Transition Penwith

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The 11th Hour may not have enjoyed the profile of the last major documentary to tackle the issues and challenges of climate change (that'd be Al Gore's engrossing Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth), but it's no less compelling, and proves to be a thought-provoking feature in its own right.

Producer and narrator Leonardo Di Caprio, who also shares a writing credit, is the glue that holds The 11th Hour together, and this diligent documentary presents a lot of information. What's more, it balances its subject matter a little more accessibly than An Inconvenient Truth. The latter appeared to rush through the segment where it addressed the things we can do to help fight climate change, but The 11th Hour--in among some very hard-hitting material--makes sure that it devotes enough of its focus to the what-happens-next.

To top it off, it's attracted some heavyweight world figures to stand before the camera. Some you will have heard of (Professor Stephen Hawking and Mikhail Gorbachev, for instance), and others are less known, but the cumulative effect of their contributions gives The 11th Hour a gravity and power that is hard to ignore. And while occasionally you can't help but feel it slips into being a little too preachy, it tackles a serious subject exceptionally well. A documentary absolutely not to be missed, for more than one reason. --Jon Foster

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At one point a sceptic of the environmental impact of humans, Sir David Attenborough has more than redressed the balance with this fascinating two hour documentary, The Truth About Climate Change.

It's split into two parts, as the first half of The Truth About Climate Change examines some of the high profile natural disasters of the past few years, and questions how much of a part humans had to play in them. Attenborough also discusses various other lower profile environmental changes too, and what kind of impact they're having. It's intelligently done, without, crucially, coming across as preachy.

The rest of The Truth About Climate Change is then taken up by looking ahead, to what the long-term impact on the planet is likely to be, and things we can do to make sure those worse case scenarios simply don't come true. Given the strengths of the arguments made before the documentary arrives at this segment, it's not something you'll want to ignore.

The Truth About Climate Change is no Saturday night watch, but it is a thoughtful documentary that certainly offers an unsettling amount of food for thought. Fortunately, it does remember, through Attenborough, to spend enough time working through the actions after it's outlined the damage that's being done. And that makes it a rounded, interesting piece of work.--Jon Foster

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It's not a horror film, but An Inconvenient Truth is certainly one of the scariest DVDs you could own. Presented in a straightforward format by former US Vice President Al Gore--think Royal British Institute lecture delivered with a Tennessee drawl--it sets out its compelling argument about climate change both methodically and entertainingly. Global warming is a real danger, argues Gore, and human civilisation is the root cause of it. A dizzying and shocking array of facts relating to carbon emissions, the population explosion and the disintegration of the polar icecaps all add weight to his thesis. Moreover, we're already witnessing some of the effects of global warming around the world, with an increasing amount of storms, droughts and other natural disasters, more in the past few years. But Gore doesn't present these facts merely to terrify the viewer. Instead, they're meant to shock us out of complacency and into action. Indeed, the film ends with some very simple ways we can all contribute to averting this impending global catastrophe. And that, argues Gore, is the point of An Inconvenient Truth. We have the ability to change our ways, what we lack is what Gore describes as "the political will." It is his hope that this film will begin to change all of that. --Ted Kord