Encounters at the End of the World (U)

Or: "Werner Herzog Goes to Antarctica".

This time the peerless German oddball sets out to examine nature at its most extreme and enigmatic, interviewing an assortment of boffins at the continent's National Science Foundation in McMurdo and making discoveries that even he hasn't prepared for.

It lacks the focus that made his Grizzly Man so compelling. All the same, you don't want to miss the weird scenes beneath the ice shelf or inside the active volcano, or the incredibly poignant shot of a "deranged" penguin waddling furiously away from the pack towards a distant mountain range – and certain death. This is Herzog in awe at life, the universe, eternity itself.