Documentaries & Biographies > Natural History Documentaries Documentaries & Biographies

Advantages: Amazing views of British landscapes, clever special effects.
Disadvantages: Titchmarsh can get on your nerves, and nothing new here for the academic

British Isles: A Natural History was a BBC television series in late 2004 in which Alan Titchmarsh travelled all over the UK to trace the origins of the country and find out how the landscape has changed. As a geography student I watched the series when it was on television, while studying for my A-levels at the time. I have to say that I did not learn a lot from the series; it is rather basic and gives a very broad overview of the past 3 billion ...
...if older members of the British public find this sort of viewing entertaining, but as a 20-year-old I can tell you that it seems to be a waste of valuable filming time when they could be showing more beautiful landscapes! Anyway, that's the great thing about the DVD, you can just skip past these bits if you want to! I have to praise the special effects in the series. Like any nature documentary it has the fast forwarded time series of flowers blooming ... Read review

Advantages: educational, adventerous
Disadvantages: a little violent for small children

...how people portray them. Walking With Dinosaurs shows how dinosaurs really lived back then. It shows how they would act and defend themselves. It is very educational and filled with interesting facts for kids and adults of all ages. It really expands our minds and our knowledge. We can walk with those dinosaurs as they hunt, lay eggs, bring up their young, how they feed, defensive manuevers and strategies, and much more. This is an adventerous series ...
...It just brings the animals to life. It is wonderfully narrated and very accurate. It really portrays the life of the dinosaurs. It shows the dangers, the triumphs, and the defeats. I really appreciated this. The directors portrayed these well and really captured their movements and features. Do you want to find out great facts about the dinosaurs? Do you want to know what kind of dinosaurs there were? Have you ever wondered what it would be like ... Read review

Advantages: Masterfully edited, full of astounding footage both familiar and otherwise...a classic.
Disadvantages: None.

...rarely-seen footage and interview material, No Direction Home is, for the first half at least, as much about America in the pause-for-breath moment between the beat writers of the 1950s and the counter-culture student movements of the mid-to-late 1960s as it is about the life and work of Robert Zimmerman. It is - clichéd as it sounds - a sweeping, engrossing portrait of a time and of a place, scouring the terrain leads from the rattle-tattle zap-pow ...
...of Odetta's acoustic guitar, from the wandering shoes of Neil Cassidy to those of Woody Guthrie. Dylan features heavily throughout this section of the film, of course, but he is very much a character-in-the-making. When he does take centre-stage in time for the second half (the film is, incidentally, almost four hours long), it is via some of the most compelling footage available, some of it assumed lost or destroyed. A talking heads documentary ... Read review

Advantages: Uncompromising, thought-provoking meld of exploitation and propaganda.
Disadvantages: Morally disturbing, apparently uncertain of its audience at times.

...Executions. Like the latter, The Killing Of America parades its grotesqueries (sundry assassinations, beatings, slaughters...) in the service of a core political message - a message which, in this instance, is almost as disturbing as the carnage onscreen. The film almost seems to call for vigilante justice, and a reactionary, right-wing tone informs most every scene. It is, however, a fascinating picture in its own right, a strange, curious meld ... Read review

Advantages: big budget-good fun-good story
Disadvantages: unscary morlocks

...modern remake of the 1960s time machine. This movie is about Hg wells remake of the original "time machine" back in the 1960s. The 2002 remake stars Guy Pearce .... Alexander Hartdegen Mark Addy .... David Filby Orlando Jones .... Vox Samantha Mumba .... Mara Omero Mumba .... Kalen Jeremy Irons .... Uber-Morlock Sienna Guillory .... Emma Phyllida Law .... Mrs. Watchet this movie is about a Victorian man named Alexander who lost his loved ...
...and save her but every time he returns she always dies a painful death, he then decides to travel further into the future going from one time to another eventually he settles in 800000 ad. Alexander encounters a new species called the morlocks who have lived for many centuries, they are big and very fast and strong, they feed off the human race who now live in huts or tents attached to the side of river banks. I have never been a big fan of remakes ... Read review