So much average

Sick Product of a Sick System

Best movie ever!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I was getting the speakers in my car upgraded when the salesman showed me their new HD TVs and the super speaker systems. He used LOTR to demonstrate how you hear the smallest sounds. I wish he would have used this film. I would have bought a system right away. Even on my normal TV with build in stereo the sights and sounds were nothing short of spectacular.I am not just talking about the music, which was incredibly beautiful, but the sounds of the life forms in the film. They really enhanced the small creatures with close up camera work and realistic sound. Looking at a lizard, you could imagine a dinosaur with any effort at all.Anyone who watched the Discovery Channel on occasion, especially if you have been watch Planet earth - and I hope you have - has seen some incredible things, but I have not seen anything as incredible as this.We science geeks know that the atoms in Hitler or Ghengis Khan could be floating around in our bodies right now, but anyone will enjoy seeing the story of life and death with all the drama and excitement that this film has.If you get Showtime (I don't) then tune in as it is currently playing.

Yes, the visuals are dazzling. The pacing and camera stance are almost Kubrickian, which alone reminds us that we are seeing a movie, and not a Discovery channel feature. There are three narratives at work here, the visuals, our collective knowledge of science/nature that we have before experiencing these visuals, and the narration. Of these, the narration is the weakest link, nearly broken when we get to the conflation of biology with poetic 'love'. That is before......we get to Entropy. Movies themselves are a kind of struggle against entropy. Starting with a flood of chaotic images (elements), the movie's task is to go against the flow and try to impose a higher state of order -- a sort of life of its own in the viewer's mind. Through this device of self-reference, we are given the target criterion with which we judge the movie's quality: does the new order in your mind hold up against degradation? I would say yes. Not only visually, but narratively -- by looking at ourselves from outside ourselves, the trap of melodrama is avoided.Watch this and pay attention to the sight of a drop of milk dissolving in water, or the smoke rings...these are inherently cinematic notions: notions that belong with us among the tribe of the living.

Clearly not everyone will like this film. It is very different from Microcosmos and Winged Migration in that it doesn't have enough imagery to woo the viewer, but adds some sort of narrative unlike the first two films.Unfortunately, the narrative is extremely simplistic and not creative or beautiful enough to hide the fact. It consists of a Negro elder somewhere in Africa, who in rather accessible, but very simplistic language explains that Earth emerged, cooled down, life evolved, organisms have sex and this is how he came to this world. This might be interesting to children or people not familiar with science and nature documentaries, but for a refined viewer such narrative doesn't offer anything compelling.Unfortunately, there isn't much in the film for them. The visuals, while pretty, are not original at all (some molten lava, some birds, some insects, etc.). We have indeed seen most of it in countless other documentaries, which was not the case with visually revolutionary Microcosmos and Winged Migration. There are some funny scenes that usually involve anthropomorphic behaviour from animals - perhaps revealing the intention to target this film towards kids. :) If you go to see this movie, please don't expect to see anything deep, don't expect to see but most cursory description of genesis and don't expect visual breakthroughs. It's just a nice small movie with pretty pictures and some funny moments.

Just like the Director did some ago in Microcosmos. This is a project in which we can see the advances of film-making, the one that can show us images that we had never seen before. Amazing! Beautiful! This film is not for any public. If you are a blockbuster addict, don't even think about watching it.Even though I don't speak French and I watched without subtitles, I enjoyed every single and beautiful image. From the crystallization of Vitamin C through and electronic microscope, to the sea horses love dance, from the amazing life of the walking fish to the love parakeets, from the beautiful dance of Jellyfish to the lava rivers, every single image is filled with color, life, joy and some kind of mystery.Julio Acosta