Journeys to both ends of the Earth

The DVD Beat
Reviews by Nathan Weinbender

The Pick of the Week
WALL-E
WALL-E is an amazingly expressive character, yet he doesn’t speak. He communicates in blips and bleeps and other sound effects, but he has a wonderfully animated pair of eyes that resemble binoculars and convey just about every emotion. I suppose it would be more appropriate to refer to WALL-E as an “it,” not a “he,” but he—yes, he—is such a lovely character that we soon forget he’s a hunk of metal and invest our emotions in him.

He is a cute, ambulatory robot, existing alone on a long-desolate Earth. Some 800 years ago, when humans vacated the planet and now live comfortably in an orbiting space station, WALL-E’s were left behind to deal with waste management. Our WALL-E is the only one of his kind left, and over time he has developed a precocious personality.

WALL-E is lonely, with only an ever-resilient cockroach to keep him company, and he fantasizes about romance while watching his favorite movie, “Hello, Dolly.” When a robot called EVE shows up to search for plant life on Earth, WALL-E is smitten. But when EVE is summoned back to the human’s space station, WALL-E follows, and he incites mayhem aboard the ship, liberating a group of malfunctioning robots.

This is the point in the story when “WALL-E” sort of loses steam. It goes from an engaging physical comedy to an environmental sci-fi fable that only partially works. The space station is inhabited by fat, lazy humans, who resemble pustules in hovering chairs that they never get out of. They’re not as engaging as WALL-E himself, and it’s too bad that director Andrew Stanton, who previously helmed “A Bug’s Life” and “Finding Nemo,” can’t quite sustain the magic of the film’s opening half hour.

But “WALL-E” is not only a great animated film, but a great film period. Pixar continues to prove that animation is not just a medium for children, and that family films can be sophisticated, intelligent and charming.

Grade: A-

Also on DVD
Encounters at the End of the World
Werner Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World” would probably be just another Discovery Channel nature documentary had it not been for Herzog himself. He is such an engaging character, and his off-beat narration is so earnestly kooky that it almost threatens to overtake the images. Actually, I take that back. The images in this movie are glorious, Herzog or not. The director travels to the South Pole to observe the scientists living and working there, and he finds some tremendously interesting people—a man who was nearly kidnapped and killed by Venezuelan militants, another who discovered he was of royal Aztec heritage because of the lines on his hands, a lady who once “traveled from Denver to Bolivia in a sewer pipe.” The world below the ice is even more astonishing. There are moments in the movie where Herzog allows his camera to simply observe, and the sights of the strange aquatic life, the towering icebergs and the vast desolation of the ocean are, at times, breathtaking. And then there’s Herzog at the center of everything. When he secures an interview with an eccentric penguin biologist, what does he ask? “Is there such a thing as a gay penguin?” You have to love the guy.
Grade: A-