Through masterful and patient cinematography and editing, the movie documents a compelling story of survival. I was very much invested and fearful for the mother and her cubs, who were under the constant threat of attack by desperately hungry adult male bears, who were unable to otherwise feed themselves due to the effects of man's environmental recklessness on their habitat. Being a native IMAX movie, the picture quality is superb - way better than, say, Planet Earth or Arctic Tale. The presentation, the aerial shots, and the way the cameras take the viewer on the bears' journey is amazing. As for music, in addition to the Paul McCartney songs, there's also some beautiful original score by Steve Wood. Particularly the delicate celestial track that was also used on the Bluray's home menu screen gave me goosebumps. It's worth noting that a very tiny segment features footage shot using a remote controlled robotic digital camcorder, which (at the obvious expense of image quality) was able to capture the kind of up-close action that would've been impossible to get using the bulky and precious IMAX camera. However, rather than blow those scenes up to fill the entire screen, the movie has the honesty to put them in a sort of small ice-themed frame in the center, as if to say: "Look folks, these are some cool bits that we had to include but we're not by any means trying to pass them as 65mm film". This is something I came to appreciate having watched Hubble 3D, a movie where the vast majority of the non-CGI parts are cheap consumer camcorder footage (Am I watching an IMAX 3D movie or a reality TV show?). Anyway, if you love having your HD screen filled edge-to-edge with gorgeous full 16:9 65/70mm IMAX shots, you absolutely need to own To the Arctic 3D on Bluray.
Review of To the Arctic 3D
