There are some fantastic films on the
environment,
but it can often be difficult to find the truly great ones. To make
your life a little bit easier, here is a list of ten fantastic,
eye-opening
movies for any individual passionate about saving our planet.
10. Tapped, 2009
Director Stephanie Soechtig’s examination of the bottled water
industry’s “effects on our health, climate change, pollution, and our
reliance on oil.” The documentary debuted at last year’s
Los Angeles United Film Festival
and has yet to score major distribution, but fret not: Netflix is
already offering a public queue in advance of a presumed-to-be
forthcoming DVD release, so get in line for this one while it’s hot.
Why It’s Noteworthy
Tapped dares to challenge the moral and environmental
efficacy of a habit all too many of us share: chronic bottled water
consumption. The film deserves credit, especially, for never straying
into the realm of moral high ground-itude, instead presenting a sober
and earnest look at a lifestyle choice we all might behoove ourselves to
rethink.
9. The 11th Hour, 2007
Narrated and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio,
The 11th Hour
takes a holistic look at the deluge of environmental problems currently
facing our planet. Perhaps more than others of its ilk,
The 11th Hour concerns itself with offering practical solutions, if only in theory, to the environmental truths it confronts.
Why It’s Noteworthy
In many ways,
The 11th Hour is nothing more than
An Inconvenient Truth
with less teeth and more star power (Roger Ebert called it a bore,
urging people to rent Gore’s film instead). Still, it deserves credit
for at least attempting to contribute something to the canon of
2000s-era enviro-docs, even if lacks the punch packed by certain of its
contemporaries.
8. Fast Food Nation, 2006
“Do you want lies with that?” reads the tagline of
Fast Food Nation,
Richard Linklater’s feature-length adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s 2001
book of the same name. In the film, an ensemble cast rounded out by the
likes of Greg Kinnear and Wilmer Valderrama explores the political,
environmental, economical, and social ethics pursuant to fast food meat
production.
Why It’s Noteworthy
Part drama, part black comedy,
Fast Food Nation is one of the most gleefully subversive polemics out there. Don’t plan to hit up McDonald’s after seeing this one, though;
Fast Food Nation is far from feel-good fare, featuring scenes from a real-life abattoir. Yum!
7. King Corn, 2007
King Corn is the tale of two best friends from college who
travel to America’s heartland to plant and farm one of our nation’s most
heavily subsidized crops: corn. In attempting to trace the path of
their product from field to market, the two friends uncover shocking
truths about the inner workings of an industry we as Americans are
inextricably linked to.
Why It’s Noteworthy
Hailed by the
Washington Post’s Ann
Hornaday as “required viewing before entering a supermarket” and
boasting a formidable 100% rating on RottenTomatoes.com,
King Corn is
easily one of the best-reviewed environmental docs out there. That,
coupled with its slick production, likable characters and down-home
presentation, make
King Corn a documentary anyone can enjoy — regardless of political stripe or environmental proclivity.
6. Avatar, 2009
Ostensibly
Fern Gully with guns and aliens, James Cameron’s
3-D blockbuster-to-end-all-blockbusters packs with its punch a
surprisingly noble message: Don’t mess with nature, lest it mess back.
In the film, paraplegic space marine Jake Sully is charged with
infiltrating a race of blue, 10-foot-tall aliens in an effort to co-opt
their resource-rich planet. New-found inter-species romance eventually
intervenes, however, swaying hearts and minds while sparking
interstellar war in the process. You know — that old chestnut.
Why It’s Noteworthy
Avatar is oft-interpreted as a parable for the United
States’ seemingly insatiable thirst for oil, and frankly, it’s hard to
walk away from the film with a reading to the contrary.
Avatar deals
heavily in the follies of ethnocentrism, too, and it’s for these
reasons in aggregate that Cameron deserves credit: He’s crafted a film
that’s at once technically stunning, hyper-mainstream, and appropriately
didactic. I see you, James.
