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How sad is this?

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Who amongst us has not dreamt of flying under our own power? Despite a century of airplanes there is still nothing akin to winging off into the blue, crannying through small openings in trees, scaling sheer cliff faces. Never before has the idea of real bird-like flight been so perfectly expressed on film as it has in director Jacques Perrin's masterful documentary film Winged Migration. Naysayers have decried the film is not a documentary because many of the birds were raised from birth, then trained to obey humans, bonded to them for they were the 1st things the birds saw after birth, called imprinting), so they're not 'really' wild animals. Another objection is that the film, on several occasions, intersperses computer graphics with the 'authentic' documentary sequences.These objections are bushwah- this film is 1 of the most unique & exhilarating pieces of film- documentary or not- ever made. It goes & we see them interact in ways never not just seen before, but not really imagined. Yet, despite how informative it is the film is really about how birds live, in an interior sense. Most people watching this film will have ideas that birds migrate, are sensitive to earth's electromagnetic fields, & acutely aware of the seemingly most trivial landmarks, but it's when the film focuses in on a species or flock that we realize that all the birds are individual. Unlike the Alfred Hitchcock film, The Birds, these creatures are not mindless automata. Because they are not as sophisticated as humans does not mean they do not possess a high degree of sophistication, & 1 might even argue bird culture. Mating dances, flight patterns, hunting routines, are all delineated in detail, & we see the travails & triumphs of groups, even as some individuals fall prey to death in its myriad forms- human hunters, industrial waste, other birds, & in a particularly chilling scene a bird with a broken wing who is pursued on a beach by a horde of voracious sand crabs.Of course, being a documentary there is not a real plot, we just follow the different flocks through the course of a year. What intrigues is how the footage got so close to the birds? Some was taken while flying in ultra-light aircrafts, the noise of which the birds were made accustomed to while still in their eggs. Other footage was culled from hot air balloons & some from ground vehicles. Regardless of its provenance the visuals dazzle far more than any cyberworld can. Take your faraway worlds & galactic rides- give me this earth, this view, this way! Thankfully, there is very little narration- just enough to inform of a plight, but not enough to drone on irrelevantly.

This is my two-year-old daughter's favorite movie. She watches it as often as we allow her to. She particularly likes the pelicans and the "Candigle (i.e. Canada) Geese." Luckily, my husband and I also enjoy it -- the cinematography is impressive, and some of the images are stunning. Some of the scenes were staged, which is more apparent to us as adults, and the music is repetitive and in some cases overly dramatic or "inspirational," especially over the opening and closing credits. Still, given the awful tripe that small children sometimes become enthralled with, I think we are lucky; and if she asks to watch it on a nice day, we can suggest going to the local park instead, to see some real live birds.There are several scenes that might be upsetting to a young child. I have noted them in the Parents' advisory section. Our daughter is a little too young to understand what is happening in these scenes, so most of them don't bother her, but she does insist on getting on mommy or daddy's lap during a couple of scenes.

A fine french documentary about migratory birds, by the same team that made the insect documentary "Microcosmos". You are likely to be awed by these images, and wonder "how did they film this" all the time. Unfortunately, I also had a few reservations: one (a minor, perhaps) is that the documentary is a bit too long, even for the most enthusiasts of bird lovers. Second, the version I saw in the cinema was dubbed in a very strongly accented English, which was distractive. Third (and perhaps more seriously), some of the sequences are obviously staged (for example, a parrot escaping from a cage in the Amazon): for a movie that purports to be a documentary, seeing something to be staged is an obvious disappointment. These criticisms aside, I believe this movie is very much worthwhile watching.

The photography in this outstanding movie is simply astonishing. You are constantly asking yourself: "how did they do that?" What is more amazing is that they did not employ any trick digital techniques - what you see is real, the result of four painstaking years. A beautiful, uplifting film. There are images that will live with you for a long time. And you do not have to be a bird lover to enjoy it (I'm not). The DVD contains a very interesting "making of" feature which explains how they captured the amazing footage. It shows how they "imprinted" the birds from birth to be comfortable around humans (using techniques pioneered by Konrad Lorenz) and thus were able to film them close up. Jaw droppingly beautiful. The greatest nature film I have ever seen.