Encounters At the End of the World (2007)

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This documentary about life in and around a vast scientific research centre in Antarctica. None of these meetings, however, is as interesting as the interspersed footage of the pole’s natural wonders.

His best film for years.

This Oscar-nominated gem reveals far more than the traditional documentary by coming at the subject from an unexpected angle to reveal a myriad of unvarnished truths.

Too loose and aimless to sit with Herzog’s best, Encounters drifts along on its filmmaker’s frostbitten humour and his ever-searching eye for weirdness and wonder.

Herzog is baffled, amused and fascinated by them all, exults in their palpable strangeness, draws us deep into their unique world and, via Henry Kaiser’s extraordinary underwater photography, what looms often unnervingly beneath it.

Nature at its most mysterious, brutal and implacable - just as Herzog likes it.

Seemingly off-hand, cumulatively imposing, utterly masterful.

As a nature doc alone, Encounters at the End of the World would stand as one of the year’s best. But it is the people who choose to live and work at the very ends of the Earth that are Herzog’s real subject.

It's a thoroughly intelligent, worthwhile and tremendous-looking film. But where is the dark spark of Herzog magic?