new convictions, proselytizing to everyone within earshot (including family members depicted by Laura Dern and Thomas McCarthy as exaggerated suburban caricatures), forging checks from her boss' account to animal organizations, and telling her tiny niece that life isn't like the movie Babe and threatening to then show her the inside of a chicken slaughtering facility. Of course, like most myopic extremists, Peggy's actions aren't consistent with her words: I love the scene where, after adopting over a dozen abandoned dogs, this vegan goes to the grocery store and loads up the cart with wet dog food cans. Uh, excuse me if I'm wrong, but don't wet dog foods (at least those in major grocery stores) contain beef, lamb, chicken and other animal products? Some vegan.

This insufferable film does more harm than good by playing up the stereotype of the foaming-at-the-mouth, bleeding-heart, PETA-supporting loony, and even at the end, White never makes enough of a distinction between being deeply committed to a cause and merely worthy of being committed to an institution. (And for those who have no problem with Peggy's actions: Pretend she's a right-wing religious zealot or anti-abortion advocate and see if you still support all of her firebrand methods.)

To be fair, many scribes have lavishly praised Year of the Dog, presumably because it's not a cookie-cutter motion picture but instead comes across as something clearly out of the ordinary. Well, yeah, I suppose it is. Then again, elephantiasis of the testicles is also out of the ordinary, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, either.

• SHOOT TO THRILL: Muntze (Sebastian Koch) and Rachel (Carice Van Houte) go undercover in Black Book (Photo: Sony Pictures Classics)

BLACK BOOK (***1/2 out of four), director Paul Verhoeven's first Dutch film in over 20 years, indeed opens its story proper with a sequence centering around a black book. In this case, it's the Bible, and Jewish Rachel Stein is expected to memorize a passage each day as payback for being sheltered from the Nazis by a Christian family in Holland. But a wayward bomb destroys her hiding place, and as a result, both Rachel and the movie are off and running.

Another black book -- the one in the title -- becomes a focal point deep within this film's 145-minute running time. It's probably the least expensive prop in the picture, which stands as the most costly Dutch movie ever made (and, fortuitously, the most profitable as well). Yet the end result warrants the price tag, as this is slam-bang entertainment that's almost delirious in its attempt to emulate some of the ambitious WWII epics from the past. It's a shame that Verhoeven's stateside reputation will probably never fully recover from his ill-advised decision to helm Showgirls, because before that debacle, the director had earned a lofty reputation not only for his Dutch titles but also for brainy, big-budget Hollywood yarns like Total Recall and the glorious sci-fi satire RoboCop. He infuses Black Book with plenty of verve and passion, and he's aided by a top-notch cast led by the wonderful Carice Van Houten.

In Rachel Stein, Van Houten has created a truly memorable character, a woman who endures her share of heartbreak and humiliation yet above all else is a survivalist (we know she makes it out alive because the film opens with a sequence that's set roughly a decade after the war has ended). Even though her family is gunned down before her eyes, she manages to escape the carnage, determined to find the duplicitous rat whose actions caused their demise. She joins the Dutch underground, where she becomes attracted to Hans Akkersmans (Thom Hoffman), a macho marksman (he bears some resemblance to Russell Crowe) who seems to have more lives than your average cat's grand total of nine. In true Mata Hari fashion, Rachel is asked to get chummy with a high-ranking Nazi official (Sebastian Koch, the conflicted playwright in The Lives of Others), a problem once she begins to fall in love with him. With its series of blazing gun battles, numerous espionage capers (will Rachel get caught while bugging Nazi HQ?), and characters repeatedly double-crossing each other, Black Book rarely gives the viewer time to breathe -- it's like The Guns of Navarone for the art-house set.

Black Book was one of the nine finalists for last year's Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar (it was bypassed for a nomination, with the WWII-quota-filling nod going to the far inferior Days of Glory), but it only received its U.S. theatrical release this month. I guess that makes it one of the best films of both 2006 and 2007.