Caves are awesome and so is Werner Herzog so I really dug it.

Herzog narrates the film with his usual spellbinding tones, waxing poetic about the mysteries of the universe. It does occasionally resemble self-parody but I could listen to that guy talk all day. It's not one of his best docs, though. It could use some more interesting interview subjects or some more esoteric tangents. As interesting as the caves are, they don't seem to be quite enough to sustain 90 minutes on their own. But, some mild repetitiveness aside, it's a rather captivating study.

The usual Herzog concoction of beauty, poetry, eccentrics and... alligators. Again.

I really should've seen this in 3D. Nonetheless, it's a good movie. Being Herzog, you should expect more than archaeology, history, and facts. He fills the narration with poetics, delves into some of the scientists' personal eccentricities, and digresses from his main subject. There's not anything much wrong with it, but it doesn't hit me quite as hard as a lot of his other work.

Even without the 3D, this is still a thoroughly engrossing documentary. Watch as Werner explores what we can learn about our existence by studying 32,000 year old cave paintings. And of course, it wouldn't be a Herzog documentary without musings on things such as the art criticism of albino crocodiles.

Whatever. This film completely worked for me. Herzog envelops you in the idea that this art... has been around... for 30,000 years. For comparison, Christianity has been around for 2,000. From that perspective, these scratches of horses on cave walls hold profound cultural and spiritual resonance, something proto and primal, that I think validates all of Herzog's funky wanderings into albino crocodiles. It's something beyond him, definitely, to explain, but also way beyond us.

35,000 years old.

Narrative is shapeless and overlong, but its subject matter, presentations and the expected insights and ruminations of Herzog make an interesting journey, which includes a final silent montage of astounding power and beauty.

Thematically expansive and visually resplendent, Cave of Forgotten Dreams reaffirms Herzog's standing as a premier documentarian. Speaking in cinematic language without losing sight of the monumentally interesting facets of age-old discoveries of human art and natural history made inside the titular cave, his film amazes and delights with breadth of insight and heartfelt testimony. Cave's success alone is almost enough to make 2011 a banner year for documentary films.

If you read the description of this film and it sounds like something you'd love, you will love it. If you plan on watching specifically for Herzog, I suspect you may only mildly enjoy it. I know that is how I felt.

Very slow, but rewarding.

(2D version) This film is something of a failure. It's rather unfocused and poorly structured, while also lacking enough content for its length.

The paintings are awe-inspiring, and Herzog does an excellent job of poking and prodding the quirky characters who work in and around the cave, but as is the case with most of his movies, CoFD ends up being 15 minutes of content stretched in Herzogian fashion to 60.

Very slow, very dry. The cave is amazing, but it feels like Herzog is treading water far too often. It honestly would have worked much better as a short.

Very evocative presentation of the timescale of the human individuation process, and of the very long aesthetico-technical circuit unfurling from the cave paintings of the Paleolithic era to the 3D camera of Werner Herzog. The offhand reflections of the interviewees are often as interesting as their accounts of their scientific work and findings. Saw this in 2D. Also: http://www.screeningthepast.com/2011/08/technics-and-time-3-cinematic-time-and-the-question-of-malaise-bernard-stiegler/

I really wish I could've watched this in 3D - and I can't believe I'm saying that.

In typical Herzog fashion he tries to uncover the thought process behind the subject of this documentary. In this case it's paleolithic artists who painted incredible images in a cave in France. It's great just to hear the wonderment in describing the mindset and the intent on capturing kinetic movement and "frames" that we take as normal. The focus though seems to be the spiritual conjoining of man and his environment. The sense of self is just a depiction on the wall that is timeless.

Interesting, but about 45 minutes too long. Would have been a better 1 hour TV special or something. Lot's of long shots of art that ultimately looks like it was done by a 12 year old. Maybe I'm the only one, but the art isn't the thing that's interesting, it's the backstory of what could have taken place, and something so historic that's interesting, so I'm sorry if I'm bored by a 10 minute slideshow with no dialogue near the end.

