The cinematography of "Oceans" is lovely--much the sort of thing you see in "Earth" and the other David Attenborough films. In other words, this French film is simply gorgeous and offers breathtaking scene after breathtaking scene. You cannot help but admire it. Is this saying it's a must-see or brilliant film? No. While the film looks absolutely stunning and the English language version very soothing thanks to the lovely narration by Pierce Brosnan, it's also a bit of a confusing film. After all, there really doesn't seem to be any real coherent theme to all the clips other than 'we should make sure to save these critters'. So, it bounces from one creature to another but there's really no segue or reason to it other than they live in the oceans. Had they stuck only with sea mammals or fishes it would have made some more sense but the choices of which animals to feature just seemed random. Enjoyable to watch despite all this.

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

Oceans, though a documentary, is also quite a typical French movie in that it is confounding, since the French seem to celebrate the abstract. My reaction at the end of a few French movies has been "WTF."I initially expected this to be an ecological "save our oceans" movies, but the first half of the movie played more like a "mysteries of the ocean" visual extravaganza in which they showed many creatures and sights I'd never seen before. Gorgeous. All of a sudden it switches to highlighting the cruelty of man, with many bloody scenes such as live sharks having their fins cut off and being tossed back into the ocean to starve to death. And then it concludes with the expected "save our oceans" spiel, which I have to say is a whole lot less interesting than the rest of the movie. And not very motivating either. At the end of An Inconvenient Truth, I felt like I had to go out to do something to help save the world (I didn't but still), whereas Oceans left me mostly apathetic. What this movie feels like is a string of visually spectacular clips of marine life, tied together as best they could by its directors into a barely-cohesive documentary. Its messages come across as incidental and unavoidable: "Well since we have these gory/sad clips anyway and since all documentaries about nature have to chastise humans."It's not a bad watch if you're into nature documentaries but you're ambivalent, you might as well stay home and watch The Discovery Channel.

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.