Customer Reviews

Wolves [Blu-ray]

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I was expecting this to be a high quality nature film similarily filmed to Planet Earth. Imax has sorely disappointed me. At best the quality isn't great and it doesn't even look as good as nature films recorded on lower quality equipment.

Also, if you expect this DVD entitled "Wolves" to include anything remotely related to footage with wolves in it you will be disappointed. This movie is a documentary about the rape of the aboriginal culture. There are about 4 minutes of actual footage of wolves in the wild.

You would be better served by staring at a still image of a wolf if you hope to learn about wolves rather than watch this painfully bad "wolf documentary"

I bought this in hopes it would be a good Wolf documentary. But sadly the feature did not come out well. The director tried to cram to much into its 40 or so minute run time. You see one pack of wolves working to raise pups and also one scene of wolves chasing their prey. I would have prefered it be on following one pack of wolves.

This film was absolutely terrible. For most of the film what you are watching is in a tiny box in the center of the screen with a background image filling up the rest of the TV. My husband didn't even finish watching. It was boring and not about Wolves hardly at all.

IMAX Wolves is another attempt at bringing the catalog of old IMAX nature films to Blu-ray. I've seen about 10 of these now and most of them have been disappointing. This title, I'm sad to say, is no different. It is from 1999, which in itself isn't a bad thing if the documentary is well-produced and informative, as there are certainly many films that hold up quite well over time. Wolves does not. It is dated, boring, and not really even about wolves. It's about people's relationship with wolves, our misconceptions, and the effort to bring them back through breeding programs by the Nez Perce tribes and conservationists in Idaho.

The film begins by talking about the balance of nature, with a shot of an airplane flying over Yellowstone's snow covered terrain and accompanying radio chatter. The very first cut is of a guy in an orange jumpsuit getting out of what looks like an outhouse with a radio antenna on top of it (probably a research station? I don't know, since the film doesn't tell you). The video in many scenes is astoundingly awful. It is shown superimposed in a black-bordered box in center of the screen, with a background around it, or simply on a black background. This is to compensate for the fact that the footage is low quality or low resolution. I counted at least 5 scenes like this (totaling more than 10 minutes), including 2 history lessons about how white men killed the wolves and buffalo to starve the Native Americans. Wolves are really a byproduct of this film. It's really about people, which is more than half of the run time. There's a lot of people talking about protecting the wolves, educating young people about the truth, and trying to bring them back.

A terrible Blu-ray disc and a bad documentary. Check out Yellowstone: Battle for Life [Blu-ray] instead if you're interested in seeing animals. There's a wonderful segment about wolves in there.