Encounters at the End of the World (2008)
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I had a very odd application.

I had to explain that I was into things like: Is there such a thing as insanity among penguins? And why is it that human beings saddle a horse, and like the Lone Ranger, put on masks in order to disguise their identity and then feel the urge to chase the bad guy? And why is it that certain species of ants keep flocks of wild lice in order to milk them like slaves for droplets of sugar? And why is it that a chimp — clearly a superior creature — does not straddle a goat and ride into the sunset?

So does Werner Herzog explain his motivations for the journey that would spawn Encounters at the End of the World, and if you’ve sat down in front of the crusty director’s latest documentary hoping (or fearing) that you were in for another Discovery Channel-esque look at the wonders of life at the bottom of the planet, prepare to have your expectations knocked off their axis. We’ve had a lot of film crews journey to various bits of frozen tundra over the last decade or so, but nobody combines disdain for humanity with a curious spirit quite like Herzog, and his work here is typically, appropriately iconoclastic.

There are no chimps on goats, but Herzog still manages to take viewers places they’ve never been before — both around Antarctica and into the psyches of the people who live and work there. This latter component is really what makes Encounters tick: Herzog arrived at McMurdo Station curious about what would drive a person to seek employment in such unforgiving environs, and between various excursions, he does a fair amount of probing the histories of his hosts. Given Herzog’s career-long love for the exceptional (or exceptionally strange), you might think Antarctica would be the perfect place for him, and you’d be right — pretty much as soon as he steps off the plane, he’s aiming his lens at a pack of characters positively Lynchian in their penchant for the unusual. (more…)

By the calendar it’s not quite summer yet, but the northeast has already wilted under August heat — and the movies already feel spent and depleted, in need of a second wind. The Pixar movie, WALL-E, might do it: a film without dialogue seems like a mighty good idea given the screenwriting of late. But this week’s comedies — I had held out hope for Get Smart, but based on word-of-shoe-phone will likely get it on Netflix or HBO next summer — feel like filler. I’m lukewarm on Will Smith’s latest Fourth of July picture (I’m lukewarm on Will Smith, period). There are indies to be considered, but by and large, I can Rip Van Winkle the hoped-for Hollywood hits till mid-July, when The Dark Knight and, yes, Mamma Mia! open. I have a growing curiosity about Hellboy II, but it’s hard to see a cult-ish sequel getting much traction.

Still, I’m not entirely disenchanted, though you might think me so given last week’s no-show. I went to the press screening of The Incredible Hulk, like a good little critic, and banged out a few paragraphs on it, admittedly a bit late. But WordPress ate my homework, which I didn’t realize till yesterday. Now, I could push the “delete” key, and be done with yesterday’s hit, which you can already scrape mold from. But, no — I made the effort, dammit, so having raged at the machine here it is, slightly freshened as we head to this week’s haul.

The dumb-ass Hulk movie some of you have been waiting for has arrived. Hear me out: While Ang Lee’s much-mocked V.1 of 2003 makes a mountain out of a molehill, digging deep into a simple Marvel concept, it has an abundance of style, and maybe too much of everything, really. There’s a crazily Freudian father-son dynamic, Pop Art editing matched to comic book frames, and loony flights of fancy (the untamable Hulk leaping over mountains) that only a top-flight filmmaker would dare to risk. By contrast, there’s nothing particularly at stake in the new do-over, The Incredible Hulk. It’s an unleavened summer blockbuster, an entertainment machine that blows things up, sputters, grinds, and stops after two hours, then resumes to pick up new passengers at the multiplex.

Hulk left me feeling overstuffed, but I knew I had seen something that departed from the comic book adaptation template. The Incredible Hulk clings to it for dear life, too timid to do anything out of the ordinary and jeopardize the gross and the franchise possibilities. (more…)