The 10 terrific – and terrifying – climate change movies you need to see

It is the over-riding, sometimes overwhelming, crisis facing humanity.

Depending on where you live, the effects of the Earth’s now clearly changing climate is causing more intense storms, hotter temperatures, or longer droughts.

And it’s not only scientists have been warning us for decades about the potential harm we’re doing to our planet, Hollywood has been too, with fantasies and allegories that are serious, sobering and sometimes just plain scary.

To mark the release of Apple TV+’s new star-studded mid-21st century spanning series Extrapolations, Stuff to Watch has gone on a deep-dive into the cinematic archive to come up with 10 terrific and terrifying tales (and where you can watch them right now).

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* Twenty 21st century movies that will leave a mark (and where you can watch them)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (200, iTunes, GooglePlay)

Brian Aldiss’ 1969 short story Super Toys Last All Summer Long was the inspiration for Spielberg’s homage to Stanley Kubrick (who originally wanted to make the movie).

Set in a futuristic, post-climate change society, it follows the Pinocchio-esque adventures of a child-like android programmed with the ability to love. As well as Haley Joel Osment’s (The Sixth Sense) one other great performance, this heartbreaking tale also features the magnificent Teddy.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012, GooglePlay, iTunes, YouTube, Lumiere Online, Academy OnDemand, AroVision, Deluxe AtHome)

A brilliant and bravura film that took on extra resonance in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Katrina and our own tempestuous relationship with mother nature.

A rural Precious, a serious Waterworld, a terrifying take on Where the Wild Things Are, director Behn Zeitlin’s fantasy-drama (based on the one-act play Juicy and Delicious by co-writer Lucy Alibar) about a Louisiana bayou-living six-year-old girl and her hot-tempered father is a vibrant, soulful film that really has to be seen to be believed.

While hand-held camera and natural lighting give the film its air of authenticity, it’s the “non-actors” who really shine.

Burning (2021, Prime Video)

It felt like a precursor of impending doom.

When Kiwis awoke to a new year on January 1, 2020, it was to an unnerving, eerie sight. The sun was shrouded by a blanket of smoke and there was a faint acrid taint to the air. So potent were the Australian bushfires at the height of that “black summer”, that their effects had drifted over to our side of the Tasman, even coating our pristine Southern Alps in ash.

Thanks to Eva Orner’s vital, vivid and visceral documentation of the events of those harrowing few months (disturbingly, the first bushfires of that summer were actually recorded in September), you’ll see the devastation and despair in all its tear and fear-inducing horror.

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (2020, Netflix)

The now nonagenarian, beloved British natural history presenter uses all the skills built up by more than six decades of bringing exotic flora and fauna into our homes to spell out, in as plain a language as he can, that climate change is real and that making personal and institutional change is less about saving the planet (which has already adapted to five extinction events in its history) and more about saving ourselves.

As a tearful Attenborough opines in one of his many trademark direct-to-camera addresses, “human beings have overrun the world”. But the real heartrending, thought-provoking clarion call comes after Attenborough’s sobs, when he lays out the nightmarish future we could be headed for if we don’t change our ways. Less Roland Emmerich, more Christopher Nolan.

The Day After Tomorrow (2004, Disney+)

Having obliterated the White House, destroyed more than 100 major cities and taken out around 3 billion people with his 1996 alien invasion actioner Independence Day, the modern-day master of disaster Roland Emmerich this time unleashed a superstorm and a tidal wave upon the citizens of Earth, as he adapted Art Bell and Whitley Strieber’s 1999 book The Coming Global Superstorm.

Dennis Quaid is the paleoclimatologist attempting to warn the authorities about an impending ice age. Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum and Ian Holm also star.

“The jaw-dropping special effects in this weather-gone-wild doomsday film sweep all else away,” wrote New York Post’s Megan Lehmann.

Don’t Look Up (2021, Netflix)

A star-studded, scabrous, scathing political and social satire, this is likely to go down as this generation’s Dr. Strangelove.

At one level, this tale of two scientists attempting to persuade humanity about the existential peril of an approaching comet is a stinging rebuke of governments, bureaucracy and the sometimes self-aggrandising, incompetent people that are attracted to power. On another, it’s a quite brilliant pastiche of the Hollywood movies of the mid-to-late ‘90s when it was believed that any external threat could be solved by the President and someone willing to make “the ultimate sacrifice”.

The impressive acting ensemble includes Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Interstellar (2014, Netflix)

Haunting and heart-wrenching, like Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, this is 21st century science-fiction that resonates more and more, as humanity stumbles from one crisis to the next.

While at one level it’s about a team of explorers who travel through a wormhole in order to find us a new home, it’s also an emotional story of fathers and daughters, as Matthew McConaughey’s widowed Nasa pilot Coop is torn between securing Murph’s (Mackenzie Foy/Jessica Chastain) future and being a part of her present.

With a killer soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and terrific use of footage of Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl documentary to set the scene, this is movie-making and storytelling at its finest.

Snowpiercer (2013, Neon, Shudder)

Chris Evans, Jamie Bell and Tilda Swinton head an all-star cast in this sci-fi actioner about a train which appears to support the only life left on Earth after a climate-change experiment goes awry. The somewhat troubled production marked Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s (Parasite) English-language debut.

“Enormously fun, visionary filmmaking, with a witty script and a great international cast,” wrote New York Post’s Lou Lumenick.

Soylent Green (1973, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube)

Set in a 2022 where the greenhouse effect is in full swing, this is a sci-fi-infused police procedural with a real sting in its tail.

Loosely based on Harry Harrison’s 1966 sci-fi novel Make Room! Make Room!, it sees Charlton Heston play an innocent cop who stumbles upon a nightmarish truth. The movie also marked Edward G. Robinson’s last onscreen appearance.

“Just seems to keep getting better with age,” wrote Fantastica Daily’s Chuck O’Leary. “An entertaining sci-fi flick done before special effects took over the genre.”

Waterworld (1995, iTunes, GooglePlay, YouTube, AroVision)

All but sunk before its release thanks to stories of blown-out budgets and on-set difficulties, this Kevin Costner-headlining post-apocalyptic headliner actually provides engaging, sometimes engrossing action.

Set in the 26th Century when the polar ice cap has completely melted and the sea level has risen more than 7600m, it’s the story of a mutant loner who battles outlaws when reluctantly agreeing to help a mother and her daughter find dry land. Dennis Hopper and Jeanne Tripplehorn also feature.

“Prophetic, cautionary and agenda-driven. It’s also epic and a damned entertaining ride,” wrote Movie Nation’s Roger Moore.