Former vice president Al Gore lends an appropriately sober face to the issue of global warming in this arresting documentary. Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim offers a fairly straightforward adaptation of Gore’s well-honed lecture, effectively enhancing it with elaborate graphics. Gore’s data is concise and accessible, thanks in large part to a state-of-the-art, slide-show presentation that includes computer-model charts, photos - including distressing before-and-after shots of shrunken glaciers and otherwise degraded land masses - archival footage, and even cartoons that dramatically illustrate the impact of global warming.

His alarming point: that manmade pollution has wrought more drastic changes in a few decades than the planet had previously seen since the Ice Age. Not the world’s most natural public speaker or funnyman, the former veep nonetheless makes a compelling case for swift and decisive action. (Barnes & Noble)

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

With the fate of our planet arguably hanging in the balance, An Inconvenient Truth may prove to be one of the most important and prescient documentaries of all time. As he jokingly refers to himself, “former President-elect” Al Gore felt an urgent personal calling to draw attention - as he had been doing throughout his political career - to the increasingly desperate crisis of global warming, and this riveting documentary is basically a filmed version (by respected TV director Davis Guggenheim) of the PowerPoint lecture that Gore has presented (by his own estimate, well over 1,000 times) to attentive audiences all over the world.

Considering Gore’s amiable, low-key approach to charts, graphs, statistics, and photographs that leave no room for doubt regarding the reality (not “theory”) of global warming as Earth’s ultimate environmental crisis, many viewers will be surprised by just how fascinating and convincing this no-frills film really is.

As we learn about the milestone events that shaped his character (including his sister’s death and young son’s near-fatal injuries after being struck by a car), Gore sheds the stiff demeanor of his 2000 presidential campaign and impresses us as a man with a mission, transcending partisan politics with an impassioned plea for common sense, ethical forthrightness, and passionate purpose in reversing the harmful effects of global warming through personal and political responsibility. (Amazon)