Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Lawbolisted Powerful

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

jessica-keener It's just really damn good. Lava is like water but red and hot, really hot, like really really hot

cd637 Werner Herzog proves again he is a monster of a documentarian. Into the Inferno is filled with stunning imagery and sounds that truly left me awestruck. The substance of the film itself was not quite what I was expecting, but it turned out that that was a good thing. This film goes places you would never really think of, and sheds light on many different cultural connections to volcanoes around the world. It more about people, societies, and culture than it is about science and geology, although there is some of that too. If you are at all interested in volcanoes and how people react and interact with them around the world, this film will pleasantly surprise you.

davidjtalbot Werner Herzog is nothing if not an obsessive film maker. This obsession leads to stark and beautiful sights captured through his camera, which serve more of a philosophical aesthetic than any true narrative. I went into this expecting a documentary about the history of volcanoes, perhaps a narrative on their cultural considerations. Instead what I got was a personal rumination on the discompassionate, violent nature of volcanoes, put into relief by the helpless, delusional stories primitive communities create about them.Herzog superimposes his trademark "Man as nothing but subject to the indifferent forces of nature" theme subtlety throughout the film, until the end it comes forward in full, with nothing short of an apocalyptic speculation about volcanoes annihilating the planet in synchronized eruption....K.I respect Herzog's view that man is a futile, helpless, and deluded organism at the mercy of the objective and inconsiderate forces of nature, but that is nothing more than a reflection of his personal view on humanity and nature. It is not inspiring, it is not particularly original, but it is vastly dark. To that I simply say, I prefer to see the world as something of beauty, something from which we are inextricably linked, that supports us, and provides this incredible experience called human life. I am thankful for the sometimes violent beauty of nature. Herzog does a good job of disguising his nihilism beneath gorgeous shots, imagery, and commentary, and slowly leaks it in as time ticks by. It's like a good magic trick, that if pulled off effectively might just leave the viewer feeling somewhat nihilistic at the end of the movie too. Nice try Werner, not this time.

BlueFairyBlog Werner Herzog is a captivating man who has grand pursuits and a varied set of interests. He has made many films since his breakout hit, "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," in 1972, and all of them have either been exceptionally interesting, complex, fantastical, or illuminating in nature. Herzog makes both fiction and non-fiction films that deal with issues as diverse as colonialism, the savageness of the wilderness, ecological disasters, opera, and ski flying. With his newest film for Netflix, Herzog once again shows us that fascination is an oft neglected but empowering feeling that can be applied to numerous aspects of life. He starts us off with the topic of volcanoes, but he becomes much more fascinated with humankind at large, evidenced by his own reticence to even get close to a volcano.Herzog reels us in with the help of Clive Oppenheimer, a Cambridge University volcanologist that he had previously worked with in the documentary, "Encounters at the End of the World," which was a film about Antarctica. Oppenheimer is a playfully compelling, if timid, guide into the world of volcanoes. He and Herzog travel the world and study volcanoes in Indonesia, Iceland, North Korea, and Ethiopia. At each of these junctures, the cultural importance of the volcano is made the fixture of the film, rather than focusing on hard science. The peoples of these regions all seem to be in awe of volcanoes, and either have a deep fear or respect for what it's capable of. In Ethiopia, a nearby volcano is the key to finding fossils of Paleolithic hominids, the rarest of human fossils. In North Korea the region's fierce patriotism is linked with its local volcano where the leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-Il once stood, proudly displaying to their nation that they were strong and resilient in the face of outside vitriol.Though some of these excursions seem to undercut the fact that this is a film about volcanoes, this film never bores its audience. Between the panoramic shots of tropical foliage and the drone sequences that pan across villages and volcanoes alike, this is a feast for the eyes. There's a great contrast between the beauty of these regions and the oft-confusing shots of the magma that these ruptures expound with horrifying regularity. The inner regions of volcanoes look both like fire and water, and the magma often looks pitifully tame when it moves slowly down a mountainside, though it is actually a most dangerous force that will destroy all in its path. Herzog talks a bit about a couple who were volcanic photographers and were eventually killed by a fast moving cloud of volcanic ash (at 100 mph). While this tidbit is unprompted, it proves to be yet another interesting facet of these quaking mountaintops. Herzog finds many ways to look at these geographic forces, which can be seen as either benevolent or destructive in power.