Dorathen Better Late Then Never

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

lasttimeisaw harbored a certain higher expectation to watch the film in the local cinema on account of that the ticket was rather difficult to obtain (I had tried a third time to finally have attained the ticket for a day after), also in China, it's not so usual that a documentary could enjoy a long-run success in the cinema (a steady augmentation weekly).The screen was a generic 2D without IMAX, which should be a perfect option for the sake of the ocean grandeur, and the premise was appealing and epiphanic, I was immediately captured by the beauty of nature and was downrightly ready to immerse myself into an eye-opening voyage.Then bit by bit I noticed that there were not quite a chunk of eye-opening creatures there, having a biological background, I must admit few are beyond my knowledge and the which was worse that it hardly jumped out of the remit of the national geography channel, plus the covering realm is way too large for a single feature, so every time I had grown my interest and attention to the specific specie, the subject leaped to another one at once, so after several rounds, my feeling of indigestion caused a sense of fatigue. I cried out loud inside that please linger a little bit longer! Nevertheless, the vastness of oceans is a mission impossible to conquer, a deeply sincere summoning of saving-the-world is banal but at least well-intentional (the cruelty of net-harvest and procuring of shark fins is manipulative but intensely appalling.Visually jaw-dropping, the effort behind the team alone does a spate of standing ovations! I emphatically admire what a mammoth patience and audacity human beings could achieve!

gregking4 Lovers of the National Geographic style of documentary and television wildlife documentaries will certainly enjoy Oceans, the new documentary from Disney and French filmmakers Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzard (the Oscar nominated Travelling Birds, etc). Perrin and Cluzard take us on an underwater journey with their latest film, which they have described as a "wildlife opera." The film was shot over a period of four years in a host of diverse locations using some of the latest technology, which is way beyond anything that the famed oceanographer Jacques Costeau had at his disposal. The result is visually quite stunning, especially when seen on the big screen. Some twenty cinematographers worked on the film. During the end credits we get to see the filmmakers interacting with the sea creatures and swimming with the fishes. Along the way we meet many of the diverse life forms and get up close with the denizens of the deep, including whales, penguins, and schools of brightly coloured fish. During the course of the film we meet some 90 different species of sea creatures, although there is precious little information given about them. Instead, what we have is a marvellously intimate close up of the various creatures both at play and feeding on other species. The filmmakers also introduce us to some rare and endangered species, serving a timely ecological warning about this vanishing undersea world. The film delivers a potent message about the damage being caused to the oceans by pollution, predators, and the millions of tonnes of garbage dumped into the oceans, and it sends a strong warning about the need to preserve the fragile marine ecosystem. "Human indifference is the oceans' greatest threat," remarks Pierce Brosnan, our narrator for this undersea journey. However, there is something dry and clichéd about his narration, translated from the more poetic and lyrical French, which is delivered in bored and distracted tones by Brosnan. Unfortunately, the film has a "seen it all before" vibe, and little of the material is fresh. While we've all seen footage of polar bears, sharks, dolphins, whales, and the cute antics of penguins before, there are also some unusual sea creatures captured on film. The most spectacular scene features a flock of birds dive bombing a school of fish for their food; accompanied by Bruno Coulais' wonderful score this is easily the standout sequence. With Oceans Perrin and Cluzard actually add little to our understanding of these creatures, as there is a lack of solid facts or connecting threads to link it all together in coherent fashion. Also, the version we are seeing locally is 20 minutes shorter than the original overseas version first released in 2010.

lite_fuzz An earlier review made me chuckle: "...every once in a while, you might just pinch yourself to see if those beautiful images are really real or created with a green screen. Of course, no CG effect could ever replicate nature's beauty." Tell that to the 57 crew for the film credited with one of the following: -digital artist -digital compositor -digital effects artist -head of CG environment Mikros -head of render farm -head of software -head of VFX studio -matte painter -modeling/texture artist -render farm operator -rotoscope artist -visual effect supervisor -visual effects coordinator -visual effects producer -visual effects production assistant -visual effects supervisor

DICK STEEL Making its world premiere at last year's Tokyo International Film Festival, Oceans is the latest enviro-documentary to hit the big screens, highlighting that while outer space is touted as the final frontier to be conquered by man, the waters around our land mass hold just as much fascination with the countless of species available in the depths of the ocean. Oceans, by directors Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, provide us that glimpse 20,000 leagues under the sea.For those, like me, who are absolutely clueless about the sea creatures other than what can be put on the dining table, you'll be left quite flabbergasted as you observe the various species being featured on screen, without any prompt or subtitle to label just exactly what creature they are. Of course for those who are schooled by Finding Nemo, you're likely to be able to name some of what's featured, just as the noisy young boy sitting beside me was able to, being somewhat of a help.Aside from the usual gorgeous cinematography featuring schools of dolphins in motion, and plenty of synchronized swimming, with creatures big and small ranging from the giant whales to the newly hatched turtles struggling to make it to the waters before being picked up mercilessly by their predators, this is one documentary that allows you to go up close to these creatures since cameras were planted into the depths of all the oceans of the world.It doesn't come across as preachy, because it doesn't wear its ecological badge in such an obvious manner at all in its sparse narrative. Instead, it does so very subtly, reminding us that there are others with whom we share this Earth with, and if we continue to plunder and pollute the land and treat the sea as sewage (so is that gaping hole capped by BP already?), then these are the creatures that we will lose in the near future, causing a major upset in the balance of Nature, and who can predict how Nature's wrath will be incurred back on us.Nature documentaries are no longer made for the small screen, but have some mighty budget to be able to bring quality to the making of such films, serving to entertain and to capture beauty so rarely seen.