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 decisive action.