Featuring Stomp, Eva Yerbabuena, and Carlinhos Brown. Rating unavailable.

Now playing at the Alcan Omnimax Theatre

I've always preferred IMAX movies that don't try too hard to be about something; that is, the big-screen bonanzas that let their outrageous visual poetry wash over you without too much purposeful, middle-school lecturing. In those terms, Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey may just be the best IMAX movie ever--and it really is about something.

There is zero dialogue in the film, but it's anything but quiet. Using the New York--based percussion group Stomp as its centre--with group veteran Keith Middleton as unofficial tour guide--the swiftly edited effort jumps from Brooklyn brownstones and Manhattan subway platforms to the places and people that inspired, or in some way connect with, what most of us consider the most thrilling aspects of popular music.

Everywhere the camera goes, drum is sure to follow. Whether visiting with South African gumboot dancers, Japanese taiko drummers, or Native Americans echoing the eagle's cry high above Red Rock Canyon, the musicians here never stop seeking the pulse of their varied landscapes, as well as imposing an essential humanity on even the barest of spaces.

Certain highlights are higher than others. The clanging bells of England's Winchester Cathedral come as a celestial respite from the polyrhythmic percussions that dominate most beat-minded cultures. But they don't move the heart (and other regions) the way that dramatic dancer Eva Yerbabuena and her flamenco group do atop a sunny escarpment overlooking Granada, Spain.

Amid the mix of Brazilian samba schools (with one Bahia outfit led by singer Carlinhos Brown), Bombay religious outings, inner-city marching bands, and ritualized mating dances in Botswana, Stomp also provides a literally light touch, banging away on construction material underwater in the English Channel or squeezing bicycle horns while riding on a desert road. And hey, listen to that Laundromat washing machine do its thing!

The sounds are amazing and, as captured and assembled by British-based codirectors Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas (who created Stomp's original theatrical shows), the connections are clear, although never underlined. What really sticks is the music of all the faces we meet: so different, so surprising, and yet so alike in their embrace of life and its many rhythms.