What makes it different from others?

Nice effects though.

Instant Favorite.

Great Film overall

I was getting the speakers in my car upgraded when the salesman showed me their new HD TVs and the super speaker systems. He used LOTR to demonstrate how you hear the smallest sounds. I wish he would have used this film. I would have bought a system right away. Even on my normal TV with build in stereo the sights and sounds were nothing short of spectacular.I am not just talking about the music, which was incredibly beautiful, but the sounds of the life forms in the film. They really enhanced the small creatures with close up camera work and realistic sound. Looking at a lizard, you could imagine a dinosaur with any effort at all.Anyone who watched the Discovery Channel on occasion, especially if you have been watch Planet earth - and I hope you have - has seen some incredible things, but I have not seen anything as incredible as this.We science geeks know that the atoms in Hitler or Ghengis Khan could be floating around in our bodies right now, but anyone will enjoy seeing the story of life and death with all the drama and excitement that this film has.If you get Showtime (I don't) then tune in as it is currently playing.

Yes, the visuals are dazzling. The pacing and camera stance are almost Kubrickian, which alone reminds us that we are seeing a movie, and not a Discovery channel feature. There are three narratives at work here, the visuals, our collective knowledge of science/nature that we have before experiencing these visuals, and the narration. Of these, the narration is the weakest link, nearly broken when we get to the conflation of biology with poetic 'love'. That is before......we get to Entropy. Movies themselves are a kind of struggle against entropy. Starting with a flood of chaotic images (elements), the movie's task is to go against the flow and try to impose a higher state of order -- a sort of life of its own in the viewer's mind. Through this device of self-reference, we are given the target criterion with which we judge the movie's quality: does the new order in your mind hold up against degradation? I would say yes. Not only visually, but narratively -- by looking at ourselves from outside ourselves, the trap of melodrama is avoided.Watch this and pay attention to the sight of a drop of milk dissolving in water, or the smoke rings...these are inherently cinematic notions: notions that belong with us among the tribe of the living.

This is a beautifully conceived, artistic myth about origin and cycle of life as told by an African storyteller in beautifully enunciated French (English subtitles). His myth is illustrated with nature photography that is both appropriate for the particular thought and, simultaneously, of great beauty. Over six years of patient work assembled this material by the co-directors who are also professional biologists. As a consequence, their myth rests solidly in modern science. Their venues range from Iceland (the opening shots) to Madagascar (for the brilliantly colored shots of marine life). This wonderfully conceived film is underpinned by an original score which complements the photography and is wonderfully innovative. I hope a video becomes available.

This film boldly undertakes to tell the story of life from the Big Bang to the variety of species that we know today. And the history lesson becomes a fairy tale.Genesis asks that you leave aside everything you know about yourself, and think of your body as the substance that makes up the universe, your life as the energy that sparkled up the Big Bang, your projects as a shape, a limited space of organized chaos, resisting the deterioration of time.The film is breath-taking and captivating from the opening sequence to the last shot. Every image of the film is carefully selected and placed in a sequence: swirling dirt becomes a galaxy; rings of water float on the sound of the mating dance. The technological prowess of the filming is staggering, but does not surpass the ingenuity of the editing, and camera movements: shot in his apparent loneliness, the insect looks like a genius, solving obstacles one after the other. Human meaning is attached to all images shown, from the fish pretending to be daydreaming while baiting its prey, to the crawling crab signaling to a rival. The story of the earth is told by the reality of those jungles and tropical beaches, that we know so little about: swimming frogs start to hop; the giant tortoise becomes a dinosaur.If you think this is going to be some kind of Discovery Channel show, think again and surprise yourself.