Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Yazmin Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

SnoopyStyle The caribou herds are in trouble and the government sends scientist Tyler (Charles Martin Smith) to the Canadian north to investigate the damage that the wolves are supposedly doing. He arrives at the end of the rail line in Nootsack and Rosie (Brian Dennehy) flies him out to the frozen north. He is alone with a few human contact like Ootek the Inuit. He is surprised to find the wolves but not the caribou. He soon discovers that the wolves are eating mice and are not the ruthless killing machines of the imagination. This is an adaptation of Farley Mowat's 1963 autobiography. This is a wonderful meditative movie of a man in the wilderness. It teaches a few things about wolves and the north. Smith's constant narration gives a hypnotic feel to the simple performance. It doesn't play up the survival aspect which these movies tend to be. I also love that Ootek keeps saying that Tyler has "Good Idea". Ootek and his friend Mike are fascinating characters. It's also great that they are fully flesh-out human beings rather than the noble all-knowing savages. Mike is funny and a complex character. They give Tyler the notion that the wolves are a part of an ecosystem and the caribou rely as much on the wolves as the wolves rely on the caribou. There are a lot of nature shots but none is more impressive than a naked Charles Martin Smith in the middle of a caribou stampede.

Roedy Green This would be a perfect movie to take your ten year old nephew and his friends to. You know, because it is a true story, the hero will have to prevail, yet he is subjected to gross ordeal after ordeal: a terrifying plane ride, having all his belongings unceremoniously dumped on the ice, being given nothing but asparagus to eat for a whole season, being sniffed by wolves, being inundated by mice, eating mice, dunked in ice cold water, drinking wolf-pee tea, getting caught without clothes, moose beer, abandonment...There don't appear to be any special effects. Whatever ones there were were done so well you don't experience them as that. Only once in the caribou scene, did I notice some cinematographic sleight of hand. There was an unexplained total lack of mosquitoes and blackflies.There is very little dialogue, though there is plenty of fish-out-of-water interaction between the hero, Brian Dennehy representing commercial interests, and the old and new Inuit. This where the humour comes.The landscapes and the wolves are, as expected, breathtaking. Our hero looks a little too clean, well muscled, well groomed and freshly clothed, even at the end of the movie, but Disney, after all, had a hand in it. I would not take younger kids to see it because the ending is a little too sad, in the Disney Old Yeller tradition. It is a good movie about pluck, fearlessness and just picking yourself up and carrying on no matter what happens.The message is that predatory wolves actually help caribou populations by culling the sickest and weakest animals. Poachers do the exact opposite. Though they don't say it, the same applies to cod and seals.

Lechuguilla About a man who goes to the Arctic wilderness to study wolves, "Never Cry Wolf" displays fine cinematography amid some spectacular scenery of the North Country. And the native wildlife, wolves and caribou mostly, present themselves with majestic dignity.But the script gives us a main character, Tyler (Charles Martin Smith), who is not the least bit convincing. Anyone sent on a serious Arctic mission would be more in-the-know than Tyler. His wilderness innocence seems contrived to add flavor and lighthearted adventure solely to entertain viewers.Similarly, the voice-over (VO) narration is annoying. It's been inserted presumably to give a sense of dialogue that film viewers expect, given that for much of the plot Tyler is alone. The VO communicates what Tyler is thinking, but that only amplifies his ignorance, which diminishes the credibility of the story.If I had been in charge of casting, I surely would have selected someone other than Smith to play Tyler. Smith tries hard. But he is about twenty years too young to be taken seriously as a scientist.And given the absence of civilization, why are we listening to background music? However light and airy it may be, it's totally out of place in a wilderness setting. All it does is manipulate viewer response as the plot moves along. The most potent scenes are those that maintain silence and stillness."Never Cry Wolf" conveys a simple, straightforward story, lightly humorous in tone, suitable for kids. There's nothing complex or opaque here, which is okay given the film's genre. Yet, I could have wished for a script with a more daring, and less conventional, story, a script and accompanying production aimed at adults, not children.Despite a slightly dumbed-down story, this Disney film is worth watching once, for the spectacular scenery. And the visuals alone make a good case for the preservation of wilderness and the protection of endangered wildlife.

