Rating: 
Summary: Terrific film/Please watch it!!!
Review: This film is a stunningly beautiful masterpiece filled with breathtaking cinematography. The four years of work that went into making it shows during every second of the film. Jacques Perrin and the people he worked with have created a piece of work that is in essence a spectacular gift to the world. Watching birds of various kinds fly gracefully through the air seemingly without any effort is a sight to behold. You feel privileged to be able to glimpse this magical world in which the birds inhabit. Also a treat is watching what the birds do when they are not flying, whether it is Clark's grebes dancing on the surface of a lake or male sage grouse strutting their stuff by inflating their throat sacs and creating weird noises with them or gannets plunge-diving into the ocean to catch fish. The scene involving the sage grouse is quite stunning. At the beginning of the scene, you see sage grouse on a partially snow-covered grassland in Idaho. In the background, you see several flocks of migrating birds flying against a backdrop of mountains. Some of the aerial shots of birds flying are so beautiful that they appear unreal. It is as if a skilled artist had painted the landscapes. There are numerous scenes of flying birds that will take your breath away. I will mention three. The footage of Canada geese flying throught Monument Valley, Utah, is gorgeous. The rock formations provide a breathtakingly beautiful backdrop for the shots of the birds. The footage of trumpeter swans flying over a river in a Southeast Asian rainforest on their way to Vietnam is also incredibly beautiful. When they arrive in the paddy fields of northern Vietnam by flying past a landscape of green dotted with majestic rock formations, your breath is taken away by the beauty that you see onscreen. The footage of the white storks flying over the sand dunes of the Sahara Desert is so incredible that it appears fake. You really have to see it to believe it. There is also a magical shot of the Great Wall of China on a foggy day. It looks so incredible that you may actually think that a master Chinese painter had painted what you see onscreen.I do have several gripes with the film. First of all, the selection of birds that were shown in the film had a glaring omission. I only noticed one scene showing ducks in full flight. This was the scene of a single male Mallard duck flying through the French countryside and eventually joining a flock of geese over the river Seine in Paris. Why weren't more ducks showcased in the film? Second, the scene where a mother bobwhite quail is nesting in the path of moving farm combines is an unnecessary addition to the film. Third, the scene of the Canada geese drinking water from a broken-down truck is unique, but in my opinion, out of place with the rest of the film. Also, the scene involving the same geese flying over a herd of running mustangs is so fake that its inclusion in the film is almost embarrassing. What is such a shot doing in a film that claims to have no special effects? This DVD of the film is amazing. The picture quality is stunning. The transfer is amazingly clear. The sound quality is rich and clear. Several extras are included. They are well worth viewing. The Behind-the-Scenes featurette is a pleasure to watch. It explains very well the process that was used in filming the birds and all the effort that went into making the film. We learn that the white pelicans became sick during the airplane flight from France to Senegal. We also learn that the footage of the film showing snow geese flying through snowy weather in the Adirondacks in New York State was improvised when bad weather conditions forced the film crew to abandon a staged scene of geese hunting. Watching the cute baby birds at the beginning of the featurette, especially when they are running with ultralight planes on the ground, is an absolute delight. In one shot, you can see that baby white storks demonstrate the same weird neck-bending, beak-clapping behavior as adult white storks. The narrator of the featurette makes a few mistakes. He pronounces "Adirondacks" as "A-DIR-on-dacks" instead of "A-dir-ON-dacks". The last part of the featurette is about the filming of white storks flying over the Sahara Desert. The narrator mistakenly refers to the storks as "swans" at least twice. I highly recommend the film and its DVD. Your view of birds will be forever changed by watching this film. Anyone who has had a chance to watch this film has been incredibly lucky. As you know, the film only received limited theatrical release in the US. Sony released the film in American theaters only in the summer of 2003. This was months after it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. This makes absolutely no sense. Also, Sony did a huge disservice to the film by not running any ads on American TV for it. The people who run Sony should be ashamed of themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Birds in flight -- in all their power and glory. Fantastic!
