tieman64 This is a review of "Fly Away Home" and "Wind", two films by Carroll Ballard.Loosely speaking, Ballard makes two types of films. Those in which humans tentatively interact with "wild" animals, and those in which man interacts with nature via technology inspired by the natural world. In the first category Ballard's made fare like "The Black Stallion" and "Duma", in the second he's made films like "Wind" and "Fly Away Home". Arguable one of his best films, "Fly Away Home" is about a daughter and father who build an ultralight air-plane that mimics the behaviour of, and acts as a surrogate mother for, a flock of geese. Using the plane, the duo guide the birds to a sanctuary several hundred miles away. It's a touching picture, filled with beautiful scenery, gorgeous aerial footage, sensitive direction and some wonderfully understated acting by Jeff Daniels Anna Paquin.Though his financiers force formulaic plots upon him, Ballard dislikes heavy-handed storytelling, and so tends to keep his characters quiet and muted. With his ethereal visuals, use of silence and love for wind/nature, "Fly Away Home" strongly conjures up the work of Malick and Miyazaki.The film has flaws: some of its rear projection is intrusive, some of its conflicts are a bit clichéd, some of its villains are cartoonish, and aside from the opening and closing song, Ballard's musical score isn't strong enough for such a poetic picture. Still, these flaws are minor and don't intrude on the film's better qualities. While "Fly Away Home" involves an inventor building an air-plane, "Wind" involves a group of mechanical engineers designing a boat. Sounds boring? Both films are more interested in mood and ambiance than they are plot. In "Wind", the design team relocate to a huge hanger at the centre of a vast desert, a world away from the oceans they hope to conquer. We watch as they sculpt away at their boat, Ballard salivating over sleek hulls, tall masts and mighty rudders. Muscles, skeletons, animals, rocks, wind and water are studied and observed, the boat a failure if its body doesn't bend to the will of the waves.Both films deal with men and machines waltzing with nature; our ultralight air-plane is only believable to the geese if they perceive it to be their biological mother, and Ballard's boats fail if they don't slice cleanly through the winds and waves. To resist nature is to compromise the design.Both films were also mildly influential in how they added to our camera vocabulary. "Fly Away Home" gave us some then new three-dimensional camera sweeps and "Wind" offered several cinematic baby steps as well, using specially designed camera mounts for both helicopters and boat hulls, masts etc. "Fly Away Home" is the better of the two films - it's one of the best "family" films of the 1990s - whilst "Wind" is plagued by a bad script, though it does also offer excellent mood and ambiance. You sense that Ballard wants to avoid conventional Hollywood scripts as much as possible, but that they're necessary to provide some semblance of either structure or marketability."Fly Away Home" – 8.5/10 "Wind" – 8/10

TedMichaelMor Cinematographay, superb editing, and a first class sound track make this film. The light in Australia and Newport, aerial shots, even computer graphics (in news scenes), long framing shots, camera movement, medium and close shots on board the boats, and excellent narrative editing thrill the eye and our love of story.Contrast between the ocean and the desert where designer and builders construct the American challenger boat bring a delightful balance to the iconography.Preppie clothing and elegant on land settings let us pretend ourselves into a special and exclusive world. With all this, the actors play their hand in the melodrama with just the right pitch. I enjoyed the movie. Well worth watching again.

Nixaandehand It's as far as i know the only movie about regatta sailing, which makes it automatically the best available. I love it, the sailing sequences make you feel as if you're on board yourself. The film does a good attempt to make you experience the excitement felt on the water. To illustrate: i was totally sucked into the regatta sequence and caught myself shouting directions and boo-ing people at a certain point. All other story-filling and plot is not that bad, it gives the movie an acceptable background and a good excuse to show the excitement and hard work which makes "the art of sailing" so great. The best reason to go and watch it? obvious, the sailing, so for non-sailors it's probably less interesting but still nice. I loved it the first time i saw it in 1995 in a regatta weekend, and i still love it after seeing it again today. (funny note: I think there is functional nudity implemented in the movie; half-naked cheering Australian women at the introduction of Geronimo @ the cup, just before the crew's tribal dance).

caspian1978 A comedian made a joke about Wind back in 1992. He said he didn't have time to see the movie Wind....it blew away before he could see it.Wind has a small audience of fans. If you own a boat, you may be a fan of a movie about yachts, clipper ships, fishing, boat racing, etc. If you are a fan of Matthew Modine and / or Cliff Robertson, you may be a fan of movies that star them. Oh, if you live in the area where a movie was shot, this could influence you to want to watch the movie when it comes to the local cinema. Besides these reasons, Wind as very few people that will want to see this movie. Although the idea and the story has merit, it "blow away" with the wind. And is it just me, or does the opening of the film remind you of the opening of Grease when Olivia Newton John and John Travolta are talking on the coast of the beach? The scenes are different, but also the same. Oh well, if you like boats or you live near Newport, Rhode Island, Wind may be a nice film to watch.....once.