Five hours of big, BIG movies

Just got back from five back-to-back IMAX movies. They’re part of Riverfront Park’s 6th-annual IMAX Film Festival , and they range from nature studies to straight-out uses of the IMAX’s huge, HUGE screen (53 feet high, 69 feet wide). Here is my quick evaluation:

5 p.m., “Bugs” : Tale of the lives of insects and spiders in Borneo’s rain forest, which is ironic considering that the film was financed by Terminix. You get to see everything from a weevil eating a rotten banana to leaf cutter ants carrying leaves that make them look like matadors. Among the factoids (caterpillars eat all day, praying mantises only once), there is a message: Nature is beautiful, especially when put to a big-band jazzy beat. Oh, and praying mantises don’t like butterfly wings. Grade: A-minus.

6 p.m., “Pulse: a Stomp Odyssey” : The IMAX is supposed to be all about visuals, but this film is all about sound. The percussion group Stomp travels the world, segueing from the streets of New York (taxi horns) to the plains of Africa (wildebeest stampeding) to Red Rock Canyon (Indian fancydancing) to Japan (banging a big drum) to England (the bells of Winchester Cathedral) to the streets of Brazil (more drums) and so on. No words, but you’ll be tempted to tap your foot. Or stomp it. Grade: B.

7 p.m., “Our Country”: What do you call a history of country music that is 37 minutes long, uses black-and-white newsreels to look authentic but then has modern artists sub for the talents of such greats as Patsy Cline (Martina McBride sings her song “Walking After Midnight”) and Tennessee Ernie Ford (Alabama sings “Sixteen Tons”) and says things such as “Country music remains the most powerful voice of the American heartland”? Superficial, that’s what. Grade: C-minus.

8 p.m., “Top Speed”: There are two speeds to this rather tame look at going fast, rapid and stop. Tim Allen hosts the thing, and the only things more inappropriate than his lame sense of humor are the long sequences in… which… nothing… happens. At least the roller-coaster ride is thrilling. This one is a substitute for “Adrenaline Rush,” which was damaged en route. Grade: C.

9 p.m., “Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees”: Sure, it sugar-coats Jane Goodall’s experience as the first researcher at what is now a chimpanzee sanctuary at Tanzania’s Gombe National Park . Sure, the only time the IMAX camera is used to its full advantage is when, predictably every five minutes or so, it is thrown up in a plane flying over some steep ridge in lunch-upchucking fashion. And, sure, it does a pretty surface job of giving us anything that hasn’t been reported in any dozen Public Television specials. But there is something about sunset on Lake Tanganyika that the IMAX cameras catch in all its awesome beauty. That, in this case, is more than beauty enough. Grade: A-minus.