‘Theater of Thought’ Film Review: Werner Herzog Offers a Baffling Guided Tour of the Brain

Werner Herzog turned 80 on September 5—the last day of the Telluride Film Festival, his abiding favorite film event, which he’s been attending for decades—and, of course, he has a new film to mark the occasion; you’d expect nothing less. It’s a documentary—he’s made many—and it shows the filmmaker as youthfully curious as ever, as he turns his camera on an impressive array of scientists, doctors, researchers, wealthy executives and the odd lawyer and politician to investigate the status of progress of neurological science. It’s an enormous field of endeavor, one that seems certain to become far bigger than is now is, more central to fundamental ways in which we lead our lives and more knowledgeable about how different species interact with one another. It’s an up-to-date primer on the subject, wider than it is deep, but engaging and illuminating always.

Herzog also teased some of his upcoming projects: in addition to the volcanologist documentary “The Fire Within,” he’s in pre-production on “two or three narrative feature films” and is toying with releasing a book of poetry and returning to acting, “probably as a villain.”Where his own mind is concerned, said Herzog: “I never can catch up with it.”Studio sponsors include GreenSlate, Moët & Chandon, PEX and Vancouver Film School.

could he? And even if he can sign on with a freighter taking cargo to Southeast Asia, what can he do when he gets to Saigon?He embarks on the trip at least partly because nobody he knows thinks he’ll actually do it, and he bumbles his way around Vietnam with a bag full of beer that dispenses so many cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon it starts to feel like a cross between a clown car and Jesus’s loaves and fishes. (Chickie and his pals, Catholics all, would either appreciate or be offended by the Jesus comparison.)The point of the movie, of course, is what Chickie learns in Vietnam — that it’s a quagmire, that the good guys and bad guys aren’t as clear-cut as they might have seemed back at the bar, and that Americans are being lied to about what’s happening by their government. But to learn his lessons, he’s got to find his way around a good chunk of Vietnam, hitching rides on military helicopters because the top brass figures that he must be CIA, since a civilian can’t really be wandering around in country.

Endlessness might be the right word for viewers in 2022, given the conflicts that still wrack the globe more than 100 years after the events in this film.)“All Quiet on the Western Front” starts with the bucolic landscape of Western Europe in 1917; we know we’re in for carnage, but first we see hills and trees, clouds sitting in a pink-tinged sky, fog slipping through the woods. It’s a technique Berger and his cinematographer James Friend return to again and again, deliberately placing their story in a world that would look like paradise if not for the blood squabbles of humans.And “All Quiet” doesn’t give us time to bask in that beauty; before long, we’re in a short, brutal battle, and then the ground is littered with dead bodies.

A few minutes before the North American premiere of “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” director Evgeny Afineesvky summed up his state of mind in a single word: “exhausted.”That makes sense, because “Freedom on Fire” screened at the Toronto International Film Festival about six months after Afineevsky and his team began working on it, barely more than a month after its final footage was filmed and only a few weeks after Helen Mirren recorded narration for a scene that comes early in the documentary.For Afineevsky, who landed Oscar and Emmy nominations for 2015’s “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” this sequel of sorts was made in a six-month rush, including just three months of editing after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February of this year. “The urgency of the movie,” the Russian-born director told the audience before the Tuesday morning TIFF screening, “is to not neglect the situation right now.”Certainly, urgency is a hallmark of “Freedom on Fire,” a harrowing document shot by dozens of people inside Ukrainian cities as the Russian army conducted a bombing campaign and an invasion that seemingly targeted civilians, despite Vladimir Putin’s claims that Russia was there to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country, and to somehow “free” it – though as more than one person in the film points out, the Russian offensive has resulted in ordinary citizens being freed from their lives, their homes, their families.The director’s first film about Ukraine, “Winter on Fire,” was an on-the-ground look at the 2013-2014 Maidan uprising, in which student protests against the Russian-backed president drew a brutal response but resulted in the removal of the president.

Writer-director Rian Johnson and star Daniel Craig reteam for “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” the sequel to their 2019 film “Knives Out.” The new film trades New England for a Greek island, and a dysfunctional family for a group of friends who self-identify as “disruptors.” But essentially, it’s still a whodunit unfolding inside a mansion with a cast of eccentric wealthy folk.A lot has happened since 2019, and “Glass Onion” acknowledges the Covid-19 pandemic in its opening sequences. But it hasn’t anticipated genre-shifting game-changers like “Bodies Bodies Bodies” and “Triangle of Sadness” now driving the conversation. Billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) sends each of his friends a wooden box locked by layers of puzzles, which ultimately reveals an invitation to his Greek island for a getaway and a game to solve the mystery of his own murder.

somewhere to recuperate, Lindsay heads to her mother’s house in New Orleans, where mom has a boyfriend, uncertain hours and a taste for booze that her daughter doesn’t share. Not suited to sitting at home, Lindsay gets a job cleaning pools, then befriends James (Henry), the owner of a car repair joint and a man whose marriage ended badly some years earlier.Their friendship grows slowly and moves with easy Crescent City rhythms.

At first pass, “The Woman King” recalls those classic Disney animated fables. Though inspired by real-life warriors who guarded the Kingdom of Dahomey in 19th-century West Africa, the film hits many familiar notes: Ancient mythical land! Palace intrigue! Rebellious orphan! Tough-love mentors! Coming of age! Prince charming! Wicked villain! Good vs. evil showdown! It’s just that here, the tropes aren’t metaphors at all and the story isn’t an allegory. In the Sony Pictures release that premiered on Friday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, Oscar winner Viola Davis stars as General Nanisca, commander of the Agojie, an all-female army, and adviser to the young King Ghezo (John Boyega), who has recently ascended to the throne.

does, relying on more dynamic, albeit repetitive, scenes of her having to address the danger in her life.Much attention has been paid to Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s executive-producing role in the film, a fitting match for a documentary on a female politician struggling against the status quo. Ghafari rages against the system in question, but one glance at her office and her peers, and it’s easy to see that her staff consists of mostly men.

something to come of this chance encounter, anything to buoy her or tether her to this world.For the most part, “True Things” is a depiction of this ebb and flow between Kate and Blond. He’s a man almost of her own imagination, rarely if ever integrating himself into her life outside of their clandestine meet-ups. She goes with him to a party; he ghosts.

Werner Herzog turned 80 on September 5, and he did so at a place that loves him dearly (and where he serves as an executive director): the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. There, you can be immersed in the festival’s fare thanks to a booming, massive theater named for the enigmatic director, smack-dab next to a mountain where you can tempt your own “Grizzly Man” experience.