The Friend

“Walter” (Bill Murray) is a cranky old author who decides that he’s had enough of life and so leaves his wife “Barbara” (Noma Dumezweni) with a four-foot, four-legged, slobbering problem. She decides that the best place for “Apollo” is with his longtime friend “Iris” (Naomi Watts). Bluntly, she would rather stick pins in her eyes, but she’s a bit of a sucker for a sob story and so soon she he has a new roomie in her...

Naomi Watts inherits a 180-pound Great Dane after her mentor's suicide, and the film's whole trick is refusing to turn that into a cute rescue story. Apollo will not ride the elevator, takes over her bed, eats almost nothing for days, and Iris, a committed cat person with zero patience for dogs this size, has to learn to live around him instead of training him into something easier. What makes it work is how literall...