Deep Blue (2005)

Now that Leni Riefenstahl is gone, will we ever get to see the underwater footage she spent her last decades filming? If not, we can surely make do with Deep Blue. This life-of-the-ocean doc may have the wide-eyed whimsy of a grade-school science film (Pierce Brosnan narrates it in creamy cosmic tones), but it's full of splendidly shot wonders: ravenous whales, coral tentacles that unfurl like spaghetti, a leafy ''plant'' that turns out to have eyes. Descending into the sea's blackest depths, the movie finds transparent skeletal creatures that light up with electro-color flashes, like psychedelic Christmas ornaments. These iridescent oddities are pure science fiction, and they gave the grade-schooler in me a good ''Whoa!''

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