Review: This 2001 award-winning documentary by Jacques Perrin certainly is unique. It's a full 99 minutes of exquisite cinematography of migrating birds, some species flying as far as 12,500 miles each year. There are a few captions, which tell the name of the bird and the amount of mileage they fly in order to migrate. There's also some light background music as well as natural sounds, and a few sentences, spoken by the director. Other than that, it's only the birds, whose migratory patterns were followed for three years. At the beginning of the film there's a disclaimer informing the audience that there were no special effects were used. And so I sat there in wonder of how they were able to achieve all their shots. There's the beauty of birds flying in formation, close up shots of them feeding their young, competing with each other, stopping to rest. And there's one magnificent shot of fleeing an avalanche. There are different species filmed in different areas of the world. We see the Artic Circle, the American Southwest, the industrial areas of Eastern Europe, the vast oceans, the skyline of cities and even a shot as they fly past the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty. We also see hunters whose gunfire brings sudden death as well as a bird with a broken wing who is attacked and devoured by crabs. Here is nature, in all its power and glory. I sat there wide-eyed, taking it all in. And somehow, the petty concerns of my daily life seemed to fall into perspective. Some people might find this film boring and I doubt if it will get wide distribution in theaters. It's only playing in one theater in New York and, even in this densely populated city, there was a very sparse audience. I'm glad I was one of the people in that audience though because I loved every moment of the film would definitely see it again on DVD, especially if it had special features to describe how the cinematography was done. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Review: The most gorgeous film I've ever seen. Enough said.
Rating: 
Summary: Rats with Wings!
Review: Okay, 3 stars because these guys worked so hard on the film, and the spiritual beauty is almost unprecedented... from a distance... or if you view the birds as an abstraction... or imbue them with cutesy Disney characteristics. But look at these birds close and clearly -- they're creepy. They move by dumb instinct, just like rodents. For example, shots of masses of penguins look like a black plague horror movie -- Vermin on Ice. Some of the larger birds are more graceful. But again, get up close and look into their beedy eyes... and see overgrown rats with wings. Like a Monet painting, these birds all look worse when you get up close. The accomplishments and ingenuity of the film makers cannot be denied. But maybe next time they could follow dogs around. Now they're cute! For a quick fix on Winged Migration, maybe they could add a new scene for the "Director's Cut": In an homage to Hitchcock, show the birds attacking uniformed school kids on their way home! This scene would show another side of birds' true nature. You can't trust 'em.
Rating:
Summary: Sublime cinematography
Review: WINGED MIGRATION is filmmaker Jacques Perrin's stunning documentary study of bird migration. My wife and I left the special studio screening exclaiming, "How'd they do that!?" The film begins along a minor waterway in Europe as a flock of geese begins its annual migration north to its summer breeding ground. It then cuts to other locales around the world as other species of large birds - usually cranes, swans, and storks, but also gannets, loons and others - begin their respective journeys. In all cases, the captioning identifies the species, their start points and destinations, and the miles between the two. Occasionally, Perrin makes the point more spectacularly by superimposing the flying flock on an image of the Earth taken from near-orbit. Voice overs are kept to a minimum. Except for New York (with the WTC still standing), Paris, and a dismal industrial wasteland in eastern Europe, the flocks are shown flying through unpopulated landscapes both varied and magnificent: beaches, ice fields, Monument Valley, northern tundra, open oceans, snow-covered mountains, Asian farmlands, forest-enclosed lakes, deserts, and tropical rainforests. The sunset and weather (blizzards, fog, thunderstorms) provide dramatic backdrops. Then, at journey's end, the birds are shown in their summer habitats - usually steep, dramatic cliffs or rock-strewn shores with sea-ravaged margins. But certainly the most eye-popping camera work is with the bird formations on the wing. The apparent vantage point of the lens is among the flock, with individual birds only an arm or hand-length away above, below, or to the side. I mean, you're RIGHT THERE! You'd think they'd have to be computer animated models. But a disclaimer at the film's beginning states that no special effects were used in the filming of the birds. While Perrin emphasizes the round trip to, and the stay in, the breeding grounds, he doesn't gloss over the dangers. The viewer watches as individual birds fall victim to animal predators, human hunters and poachers, and industrial pollution. Some circumstances are heartrending, as when a disabled bird is surrounded and overcome by predatory crabs on an African beach. Before concluding back at the same waterway and with the same flock of geese which began his documentary, the filmmaker makes a digression at first seemingly inconsistent with the title, i.e. with flightless Emperor penguins in the southern hemisphere. Of course, they use their wings to swim a couple hundred miles. WINGED MIGRATION is a film to remind us that the real world can be just as spectacular and amazing as any one of the mega-budget, FX-laden, mindless thrillers dished out to the masses. It's wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Marvelous!