Steve Skafte Never Cry Wolf begins with a quiet sense of loneliness, a series of images. From place to place, you feel your eyes wander to the things you see around you. There's no big surprise, no big action sequence or dramatic turn of events. Only a slow realization, like with Tyler, of just what you're getting yourself into. His voice fades into the mix, if only to let you wander in on his thoughts. He has no grand statement to make. Only questions and hopes.One of, if not the first thing that you notice is the music of Mark Isham. Perhaps driven by youthful bravado (this was his first film score), Isham eschews any traditional dramatic production. Instead, he goes for an alternating mix between wavering uncertainty and pounding passion. His soundtrack over the title sequence plays like some proposed music designed to remind one of the craters and the mountains of the moon. A beautiful and terrifying sense of the alien, of the unknown. The music is as much a part of the soundtrack as the animals and dialogue. Indeed, at one point, it plays duet to Tyler's oboe.Rather than having a heroic and dashing explorer (who must not only find himself in the wilderness, but also lose the old version of himself), Tyler is a quiet man who has no current self-awareness to lose. In the end, this makes Charles Martin Smith essential to the role. It is Tyler's personality, his confusion, his social status, and his emotional state that can only be played quietly. As a character, Tyler has no grand statements to make, only visions and revelations of truth. Internal and otherwise. Smith plays him perfectly. Not long after the introductory scenes, Tyler finds a pilot who can take him to where he needs to be. Rosie (played by Brian Dennehy) doesn't seem exactly stable, but it's likely his only option. Dennehy plays the role with his usual crazy-eyed gruffness, yet without some of his usual sideways winks at the audience. The other two main roles in the film - Inuit natives played by Samson Jorah and Zachary Ittimangnaq - are even more understated personalities than Tyler. The depth of their specific acting talents (if acting is took to mean acting unnaturally) could be up for interpretation. But, instead of giving them actions and dialogue beyond their range of experience, they simply live their respective characters' lives for the screen. Ootek and Mike don't have wide character arcs like Tyler does. They are already in their natural environment, and no longer experience the initial resistance and friction that Tyler is becoming familiar with. Ootek goes off into the wilderness to live in the silence, but Tyler is only just learning to silence his thoughts.And it is in those thoughts that we are given a window into Tyler's development. Any change in perception or understanding that might seem either too personal or too inconsequential to share in a conversation, we are given privy to through Charles Martin Smith's narration. Farley Mowat's writing is the core of Never Cry Wolf. He writes from a humorous standpoint, as concerned with the great fears and mysteries of life as he is with those things that mildly amuse him. Each sequence is given the full weight of feeling and realism, because they all hold equal - yet utterly different - strengths and beauties. The weight of this reality comes into a nude scene which occurs later in the film. It does a rare thing in cinema - to explore the beauty of humanity in nature. Pure and unrestrained.Hiro Narita does amazing work as the cinematographer, also doing his first feature film work like composer Isham. As a photographer myself, I am in awe of his ability to make the otherwise ordinary truly stunning. In quiet passages, it is his skill capturing the little corners of Tyler's life that move things forward. In a film with such truly beautiful cinematography, it would be nearly impossible to criticize any lack of judicial editing. Any extra running time would simply be more time to admire Narita's work. But without the direction of Carroll Ballard, I have doubts that Never Cry Wolf could have been such a pure success that it is. Other films such as this have gone down well-traveled and over-used structures of the so-called 'wilderness movie' - all of which Never Cry Wolf steers clear from. There's no unrealistic animal behavior for the sense of 'cuteness', and no comic relief that isn't arrived upon naturally. Also, there is careful avoidance of the old 'Magic Indian' cliché so common in films which depict native cultures. Spirituality is a large factor in the life of the Inuit shown here, but they do not have the ability to appear and disappear at will, or to bend the space-time continuum. This is a bizarre characteristic of nearly all films about the native population that is thankfully not repeated.The commitment to truth and understanding of the relationship between nature and human nature in Never Cry Wolf is what makes it one of the truly great films of all time. It shows what can happen when all is given to a single goal, when a great director finds the perfect cinematographer, composer, and lead actor for a film, and leads them through the process of making a motion picture. This is what cinema is all about.Also Recommended -Days of Heaven (1978), The Black Stallion (1979), Vigil (1984), The Snow Walker (2003)