Film

This new entertaining and educational IMAX offering from National Geographic delves into the Cretaceous world of marine reptiles and fish – and it’s a pretty fascinating trip. For instance, did you know that Kansas was once submerged beneath a sea roughly the size of the Med? The experts know this because of the thousands of marine fossils that have been unearthed in the area.

Director Sean Phillips and the production team have made a fine fist of illustrating the lives of these bizarre creatures via some highly realistic three-dimensional CGI imagery, most of it centred on the main players of the time, namely the cute dolphin-like Dolichorhynchops and its most feared predator, the giant, heavily toothed Tylosaurus (and you thought the great white was scary). The film then cuts to the sight of paleontologists unearthing yet another fossilised time-capsule before we’re taken beneath the waves again to see what the creature might have looked like in its natural habitat. Liev Schreiber provides the informative, scholarly narrative and Peter Gabriel lays on parts of the simmering soundtrack. A good effort all round.