Search - Krakatoa on DVD

Absolutely amazing

Tom Trails | Arizona | 05/18/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a re-enactment as well as a documentary. The combination of actual footage of natural disasters with CGI imagery, along with the very well re-created people and scenery of the 19th century is superb. The scope of destruction that was unleashed by this volcano is unbelievable. Watch it on a big screen TV with surround sound. You'll feel like the world is coming to an end. It's as exciting and jaw-dropping as any effects-laden blockbuster movie, but without being corny, because as over-the-top as it might be were it fiction, this actually happened."

Stunning special effects and great Nova type discussion

ELE | Mount Vernon, Ohio USA | 12/30/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The special effects in this movie will blow you away. I agree with the first reviewer on that. However the rest comes across a little bit like a Nova show by the PBS. Unlike the DVD by the BBC which is only available in region 2, it does not develop the stories of the individual characters and have you live through the events. In this movie they jump around a lot and the stories never seem to leave you caring. There is heavy emphasis on the geology and modern geologists as well as historical geologists and vulcanologists and the story in the movie is interrupted so much by this that it can be frustrating. You will have the feeling afterwards that you understand what happened and will experience some of the horror of the Dutch and native peoples as a 100 foot tidal wave crashes ashore followed hours later by an even bigger one. However, the actual volcanic explosion at the end is done with such simple graphics that you get no personal feeling of the destruction. Some actual footages I had never seen before on the tidal wave destruction from the earthquake in 2003 were stunning. A twenty foot wave did all that and you wonder if the movie makers couldn't have shown what a 100 foot one had done in 1883."