Galapagos

Loved every minute of the series. Liz Bonnin's (BA in biochemistry, MSc in Wild Animal Biology) engaging and informed presentation ably supported the series.

I enjoy watching wildlife documentaries very much. I know they're not exactly what you'd call high art, but they can be very relaxing and entertaining if you're in the right mood for them.

The photography is truly stunning and the animals, plants, scenery, waves, seals, sardines, rays, plankton are fascinating to watch. But the music is dreadful and distracting.

This is a wonderful film. This movie has breath taking images of the island chain near Ecuador.

Ms. Bonnin looks absolutely terrorized aboard the submersible.

I was angry at renting this movie and then watching from a distance in the lab as the female biologist picked up and handled the specimens gathered from 3,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. She looks into the glass basins containing specimens and laughs as though they're funny but she makes no attempt to tell us what they are, and the camera makes no attempt to let us look at them.

Before we watched this movie, we did a mini-unit on the Galapagos Islands. I'm homeschooling my six-year-old and two-year-old, and so our botanical and zoological studies didn't get much past "This is a Cormorant" and "Look, the cacti look like trees," and a vague understanding of natural selection.

There are a number of related documentaries on the market, including a Kenneth Branagh-narrated IMAX film ("Galapagos (IMAX)") and a personal journey with Richard Dreyfuss ("In the Wild: The Galapagos Islands with Richard Dreyfuss"), both produced in 1999. However, if like me, you have been enamored with the BBC's extraordinary "Planet Earth" series designed for high definition (aired here on the Discovery Channel), then you will find yourself equally drawn to this 2007 DVD of a three-part 2006 BBC series on the mythologized Galapagos Islands.

This is an IMAX presentation that I viewed on DVD.The images are striking, and this film gives a better overall look at the islands than in other similar films I have seen.