SELECTED BY JONATHAN LEWIS:

   

   This one flew under the radar and was generally perceived to be a box office flop. Adapted from the eponymous Jack London adventure novel, The Call of the Wild is equally part spectacle and part sentiment. The trailer does a fairly accurate job in conveying the general story. This is to be a tale about a dog, Buck, as he leaves the comforts of northern California and embarks on a new life in the Yukon. And as you can quickly ascertain, Buck is a CGI creation and not a “real dog.”

   But that doesn’t stop the movie from being emotionally resonant. The moments in the movie in which Harrison Ford’s character bonds with Buck are quite powerful. It’s nice to see Ford back in a major motion picture. The cinematography by Janusz KamiÅ„ski, a frequent collaborator with Steven Spielberg, is quite striking and shows how much investment, financial and otherwise, was put into this overall family friendly film.

   Unfortunately, despite the filmmakers’ best intentions, this cinematic adaptation of a classic work simply does not rise to the level of greatness to which it clearly aspired. There’s something flat about the whole affair, despite the moments in which it shines bright. I think that flatness is fairly well captured in the trailer as well.