I posted this review of Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World over at rednoW.com a couple of days ago.

When Werner Herzog received an invitation from the National Science Foundation to visit its Antarctic headquarters, he made it clear that he was in no mood to make another film about “fuzzy penguins”. The line is a funny, if unsurprising, way to begin Encounters at the End of the World. Despite the recurring theme of global warming as the coming apocalypse (the film’s title works on multiple levels), Herzog’s dry wit keeps the audience engaged, and even laughing at times.

Early in the documentary Herzog tells us that his questions about nature are different than those who made the “fuzzy penguin” documentary. In a review of Encounters for Paste Magazine, Sean Gandert complains that Herzog never makes it clear what those questions are. Although he goes on to praise the film for its Planet Earth-like beauty, Gandert wonders: how are we, the viewers, to know how he answers the questions that brought him to the South Pole in the first place?

Read the rest at rednoW.com.