‘Into the Ice’ Review: Arctic Climate Change Doc Balances Dazzling Spectacle With a Sobering Forecast

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film CriticIn the 16 years since “An Inconvenient Truth” became an unlikely box-office sleeper and Oscar winner, the climate change documentary has grown into its own distinct subgenre — one that has to devise increasingly eye-catching ways to net the attention of viewers who may have heard the message before, but have yet to really internalize it.

The Al Gore-led PowerPoint presentation of Davis Guggenheim’s film looks positively quaint beside the grandiose, you-are-there spectacle of “Into the Ice,” which keeps the science simple and instead concentrates on ravishing imagery to remind us of a grim, inarguable and oft-repeated reality: The ice caps are melting, and we are barely doing a thing about it.

The first theatrical feature by nature-focused Danish docmaker Lars Henrik Ostenfeld, “Into the Ice” may not be especially novel in form or function, but its immersive journey into Greenland’s ice sheet is enough of a wow to make it stand out against other, similarly themed works.

Following what promises to be a busy festival run — kicking off as the opening film of CPH:DOX, before going on to Visions du Réel — Ostenfeld’s National Geographic-style film should be easily accommodated by a mainstream documentary distributor or major streaming service, though home viewing may slightly shrink the impact of its most breathtaking ice-exploring footage.Structurally, Ostenfeld ostensibly builds his film around the exploits of three climate change scientists: glaciologists Jason Box and Alun Hubbard, and paleoclimatology professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen.