Alpha

A work of great imagination but devoid of wasteful excess, grounding his straightforward tale in recognizable human-and animal-behaviors.

Evidently, facts aren't terribly important here (even the movie's title comes from a civilization that's still millennia away), but if you can get past that, there's a moderately gripping tale of survival and natural kinship to be had.

There's a pleasant, old-fashioned feel to Alpha. It plays like one of those Disneynature movies with sharper edges.

Seeing Alpha on as big and splashy a screen as possible is advisable, preferably with children who can handle occasional scenes of intense peril.

You know Sheila the She-Wolf from "Glow" on Netflix? "Alpha" would be her favorite movie.

The story is straightforward, directional, a direct but difficult path from danger to safety, punctuated by life-threatening adventures. What could have made other storytellers stir-crazy seems to have unleashed something philosophical in Albert Hughes.

...When you're starting from scratch, claw and bite, there's a lot of trust-building that has to happen. Not just between the animal and the human, but between film and the audience. For recreating the boy and his dog story... Alpha gets a cookie.

Alpha is a stirring top-tier adventure.

It's basically The Revenant meets Barbara Woodhouse, with a hefty dollop of schmaltz, full of clichés...and hilariously portentous subtitled dialogue.

Smit-McPhee has to do most of the heavy lifting, and he does so with such magnetism, he puts the aurora borealis sequence to shame.

Alpha is splendidly photographed, nicely paced, and allows us to imagine what it must have been like to live short, brutal, vivid lives surrounded by natural predators.

It's a type of film which doesn't get made anymore. Watch it for its uniqueness as well as the warm-hearted tale it unfolds...