Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

I hadn't heard of Bjorn Lomborg before I sat down to view Ondi Timoner's new documentary about Lomborg and his unorthodox but seemingly more intelligent (and probably infinitely more useful) approach to climate change and global warming than what we've been served up until now. Cool It is a smart title on several counts. It's swift and even a bit cute, while telling us not to get so worked up and apocalyptic about global warming and its results upon our tired and increasingly put-upon Mother Earth.

Reviewer: Glenn Heath Jr.
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Mike Leigh's rapturous Topsy-Turvy, now on a lovely new DVD from Criterion (supervised by cinematographer Dick Pope), isn't so much an argument against auteurism, but a concurrence for the beauty of collaboration. Over the course of the sweeping multi-character narrative, Leigh mixes performance, practice, and discourse with effortless precision, showing the "symptoms of fatigue" concerning the artistic process, but also the power of sudden inspiration.

W.S. Gilbert (Jim Broadbent), Sir Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner), the troupe of actors led by Richard Temple (Timothy Spall), the costume designers, set decorators, choreographers, producers, and couriers all make a substantial impact on the gloriously textural production of "The Mikado", yet no one artist can claim sole ownership. Leigh's methodical pre-production methodologies (often made up of months of rehearsals) literally appear in front of the camera, and avenues of disappointment and possibility seem organically woven into the mise-en-scene.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ***½

This year has been packed with documentaries about art and about the environment, but the Oscar-nominated Waste Land manages to take on both topics comfortably, without preaching, and with a positive outlook besides. Lucy Walker's film is inspirational without seeming self-righteous, moving without being hackneyed.

It begins as the well-established Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz decides on his newest project. He goes to Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest garbage pile near Rio de Janeiro; there, he meets a handful of pickers, people who work on the garbage heap, pulling out recyclable materials. They each have amusing/disturbing stories of the things they have found. Stunning footage shows huge trucks dumping fresh piles of garbage and the pickers poised and ready to start rummaging before the junk has even settled; they often look as if they're about to be buried.

Reviewer: Philip Tatler
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Within the first decades of the 20th Century, Earth was becoming a smaller place. Most of the planet's surface had been mapped and the poles had been successfully reached. Only one natural superlative remained in defiance of man's despoilment: Earth's highest peak, Tibet's Mt. Chomolungma, known more familiarly in the West as Mt. Everest.

Anthony Geffen's film The Wildest Dream, released as an IMAX spectacular via National Geographic's theatrical imprint, documents the doomed 1924 conquest of Everest by British mountaineer George Mallory. Mallory's story dovetails into American climber Conrad Anker's modern attempt to reach Everest's summit using Mallory's route.