AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Peter Grunbaum Great movie with some stunning imagery from the oceans, but, like other reviewers have pointed out, why do we have to see all the sentimental stuff? It didn't help the narrative. The ocean is about the ocean. We go in to see a movie about the ocean. Period. There was a lot of stuff in this movie that was not related to that subject. The beauty of documentarism is precisely that it is different from fiction, therefore I find it lacking in focus to use actors to get a point across. Actors belong in the theater and fictitious movies. But the imagery from the ocean was great. It was just a bit hard to enjoy when, at any moment, they might cut to something else. Anyway, pretty good movie, with some really amazing stuff from the sea.

dandydan69ca-2 This is what our world must demand from all the studious out there making films of any kind. Our race must wake up now and not only learn of all the wonderful being's we are so honored to share our earth with but we must as a united whole, start helping each and every one of them on land and sea that are so desperately in need of us do more than just care. It all begins with the young. Parents of this world hear my plea, teach your cherished babies right after they learn to speak of what really matters in this life. Show them while they are tiny the horrors that we bestow on them all. Teach them that all life has its place on this earth and each and every last species matters. Look at what dear Terri Irwin and our now gone hero Steve taught their little darling Bindi in his so few years he had with her. I say let us surround our lovely Bindi with an army of youth who think just as she does. If we can teach all the young worldwide and demand in all their schools 1 hour out of every day they attend gets devoted to learning on a specific creature and show them programs starting with this one. Show the horrible as it must be seen Earthlings, entire schools watching together at the same time. And let them choose their favorite life forms to care for most. By letting the kids do projects on them. Well what do you all think is going to happen from this? Well I will tell you and that is our race will awaken and realize it's our duty to show all life that they can live without fear from us and that we are their friends who will protect rather than hurt them. When we accomplish this we will evolve into the potential of a loving and caring being we all have within us to be. Many who read this may think I am dreaming as well as rambling on and they may be right. But I still have hope in humankind that we can join together and not only care for our race but all races of beings on our 1 earth. Hooray to Disney and Sir Walt who is smiling down after watching this gem.

Lawson 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.

Eternality There is a sequence in Oceans that blows my mind. A stone crab emerges from the seabed and crawls along. Another follows. And then a few more follow. The camera then trails these creatures as they make their way to somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The stone crabs are joined by more of their own. Suddenly, in an establishing shot that continues to baffle me, the camera reveals what seems like hundreds of thousands of stone crabs in "a great big orgy". The sandy seabed that stretches for miles and miles could not have been more alive.That is only one of a number of spectacular scenes on show. Another highly memorable sequence shows deft skill in quick cutting as hundreds of predatory birds dive headfirst into the water at startling speeds as the camera captures their assault on small fishes through above water and underwater shots. The latter is quite incredible, and eerily reminiscent of bullets ripping through the water in the Normandy beach scene of Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998).Jacques Perrin, whose previous film credits famously include acting as the adult Toto in Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988), director of the excellent Oscar-nominated documentary Winged Migration (2001), and producer of Z (1969) and The Chorus (2004), now has Oceans in his resume, a documentary that explores in amazing detail what happens under the sea, bright day or still night, stormy or fine weather. The result is like nature washing over you as you drown in its unrivalled beauty. There is no gasping for air but the taking in of the vitality of life.Oceans surprisingly works well as "a thriller". In certain sequences, Perrin opts for suspense, such as the one involving baby turtles as they evade hungry birds, making their way into the sea from the shore in their own version of Normandy. Many of them are eaten while the lucky ones try to survive in the big blue ocean. Even though collectively the turtles represent a faceless mass, we fear for each one of them because Perrin focuses on one or two of them at any one time, heightening the sense of vulnerability.It is not surprising, however, to see Oceans preaching the ecological message. "Save the planet! Save the animals!" become the general plea for viewers to do their part in protecting their only home in this vast universe. But the plea is not as strong and specifically targeted as what is felt in The Cove (2009), the Oscar-winning documentary that secretly chronicles the slaying of hundreds of dolphins by Japanese fishermen in a hidden lagoon, and has now been controversially and unfairly labeled as "anti-Japanese".Oceans is lightly-narrated. This is a good move as the stunning underwater cinematography is left to do all the talking, or in this context, to speak in silence to the viewer. Perrin films in cinema verite style; his camera is unbiased, objective, and unobtrusive. His use of original music by Bruno Coulais (The Chorus) is also spot on. Very often, the marrying of melody and motion (that of sea creatures) is a joy to experience, alternating between the subtle and the grandeur.It's weird to say this but Oceans may leave your forearms bruised. Now, you may wonder why. Well, every once in a while, you might just pinch yourself to see if those beautiful imageries are really real or created with a green screen. Of course, no CG effect could ever replicate nature's beauty. Oceans shows why and that's quite something to think about.SCORE: 8/10 (www.filmnomenon.blogspot.com) All rights reserved!