Review: This is the most beautiful film I've ever seen. You must not miss it! It's heavenly!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully filmed, but is it really a documentary?
Review: First of all, let me say that I very much enjoyed Winged Migration, and that it has captivated the many people I've shown it to. Why have I shown it to so many people? Because our 2-year-old son loves it, and people happen to be around when we watch it. We've watched it at home with friends and family. We've watched it while visiting my parents on their TV. We've watched it on my laptop in airports. He loves watching anything about animals, fish and birds, but he especially loves Winged Migration. I suspect it's something about the lack of narration, the way the birds move with the music, and some of the incredible closeups. That brings me to my only criticism of this film, if you could call it that. We purchased this movie under the assumption that it was a nature documentary. Though it is spectacular and very enjoyable, I find it somewhat misleading to call it a documentary. Other than the odd snipet of information about the individual species and how far they fly, it really isn't much more than a beautifully filmed music video. OK, they fly far. Got it. Our household watches a lot of David Attenborough nature documentaries on DVD, and we love them both for the visuals and their educational value. That said, it's hard to categorize Winged Migration as the same type of film. It's much about art than it is about learning.
Rating:
Summary: Winged Migration Review
Review: Good footage of bird migration, but no real discernable story or dialogue to explain what is going or why. Footage is amazing though.
Rating: 
Summary: And then we had their livers with a wonderful Bordeaux
Review: Nice film until you realize that the film-makers bred no small number of birds to be actors. I wonder what behind-the-scenes cinema verite we didn't see in "The Making Of"? To be frank, it did look like the film crew had a very deep affection for the animals--but on the other hand, they then allowed their "babies" to be shot? I don't get it. And what happend to all these "imprinted" birds when the filmmaking was done? Maybe I'll just go back to watching Sir David Attenborough's "The Life Of Birds" series on PBS.
Great cinematography. No guilt.
Rating:
Summary: We Need Many More Movies Like This
Review: Living in Barrow at the top of Alaska, we eagerly await the annual bird migration every spring. As I write this, we have just seen several tundra swans resting in a nearby lake from their journey, and the snowy owls should soon be here.
I've always wondered how these birds can migrate so far and through such often-harsh weather, to get here.
Now, because of this excellent movie, we know a lot more about this incredible annual process.
The movie lets the birds tell their own story to a great extent, and it is so carefully put together, my wife and I and even our Greenland Husky Nuna, watched the video with our mouths open.
This is not a happy time Disney-type movie ---sometimes the birds run into hunters or urbanization as they make their long journeys. But the overall spirit of the movie comes through --we get to literally fly along with the birds, an experience which seems unreal to those of us limited to jet planes, vehicles, trains, etc.
Maybe mountain biking through a bitter Arctic storm might be a little closer to the bird's experience. But they get here, and we are so glad to see them. And we watch them all through the brief Arctic summer, and then they are on their way back south again, some all the way to the South Pole.
See this film if you can, and join in the epic journey.
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