Encounters at the End of the World: Werner Herzog, contemporary cinema's most consistently lyrical examiner of the (in)human condition, returns to the documentary form in yet another wonderfully improbable locale: Antarctica, where the scientists he meets are a happily cynical lot. Herzog's mordant monologue on the end of days runs counter to the natural splendor that surrounds him and suffuses every frame of his film.
- Marc Savlov
Mister Lonely: Harmony Korine, the former It Boy of off-off-Hollywood filmmaking (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy), returns to the Cinema du Poète Maudit with this sweetly sad portrait of a colony of celebrity impersonators who'd rather be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Especially given its major subplot about a flock of nuns who jump out of airplanes without parachutes to test their faith, the movie doesn't make a whole lot of sense, except on the metaphysical plane, but Diego Luna and Samantha Morton bring a touching innocence to "Michael Jackson" and "Marilyn Monroe."
- Kent Williams
