Shot mostly in the Arizona desert, the film marvels over the animals that live in such an austere climate while also focusing on familiar scenarios, like two male tortoises tussling over a female or scorpions doing a mating dance to hoedown music.A typical nature doc is culled from hours and hours of patient observation by camera crews in the field, but insects usually play a supporting role at best, for the obvious reason that their behavior can’t be detailed by the naked eye. The 10 episodes are neatly divided in broad categories like “Mammals” and “Fish,” but it’s worth paying special attention to an hour on plants, which don’t often get the spotlight.The National Geographic Channel invested heavily in “Great Migrations” as a multi-night event with cross-promotion in the magazine and an accompanying book; it also came with a team of big-name narrators, led by a robust Alec Baldwin. Trekking across the unforgiving polar tundra to breeding grounds far from the sea, the male and female penguins mate for life, and that’s only the beginning of relationships in which the males protect the eggs, the females strike out to the seas for food and each family’s precarious survival is at stake.It was no easy feat for David Attenborough and the BBC Natural History Unit to follow up their 11-part behemoth “Planet Earth,” which in 2006 was the most expensive series of its kind and the first to deploy high-definition cameras.
The bulk of the episodes detail the ancient migratory patterns of various animals, from Christmas Island red crabs that chitter across roads and forests en route on mating grounds on the beach, to monarch butterflies fluttering across North America.
Documentaries don’t get any more ambitious than this.What happens in the animal kingdom when the lights go down? An episode on “Sleepless Cities,” too, is a fascinating look at how animals have adapted to unnatural concrete jungles, poaching from their human neighbors under cover of darkness.Jane Goodall as seen in “Jane,” a documentary directed by Brett Morgen.One of the feathered families in “March of the Penguins.”Hamadryas baboons in Ethiopia watching a storm break, as seen in “Hostile Planet.”A scene from Netflix’s nine-part documentary series “Our Planet,” narrated by David Attenborough. Life.
Another bright side of nature documentaries? It’s not something many nature documentaries have had the opportunity to consider, given their dependence on natural light.
And to that end, the show delivers the goods: hippo vs. hippo, wolves vs. bison, flightless baby geese vs. craggy mountain cliffs.
The blue whale description below gives you a small taste of how amazing this documentary is… But the series also benefits from an episode on how scientists monitor migration with high-tech trackers and a finale that’s a completely narration-free “visual concert.”As producer and occasional director of films like “Microcosmos,” “Winged Migration” and “Voyage of Time,” Jacques Perrin has sought to render the majesty of nature and space as an almost alien beauty, with as much emphasis on art as science.
The film celebrates her resilience, but the tone is mostly light and silly, with Tina Fey narrating as if she knows distractible children are in the room.For most modern nature docs, ravishing images are the sugar that make the climate change medicine go down, but “Chasing Coral” is a case where beauty and environmental sickness are not so easily separated. But through the special lenses created for the French documentary “Microcosmos,” ants and spiders and ladybugs have the presence of amazing prehistoric creatures or the foes in an old “Godzilla” movie.
“March of the Penguins,” “Monkey Kingdom” and more illuminate the wonders of our planet from the safety of your couch.Children under quarantine are enjoying an excess of “screen time,” if only to give their overtaxed parents a break. Animals Are Beautiful People You (and your kids) will thank us.Copyright © 2020 SheKnows Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. It’s a …
But “Life” was equal to the task, with its enormous scope and timely main theme, which is about what living things must do to survive. In 2020, it’s more important than ever that we get our kids interested in and engaged with the natural world — fast.
Born to be Wild is a 2011 nature documentary that showcases the lives orphaned elephants and orangutans.
And for good reason: The plight of the beautiful emperor penguins of Antarctica was framed as the ultimate love story and an affirmation of family values. Goodall’s infectious passion for these animals hasn’t waned in the decades since, but her interview scenes are more supplement than main attraction.
There are so, so many Finally, it has to be said that nature documentaries offer some of the best narrators in the game. The 20 Best Documentaries for Kids 1.