One Life (2011)

(On Cable TV, July 2013) Beautiful, warm and yet curiously unmemorable, One Life is a collection of short nature documentaries strung together by the barest of excuses about wildlife finding a way to live despite difficult circumstances… which usually summarizes most nature documentaries.  Daniel Craig’s smooth narration is serviceable enough, and the images are often simply spectacular, but trying to find something more to say about the film is an exercise in frustration: Few people do nature documentaries better than the BBC Earth people (recent advances in high-definition digital filmmaking mean that they now sport impeccable cinematography and unusually powerful sequences), and even the heavy anthropomorphism of the script isn’t enough to distract our attention.  One Life is good stuff to watch by the entire family, but you may struggle to find much of distinction in it.