96% Chasing Ice

All Critics (53) | Top Critics (19) | Fresh (51) | Rotten (2)

The most important documentary of the year.

"Chasing Ice" is a grand adventure, a visual amazement and a powerful warning.

If you're looking for eye-popping evidence that the world's glaciers are melting, don't miss the small-scale but spectacular documentary, Chasing Ice.

The rapid disappearance of ice mountains, filmed over a period of years, is compressed through time-lapse technology into minutes and seconds. The speeded-up effect is harrowing and also, disturbingly, eerily beautiful.

The movie might have given us a bit less of Balog and a bit more of the startling sequences he produced.

Though the filmmaker's point of view on the matter seems quite clear, Orlowski does smartly acknowledge counterarguments against climate change without dwelling on them.

A few scientists pop their heads in here, a few charts are deployed, but Chasing Ice is powered primarily by the imagery, stark, irrefutable evidence that the planet is warming, not in one or two isolated places but everywhere.

"Chasing Ice" is a beautiful film to watch, especially on the big screen. But the documentary's visual pleasures come with a heavy dose of guilt.

It's sobering stuff but the film's impact is somewhat diminished by Orlowski's reverential profile of Balog, who continues to crusade despite the toll his endeavours have taken on his body.

The documentary feels a little slight but the images speak for themselves ...

Is this about the hazards of global warming or the awesomeness of James Balog? Not entirely sure...

If any film can convert the climate-change sceptics, Chasing Ice would be it: here, seeing really is believing.

While more detailed scientific analysis and greater discussion of impacts would have been welcome, the film's visual rhetoric is solid.

National Geographic photographer James Balog illustrates climate change with time-lapsed records of glacial retreat.

A project of heroic, Herzogian endeavour. Mad, you might say. But probably not as mad as what the rest of us are doing about climate change: namely almost nothing.

Utterly engaging in its demonstration of the planet's shocking climate change and is thoroughly absorbing to watch.

Chasing Ice is a uniquely visual adventure with a chilling message warmed by Balog's humanity.

Still an eco-sceptic? Clap your eyes on this lot. Awe-inspiring, terrifying, transcendently beautiful, and absolutely weighted with significance for the future of the planet.

This is a well made Documentary that becomes very involving because it's just as much about Balog's journey as it is about global warming.

Makes a convincing case that the story of climate change is best told by pictures, not words.

Despite its dire message about rising carbon dioxide levels polluting the Earth, Chasing Ice is a beautiful film, with stunning visits to snowy realms with deep blue water.

Pictures, of course, say more than a thousand flowcharts or Al Gore's PowerPoint presentations. The images here are as glorious as those in any nature documentary ever made.

"Chasing Ice" is that movie that every environmentally conscious person has been waiting for, if only to show their right-wing relatives who parrot the standard oil-industry-funded line that "the science is still uncertain."

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chasing_ice_2012/

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