adonis98-743-186503 James Cameron and Bill Paxton, director and actor of the 1997 film Titanic, travel to the final undersea resting place of the ill-fated ship of dreams. Ghosts of the Abyss is one of those documentaries that is actually neither boring or uninteresting it's slow paced as it should be but never actually boring. Seeing Bill Paxton narrating and going down there under the Sea to see this Beautiful looking ship and it's just breathtaking i don't know how James Cameron took all this shots and made an actual film but even tho i'm not his biggest fan anymore i respect the man for his dedication and the same goes for the late and great Bill Paxton he is terrific and everything that comes from his mouth is so humble, the shots that this film has are amazing they really are they explore every inch of Titanic from start to finish and as they said there's still 'life' to it. The soundtrack is even dramatic and fits with the tone perfectly and there's even a scene where one of the crew members tells the date and he says 'it's September 11th, 2001' that was a chilling scene because we all know what happened that shocking and tragic day and you see the sadness in the faces of the team but even knowing something like that they kept going. The last shot of the movie where Titanic basically says 'Goodbye' with that rainbow covering the see above was very beautiful but also sad in the same way. There are no words to describe this film it's a documentary sure and it's not really my kind of thing but it's easily one of the better ones i have seen in a long time probably ever. (A+)

Michael_Elliott Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) *** (out of 4) Director Cameron's "return" to Titanic was this documentary with groundbreaking technology that hoped to capture images of the sunken ship that had never been seen before, Cameron was joined by countless historians, scientists and even Bill Paxton as they went 12,000+ feet below the sea to the final resting place of Titanic. This is a very mixed film because it was originally intended for IMAX screens but even then it was shot 35mm and blown up for IMAX so several people complained that the images wasn't nearly as good because of that. Seeing it at home you obviously loose the scope of the production but the images are incredibly clean and most of the time they're amazing. The crew are armed with the smaller cameras that are pretty much robots that can swim their way through the ship and reach areas that would seem impossible. The main reason to watch this film are for these images of the ship, which is pretty much just a burial ground for over a thousand people. We get to see the rooms of the Captain, Molly Brown and even Ismay but then we get to see even lower levels of the ship. The ship certainly isn't in the best of conditions as more and more bacterial grow on it each passing day but it's amazing to see windows still in place and one sequence shows us a bottle of water that is still standing upright. These images are amazing to see as well as being quite haunting because even though your eyes are wide open pulling all of these sites in, you have to remember the lives that were lost. The film runs just under an hour and it's certainly worth watching for all of this footage but at the same time there are a lot of issues with the movie. For starters, there's really not much of a story and there are many times when you have to question what Cameron was wanting to show or how he was wanting us to take what he was offering. Just look at the sequence where one of the robots pretty much dies inside the ship and we have to sit through the rescue. This sequence just seems like something that should have been in the deleted scenes section of the DVD. With that said, being this close to the Titanic is reason enough to sit through this.

dbborroughs One should see this film in an IMAX theater to get a real sense of scale. Other than Titanica no one has ever witnessed the the scale of the ship short of diving on the wreck. Its a magical experience.As a movie its odd. First off it was shot not on IMAX film but 35mm and blown up so the film is very grainy. Much of the non-Titanic stuff was shot badly for the IMAX screen. We see close ups that are too close and the camera moves much too fast. There is also the over use of multiple images which give us too much to look at, frankly its too much to take in. Cameron is a great filmmaker who needs to rethink his use of the format.There seems little point to the film other than being a 3D Imax exploration of the wreck. This isn't a bad thing, but seeing it as a 2D Imax film it kind of loses its reason for being.(I understand that the DVD has more material)That said if you have the chance see this IMAX. Its over powering to see the scale of the ship and to understand that people walked and died in this very spot.As an awesome IMAX experience 7 out of 10, though try for 3D rather than 2D.

serge PREDICTABLE ALREADY SEEN VISUALS. The problem was that most of the ship is all rusted red and therefore everything looks the same. Also a lot of this was shot with non-high quality 2-D digital cameras on 2 movable robots. After a while of seeing all this omnipresent orange-red rust on relatively small screens we don't know what we're looking at, where we are, and we just don't care after a while. The effects of 3D were rarely used except for the face of the russian submarine driver.