For an archeology geek like me, Cave of forgotten dreams was an unforgettable experience and no one could've done it better than Werner Herzog.

I want my life to have a Herzog voiceover.

Much more interesting than I expected, and some beautiful visuals, but longer than it needs to be and lulled me into a rather pleasant sleep for about 20 minutes in the middle.

To be honest, it felt like Herzog had about an hour (or perhaps even less) of useful footage, and elected out of necessity to show the same paintings several times from different perspectives. That's how it felt, anyways. I'm a huge fan of Herzog, and if you ask me every one of his documentaries are worth seeing. But Cave of Forgotten Dreams is one of his lesser ones. And as to the 3D, I can't see 3D in movies, so it quite literally added nothing for me.

A beautiful movie, visually and thematically. I dislike 3D, but this was an exception. The depth and curvature of the amazing walls came to life with the effect. Hopefully this film will serve as precedent of the potential artistic merits of 3D.

I'm glad I got to see this, but it was sorta disappointing. The people that are featured are nice intelligent folks, but they aren't the interesting sorts that the director finds, not even the perfume expert. Herzog's narration also isn't as clever or inspired. There's a long stretch towards the end of nothing but paintings and music, and it's beautiful. The 3D effect is impressive with almost tangible contours of stone and ghostly lighting. Would've worked better if it were shorter.

Poorly put together. No flow. Focused too much on one detail then jumped past a big theme. This could have been so good and the shots of the drawings were beautiful but that's about it.

Beautiful shots and some effective 3D wasn't enough. The interviewees clearly found the cave drawings much more interesting than me.

oldgoat pretty much says it. The paintings are spectacular, interesting, awe-inspiring - the use of 3D an inspired act in itself. But basically, this is a documentary about one particularly large canvas of painting, where most of what fills the canvas is fairly similar, and it lasts 90 minutes which is easily twice as long as it should be. A lot of interesting stuff but it's really not a singularly solid documentary like Grizzly Man was. Must be seen though, and in 3D.

Leave it to Werner Herzog to find a use for 3D technology that isn't part of some gimmick to hoodwink kids of all ages.

There were some missed opportunities, and a weird tension between the History Channel bits and the Herzogy-bits, but there were also moments of almost unutterable beauty. That ten-minute or so montage at the end of all the paintings was breathtaking. The 3D truly was imperative - not just on the texture of the wall as I anticipated but in a myriad of little ways, like the way it brought out the sparkling crystal surface of the cave.

The immobile closeup shots of the cave paintings are the finest implementation of 3D I've ever seen; the astounding and borderline spiritual depth that is elicited from this technique is very memorable. However, anything not related to the former is so jarring and pointless. Why does the entire documentary have to feature 3D effects, especially when it's just a guy sitting in a room talking to Herzog? Everyone should probably see it, but the director has done better.

Herzog decided to share this cave with us, and I'm very glad he did. He firmly frames the cave and the drawings within spirituality. And to me, that is where the real strength of this film lies. The music, atmosphere and (rather typically murky) 3D image add to the experience in a positive way. For an evening I found myself again completely immersed in Herzog's way of thinking. Recommended!

Sort of a hybrid Herzog film/Discovery Channel film that doesn't do well in either category. From an information perspective, not enough is explained about the cave and its place in history, and from the Herzog perspective, his deep-thinking questions are a bit bizarre and daft even for him. Have to give it a little credit, though, because this might be the only real-time look we ever get at this cave.

Interesting subject matter yet I never felt fully engulfed or transported by Herzog. More like a very solid tv special.

One of Herzog's poorer documentary efforts.

Werner Herzog has given meaning and value to 3D. Is there anything he can't do?

"As with all of Herzog's nonfiction efforts, it's spellbound by the wonder of man's relationship to his surroundings." - Nick Schager

Werner Herzog has the most easily-parodied style of documentary film-making. Even so, he manages to create a transcendent ode to the human spirit