Man Was in the Forest: Good Nature, Bad People
Animals aren't all monstrous creatures bent on vengeance. For as many films exist that depict nature's dark side, there are a number of worthy movies that evince their environmentalism by showing the beauty of the beast, the grandeur of its habitat and the evil that men do to ruin it. What is "King Kong," both the original 1933 version and Peter Jackson's 2005 epic, but a plea for animal welfare? PETA couldn't have come up with a better moment to make us sympathize with the plight of nature's creations than Naomi Watts staring longingly into the eyes of the giant dying ape atop the Empire State Building?

With all the Old Yellers, Free Willys and Lassies, most animal movies veer into hackneyed melodrama. Yet, there are a few that stand out for steering clear of anthropomorphic sentimentality: "Gorillas in the Mist," the mostly engrossing 1988 film about Dian Fossey's crusade to save mountain gorillas (starring a steely Sigourney Weaver); the harrowing animated 1978 British adaptation of "Watership Down," where bunnies are driven from their habitat by humankind to face more horrific dangers in the wild; and, the lesser-known Disney film, 1983's "Never Cry Wolf," which follows a researcher in search of Arctic gray wolves that are allegedly causing the extinction of caribou.

Directed by Carroll Ballard (better known for "The Black Stallion"), "Never Cry Wolf" has a family-friendly touch, yet never sugarcoats its subject matter. In a cold, forbidding tundra, dancing penguins are nowhere to be seen -- just the beautiful and mysterious wolves who have been misjudged. It turns out they are not the ferocious caribou killers; instead, callous hunters are to be blamed. As Bambi's mother once said: "Man was in the forest."

In John Boorman's majestic 1985 feature "The Emerald Forest," man isn't just in the forest, he's obliterating it mile by mile. Set in the Brazilian jungles, the film recounts the story of a man working on a dam project whose 7-year-old son is abducted by a Native tribe. When he discovers the boy 10 years later, he finds the he is no longer suited for civilization. With gorgeous cinematography of the Brazilian rainforests and its Amazonian people, the movie offers a sumptuous ode to the environment -- and a harsh condemnation of the modern world that destroys it.

Soylent Green Is People: The Enemy Is Us
If both eco-horror and wildlife movies explore the tensions between man and nature, a number of films reflect environmental struggles between humankind and the unsustainable world that we've created. In the late '70s and early '80s, American moviegoers experienced a deluge of paranoid thrillers and conspiracy pictures, including the dystopian ecological sci-fi flick "Soylent Green" (1973), and two groundbreaking Hollywood movies about the dangers of unchecked nuclear power: "The China Syndrome" (1979) and "Silkwood" (1983).

While "Soylent Green" is a guilty pleasure for its cheesy '70s future-shock look and Charlton Heston's exaggerated performance, the movie paints a devastating portrait of the dangers of the "greenhouse effect" (marking perhaps the first time the words were ever uttered on the big-screen). Set in an undernourished and overcrowded future (New York population: 40 million!), the film depicts on an overheated world where all natural resources have been destroyed. "Soylent Green," a genetically engineeered food source -- surprise, surprise -- turns out not to be the miracle substance the Soylent corporation has been pitching. And, like subsequent environmental thrillers, the movie lays its chief blame on the evil corporation and the callous suits who care only for profit.

The bad guys in "The China Syndome," for example, are the high-level bureacrats and executives of the nuclear power industry, whose lax safety regulations endanger human lives. With Jack Lemmon as a control room technician, Jane Fonda as a television journalist and Michael Douglas as her renegade cameraman, these environmental whistleblowers join forces to expose a corrupt nuclear industry that is more interested in expansion than safety. Famously released in theaters just two weeks before the nuclear accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, "The China Syndome" proved itself to be a prescient suspense drama about the anxieties of nuclear energy -- anxieties that are no less relevant today.

Director Mike Nichols' stirring "Silkwood" offers an even more intimate examination of the psychological and physical fallout from nuclear power. Based on the real-life story of Karen Silkwood (a brassy, breakout performance by Meryl Streep), the film chronicles Karen's work at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Plutonium Recycling Facility in Oklahoma, where unsatisfactory safety conditions lead her and some of her co-workers to be contaminated by radioactive materials. The film not only addresses the dangers of nuclear energy, but the conflicted relationships, labor struggles and internal battles that were integrally related to Karen's fight -- and her eventual demise. She was mysteriously killed in a car accident on the way to meet a New York Times reporter in 1974.

Some 20 years later, Hollywood returned to similar stories of corrupt companies, the impact of their environmental neglect, and the crusaders who fought to right their wrongs. In "A Civil Action" (1998), based on Jonathan Harr's novel, John Travolta plays an egotistical lawyer redeemed through his quest on behalf of the residents of Woburn, Massachusetts, who've been poisoned by a contaminated river. Released just two years later, "Erin Brockovich" stars Julia Roberts in an Oscar-winning performance as the intrepid activist and single mother of three who exposes a cover-up of the pollution of a small California town's water supply by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

Before these two reality-based Hollywood stories, there was Todd Haynes' "Safe" (1995), an entirely fictional, but arguably far more haunting portrait of environmental toxicity. In a stunningly frigid performance, Julianne Moore plays Carol White, a California housewife who suddenly finds herself sneezing, coughing and suffering nosebleeds for no apparent reason. What is to blame? The everyday chemicals that make her sleek, beautiful home clean? The prevailing haze of pollution that hangs over Los Angeles? Moore's delicate Carol thinks so. To escape her environmental illness, she joins a New Age community, whose closed-off, insular world implies another sort of stifling entrapment where breathing freely is not any easier.

An unnerving movie that offers no easy targets and no easy answers, "Safe" suggests that the best thing can we do on Earth Day is not to stay inside and discuss climate change with like-minded ecological supporters or doomsayers (or watch movies about them), but, rather, get off our butts -- away from our computers -- and enjoy the air, water, and grass -- while we still can.

Sound off on Earth Day movies. Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com or visit our message board.

In addition to his regular contributions to MSN Movies, Anthony Kaufman has written about films and the film industry for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Village Voice. He is a frequent contributor to Variety, the Wall Street Journal Online, indieWIRE.com and the Utne Reader.

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