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Babies (Movie Review)

I’m a fan of documentaries. It’s a great way to learn, in-depth, about a specific topic in a quick and efficient way. ‘Babies,’ unfortunately, wasn’t very insightful. It was extremely cute and adorable, but to pay $12 to see this, I’d rather recommend you string together 2 hours of cutesy YouTube videos of cuddly baby stunts and call it a day. Or just call your sister or friends who just had one and have them pop out their digital portraits of them. I’m sure the collection is already prepped and ready to go!

Because this is a documentary, there is no concrete plot, except that it focuses on one year in the life of four babies living on different continents: Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo and San Francisco.

The cameras capture the social, economic and cultural contrasts that each baby is provided. We also have a peek at how their parents raise them with the resources that life has made available to them. Besides the lovely tender moments of these infants, the film depends solely on the innocence of its four protagonists. The target audience is newly parents who will appreciate the idiosyncrasies that they have lived with their own children. It’s difficult to recommend you pay to see this in the theater. The wiser option for your pocket will be YouTube or when it comes out on DVD.

Oceans (Movie Review)

Disney is once again at it, creating rapturous sea imagery in ‘Oceans,’ their second cinematic effort distributed through there newly minted Disneynature Studios. If you are glued to the National Geography or Animal Planet channels, you won’t see anything different or innovative here, but what you will see is never before seen footage of sea creatures that we never even knew existed. That one fact makes all the difference in the world.

Documentaries don’t really have scripts, but the ‘plot’ here is the chronicling of the mysteries of the sea the way no human has ever seen it before. Directors Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud dive deep into the very waters that sustain all of mankind—exploring the harsh reality and the amazing creatures that live within. Actor Pierce Brosnan, an active environmentalist, narrates some of the most fantastic and surreal scenes on Earth.

The filmmakers began my sea experience through the eyes of a boy as he lays his eyes on the beach for the very first time. He’s overwhelmed. Brosnan begins speaking about what questions the boy, as well as us, might have about the crystal, deep blue sea.

What is remarkable and astounding is the onerous production in making a doc like this. Filmmakers traversed all five of the Earth’s oceans and devoted two full years to the preproduction process. That was followed by four years of shooting, with 75 excursions to dozens of the planet’s most untouched spots. It took nearly another year of postproduction to winnow down the 480 hours of footage. Overall, the task took seven years to create all for the price of a movie ticket.

Many of the sites visited where in Latin America such as Costa Rica, Panamá, Argentina, Galapagos, Venezuela and Mexico. The beauty that still lies there is ethereal.

For a mere 83 minutes, “Oceans†manages to extract some emotions from me by putting me in the middle of the action with a great white shark shredding to pieces a lovely sea lion, or watching a symphonic ballet of traveling tuna and awing me with the spectacle of exotic creatures that looked like something out of a Phillip K. Dick novel – The Blanket Octopus, The Spanish Dancer, The Manta Shrimp, The Ribbon Eel and the Leafy Seadragon.

This is beyond art, it is the best nature film I’ve ever seen of the sea. Oceans along with IMAX: Hubble 3D are by far the best documentaries of the year.

To follow Jack Rico’s film review check him out on Twitter at @jackricofficial