This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Disturbing yet enthralling

Did you people see the same film I saw?

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This review had been deleted due to a report of "abuse" by another reader. Typically, there is no argument, just a report to authorities of "abuse", where there is none. Sadly, nowadays, having an opinion that looks at things from a different perspective is reported by the ignorant as abuse. More sadly, those that review the complaint agree with the complainant, again, where there is no "abuse".Visual depiction, things change. There has been more CO2 in the air in the past, the earth survived. There are natural mechanisms that deal with CO2. What natural mechanism deals with the dumping of tons and tons of barium, aluminum, thorium, cadmium, chromium, and nickel in our skies? If you're interested in thinking outside the CO2 box, check out multiple internet sites related to 'chemtrails' or 'geoengineering' that I'm not allowed to cite here.Example: "For more than a decade, first the United States and then Canada's citizens have been subjected to a 24/7/365 day aerosol assault over our heads made of a toxic brew of poisonous heavy metals, chemicals, and other dangerous ingredients. None of this was reported by any mainstream media."Rather, planes (fitted with special nozzles) release aerosols "lines" in the sky that do not evaporate. At first, these lines are thin; but soon they expand and, in a short time, merge together. Our once-blue sky has vanished and has been replaced by a grayish-white toxic haze that blots out and greatly diminishes our usual sunshine.

I will admit that I have been curious for this film for a while and after now knowing if it will ever get a theater release in Germany, I was probably occasionally tempted to watch it one way or the other. However, thankfully there were so many other great films and series that I was distracted enough and didn't watch it. So I was even more delighted when I saw that it's finally hitting theaters here in Germany this month, almost 2 years after its world premiere in January 2012 at Sundance. "Chasing Ice" is Jeff Orlowski's very first feature film after two short movies and for that it is especially impressive. The writing is by Mark Monroe, who already worked on the Academy Award winning documentary "The Cove". It can be summarized pretty quickly. The center of the film is photographer James Balog, who tries to depict and prove the existence and impact of climate change by making constantly recordings from vast bodies of ice with the help of self-triggered cameras all over the planet (Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Himalayas...). The first half was okay, even if it got occasionally too scientific for audiences from all ages to appreciate. The second half was better though and very much rewarding as we finally get to see the aforementioned time lapse recordings, which are nothing short of mind-blowing, and it's almost impossible to bring better physical evidence of global warming than Balog did in this movie.However, I have a few criticisms about the film as well. First of all, I found the narrating about Balog's health issues really distracting from the story. Some others in the audience kept giggling though, so it served as comic relief to some point I guess, but i just didn't really like it, even more so when the story focused too strongly on him. The film is only roughly 75 minutes, so I just thought they should have replaced these parts with some lighter additions to the story of climate change maybe. Some parts felt almost a bit cringeworthy as well, for example when he sits on the sofa and shakes his head to several politicians going on about how climate change is merely fiction or also his big breakdown when the recording has initially not been successful. I don't know if it was real or added for dramatic purposes, but even if I can understand his frustration, it made me feel pretty uncomfortable. I'd have been perfectly fine with the parts where they interview his family about his motivations and how they see him and his endeavors. That would have been enough background story for me. Another minor criticism I have was about one scene where some of Balog's coworkers caught a fish and present it to the audience as their dinner meal. Now while I don't eat animals myself, I don't mind other people who do eat them, but this whole demonstration and how they were shoving it into people's faces was rather inappropriate, especially for a film that tells us to stop exploiting out planet, even if it's from a completely different angle.Aside from that, you get a really impressive nature documentary. That water current which shoots down into nowhere was particularly impressive and it is brilliant evidence how, even with people taking over most of the planet, nature's forces are still unmatched. I'd give the film a 3/5, but I'll add another point for the brilliant Oscar-nominated song that is included. It was written by Josh Ralph and performed by Scarlett Johansson and Joshua Bell. You have to make a bit of a connection to link the lyrics and the film's content and maybe that was what kept the film from beating Adele's "Skyfall", but if you manage, it's a wonderful piece of art and Johansson's raunchy voice (which makes me wish she narrated the whole documentary) is perfect for the tone of the song and film. Really a thing of beauty.

Distilled down, this film is to help convince the world that global warming is not only occurring, but the extent of the warming is being accelerated by man, particularly accelerating the rate at which CO2 and other gases are being added to the Earth's atmosphere. I state that without judging, just to get it out there up-front.James Balog is a National Geographic photographer and in his pursuit of "ice" in general came to a quick realization that glaciers, all over the world, are disappearing at alarming rates, compared to historical rates. His photography projects presented here are supplemented with long standing deep ice core data which show fluctuations in temperatures over the centuries, along with fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 content, as measured in the tiny air bubbles captured in the ice. It is clear in the most recent decades the CO2 levels have increased dramatically, resulting from such processes as burning fossil fuels.All this motivated Balog to devote himself to a very ambitious project, to place dozens of camera rigs in such remote places as Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, and Montana to take time-lapse photos for several years, to provide a visual record of glacier change. The project was not without pitfalls, cameras failing, or being destroyed by falling rocks, and simply Balog's bad knee giving out only to be repaired by repeated surgery.The product of all this, once the technical problems were overcome, is film of these changes in glacier ice in these various places. It is a remarkable achievement, and the 75-minute film documents all this very well and interestingly.I was able to see it on Netflix streaming movies. A nice surprise was actress Scarlett Johansson's deep, sultry vocal rendition of the song during the end credits.

When I came across Chasing Ice, I was very enthusiastic. I always loved the Great North and documentaries, but even more these two combined. I, for example, loved Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World (2007) although it was, this time, the South Pole.Chasing Ice follows the ambitious project of National Geographic photographer James Balog who, after first doing a short project on glacier, saw the impact it had and decided he had to do more than that. That's when he decided to put in place a massive scale Glacier Watch Unit by implementing cameras to take many many pictures so that afterwards, in time lapse, the glacier could be seen moving. The project surveyed glaciers in Greenland, Alaska, Canada and Iceland for a few years. This documentary is the story behind it.The documentary starts with a mix of random news cast about global warming and natural disasters. I always considered myself a skeptic about global warming, not because I don't believe that the ice is melting, but because I know the planet has gone through a lot and is still kicking. I was quite surprised and forgot about the global warming for a while as the work and photos of James Balog were being shown. It is simply breathtaking.Once their project started, the implementation of cameras, reminded me a lot of The Cove (2009) in that they also faced technical difficulties (one has to realize that the cameras were and had to function in the worst possible condition). I felt a very human connection as the documentary also underlines the risks, the annoyances (for example when a fox has eaten away at the cable or when an electronic chip has been malfunctioning and they just traveled across the world to realize there were no shots taken) but also the family of James Balog who we briefly see and the health issues he faces with his knee. It all helps to make the actual work they accomplished all so much tastier and the evidence about the glaciers are hard to dismiss.I found it to be one of the most spectacular display of nature images. The ending is, without surprise, a warning for the public to take into account the danger of our behaviors. I think that this might throw people off, but I'd say it's a necessary evil. I don't have that much faith in humanity myself, but if there is anything that can inspire something to be done, it will be through these images, because texts and statistics never changed behaviors.It moved me.I liked: Breathtakingly beautiful. Human aspects. Harsh conditions. Team work. Stunning glaciers.I disliked: Yes, it holds a political agenda, but where does mankind and politics differ when it comes to the apocalypse?88/100 One of the most striking documentary I've seen, if not for the scientific dimension but simply for the beauty of the ice. And to paraphrase James Balog, as a photograph it is so beautiful, but as a human being it's very sad.More reviews at: www.theordinaryreview.blogspot.com