5. An Inconvenient Truth, 2006
Former Vice President Al Gore’s groundbreaking[ly infamous] foray into documentary filmmaking,
An Inconvenient Truth
boasts two Oscars and one of the highest-ever box office grosses for a
film of its kind. The doc weaves Gore’s personal travails into a larger
appeal to grassroots-level advocacy, urging its viewers to consider the
mounting pile of evidence in support of
climate change‘s existence.
Why It’s Noteworthy
To paraphrase a good friend of mine, “Screw the politics. What other movie in the past decade has spurred as much debate as
An Inconvenient Truth?”
And you know what? He’s right: Regardless of your disposition toward
climate change, this documentary gets people talking. This reason alone
justifies the film’s existence, and then some. See it.
4. Earthlings, 2005
Narrated by animal rights advocate, lifelong vegan, and Academy Award-nominee Joaquin Phoenix,
Earthlings
utilizes hidden-camera footage to chronicle “the day-to-day practices
of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on
animals for profit.” In a departure of form from similar documentaries,
Earthlings
opts not to focus solely on the animals-as-food controversy. Instead,
Phoenix implores viewers to consider their reliance on animals for
clothing, entertainment, experimentation, and companionship.
Why It’s Noteworthy
To the extent that animal consumption is linked to environmental
concerns (read: wholly and as yet unalterably), this film makes a
compelling, if pathos-heavy, argument. Moreover,
Earthlings
willfully denies its viewers the all-too-popular conceit that meat
consumption is not an environmental issue. A strong word of caution to
would-be viewers, though:
Earthlings is not a film for the faint of heart.
3. Food, Inc., 2008
Robert Kenner’s
Food, Inc. takes to task the notion that the
modern-day food industry bears any resemblance to the bucolic, agrarian
antecedent to which it professes kinship. In scene after stunning
scene, the film deconstructs “the spinning of the pastoral fantasy,”
positing instead a horrifyingly singular vision of for-profit conspiracy
in which we’re all complicit.
Why It’s Noteworthy
The truths contained within
Food, Inc. are truly
hair-raising; for instance, who knew how nefarious an out-of-season
piece of fruit could be made to seem? And yet this is the power of
Food, Inc.: It can take the seemingly innocuous and impel you to reconsider its indispensability in your day-to-day life.
2. WALL-E, 2008
Academy Award-winner for Best Animated Feature in 2009, Pixar Studios’
WALL-E tells
the story of a small waste-collecting robot who “inadvertently embarks
on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.” For
all its charming pretensions, though,
WALL-E is more than just the Next Big Thing from the studio that brought the world
Toy Story. Quite the opposite,
WALL-E is a cautionary tale for the ages, foretelling what might be if mankind’s unsustainable habits are allowed to continue unabated.
Why It’s Noteworthy
Pixar’s depiction of a future in which Earth has been abandoned —
rendered naught by environmental complacency — is simply astonishing.
It’s in the conveyance of this bleak hypothetical that the film
transcends its otherwise carefree ambitions, insisting instead that
viewers consider the repercussions of an overly-consumptive lifestyle.
As both a tool of education and a piece of entertainment,
WALL-E is in a class of its own.
1. Koyaanisqatsi, 1982
Part documentary, part avant-garde concept piece, Godfrey Reggio’s
1982 opus is a work of visual and aural art unlike any other. The title,
taken from the Hopi Indian language, means “life out of balance,” and
it’s on this theme that the film dwells. With no characters, no plot and
no dialogue to speak of,
Koyaanisqatsi is 87 minutes of breathtaking imagery set to renowned composer Philip Glass’ now-famous score.
Why It’s Noteworthy
Koyaanisqatsi is the quintessence of filmmaking-as-art,
functioning to simultaneously titillate, confound, and horrify its
viewers into a consideration of the themes it treats. Of the films on
this list,
Koyaanisqatsi is among the least popular, but
undoubtedly the most profound. It stands as both an exercise in and
contention for environmental consciousness, and deserves to be seen
without question or hesitation.
Source: http://www.blueplanetgreenliving.com/2010/05/21/top-ten-must-see-films/
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