The too few moments when he is truly being himself-like when, early on in their relationship, Keda throws a stick at him in an attempt to make him shoo and he picks it up and brings its back-are when Alpha is able to brush off the dust and snow of twenty or so millennia and truly come to life. Chuck is ready for his close-up and deserves more of them. Then there is the matter of the lupine costar, played in part by Chuck, a Czech wolf dog from France. Starring: Emile Hirsch, Justin Timberlake, Ben Foster. Most of these words are in service of aphorisms spoken by Tau, who is constantly imparting bits of wisdom to his son (“Raise your head and your eyes will follow”) that undoubtedly sound better in Cro-Magnon than in English. This gritty drama is based on the true story of Jesse James Hollywood - one of the youngest men ever to appear on the FBIs Most Wanted list. The filmmakers not only recreated the glacial winter in locations that included Vancouver, Alberta, and Iceland, they invented an entire Cro-Magnon language of roughly 1,500 words. Part of the issue is that the immense amount of control it takes to mount such an undertaking precludes the moments of wildness required to really make it live. In short, in the current film-going environment, a PG-13 movie spectacular this untethered from pre-existing corporate properties is something of a miracle, albeit a flawed one that is missing the feral spark that makes the best man and beast stories so powerful. Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Jens Hultén, Natassia Malthe and Leonor Varela Written by: Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt (screenplay) and Albert Hughes (story) The most exciting set piece is when Keda falls though the ice, with the camera far below him, looking up through the clear blue as the wolf attempts to facilitate his rescue. No one flies no cities, planets or tall buildings blow up and it has no numerals dangling at the end of its title. In telling a simple tale of survival and friendship on the grandest scale, Alpha stands out as one of the more creative uses of big screen spectacle this summer. Still, it is difficult not to be impressed by much of what does arrive on screen.
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