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<p class="css-tsacue e6idgb70">Critic’s Pick</p>
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<h1 id="link-381e68d1" class="css-hzs6w4 e1h9rw200"
itemprop="headline" data-test-id="headline">‘Fireball: Visitors
From Darker Worlds’ Review: It’s Raining Mysteries</h1>
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<p id="article-summary" class="css-1smgwul e1wiw3jv0">Apocalyptic
comets, complicated math, ancient rituals, eccentric scientists:
Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s new documentary has it all.</p>
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<p class="css-1nuro5j e1jsehar1" itemprop="author"
itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">By <span
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last-byline" itemprop="name">Glenn Kenny</span></span></p>
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<ul class="css-1u1psjv epjyd6m3">
<li class="css-ccw2r3 epjyd6m1"><time
datetime="2020-11-12T07:00:08-05:00" class="css-ld3wwf
e16638kd2"><span class="css-1sbuyqj e16638kd3">Nov. 12, 2020</span></time></li>
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<dt>Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds</dt>
<dd class="css-up6b8e"><span>NYT Critic's Pick</span></dd>
<dd class="director">Directed by <span>Werner Herzog</span><span>,
</span><span>Clive Oppenheimer</span></dd>
<dd>Documentary</dd>
<dd>1h 37m</dd>
</dl>
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<p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0">This picture, “Fireball:
Visitors From Darker Worlds,” is the third Werner Herzog
movie to come out in 2020. Yes, he directed it alongside
Clive Oppenheimer, but still. At age 78, Herzog’s
productivity almost recalls that of his long-gone
colleague and compatriot <span class="css-1g7m0tk">Rainer
Werner Fassbinder</span>, who had more feature films to
his name than years lived when he died in 1982 at age 37.</p>
<p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0">Herzog has to be at least
reasonably good at self-care to maintain not just his
filmmaking pace but his globe-trotting. Like his most
recent release, <span class="css-1g7m0tk">“Nomad: In the
Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin,”</span> this movie was shot
around the world, including the Torres Strait Islands,
Castel Gandolfo in Italy, Antarctica, Arizona and Hawaii.
But it’s his intellectual curiosity and emotional
availability that make his movies sing. This film rests on
the fact that Mother Earth is always being called on by
other worlds in the forms of comets, meteorites and
asteroids — and it’s about as transportive as
documentaries get.</p>
<p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0">Oppenheimer is a
volcanologist from the University of Cambridge who first
appeared in Herzog’s <span class="css-1g7m0tk">“Encounters
at the End of the World,”</span> a spectacular
Antarctica trip, in 2007. He was later in Herzog’s <span
class="css-1g7m0tk">“Into the Inferno,”</span> in 2016,
about, well, volcanoes. Cataclysmic fire has a special
place in Herzog’s filmography; his remarkable <span
class="css-1g7m0tk">“Lessons of Darkness”</span> (1992)
treated the burning oil fields of Kuwait, set <span
class="css-1g7m0tk">ablaze by Saddam Hussein</span>, as
an apocalyptic sci-fi scenario.</p>
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<p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0">“Fireball” looks at fire
coming from the sky. But it begins very much on the
ground, in Mérida, Mexico, at a celebration of the Day of
the Dead. Men with painted faces perform what Herzog
describes as a “fireball ritual,” derived from ancient
Mayan culture; it “feels like a re-enactment,” he says.
The site where they dance is one where an asteroid changed
the topography millions of years ago.</p>
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<p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0">Oppenheimer is the onscreen
interviewer and explainer for much of the movie. He shows
places where meteorites affected both landscape and
culture. In the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, for
instance, a black stone embedded in the Kaaba, the cube at
the center of Islam’s holiest mosque, is the subject of
adulation; it is believed that the stone fell from
paradise to show Adam and Eve where to build a shrine,
according to Muslim tradition. Similarly, in Ensisheim, a
commune in the Alsace region of France, a meteorite that
landed in 1492 was seen as “an email from God,”
Oppenheimer says.</p>
<p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0">The movie introduces us to
fascinating people — among them a jazz musician turned
geological scientist and his research collaborator, who
survived cancer four times and dresses like Wyatt Earp. It
also teems with beautiful visuals illustrating
mind-boggling mathematical concepts. “It gets so
complicated now, we are not going to torture you with
details,” Herzog drolly notes at one point.</p>
<p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0">And “Fireball” makes two
very credible statements. One: that, hippie rhetoric
notwithstanding, you and I really are made of stardust.
And two: that a world-changing (as in probably
obliterating) dark-world visitor is sooner or later going
to come this planet’s way. The equanimity with which
Herzog and Oppenheimer’s movie frames that certainty is
strangely comforting.</p>
<p class="css-pncxxs etfikam0"><strong class="css-8qgvsz
ebyp5n10">Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds</strong><br>
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. <span
class="css-1g7m0tk">Watch on Apple TV+.</span></p>
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<div id="c-col-editors-picks" class="css-j64t31">
<h2 class="css-ohexsw">Editors’ Picks</h2>
<article class="css-5raq8g"><span class="css-1sj6bre
gtm-tagged">
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src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/08/magazine/08mag-collapse-1/08mag-collapse-1-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350"
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<h3 class="css-1p08cbr">How Do You Know When Society
Is About to Fall Apart?</h3>
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gtm-tagged">
<div class="css-1rcvpgy"><img alt=""
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/10/21/science/00SCI-DOGS1/00SCI-DOGS1-square640-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350"
itemprop="url"
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<h3 class="css-1p08cbr">Old Dogs, New Research and the
Secrets of Aging</h3>
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gtm-tagged">
<div class="css-1rcvpgy"><img alt=""
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/11/arts/10queens-gender1/10queens-gender1-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350"
itemprop="url"
itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/11/arts/10queens-gender1/10queens-gender1-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350"></div>
<h3 class="css-1p08cbr">How ‘The Queen’s Gambit’
Started a New Debate About Sexism in Chess</h3>
</span></article>
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<h4>Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds</h4>
<div class="css-1y5uc8z"><span class="css-ogsmth"><span>NYT
Critic's Pick</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="css-1x32a9c"><span class="css-80zux2">Find
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</header>
<dl class="css-60humm">
<div><dt>Directors</dt>
<dd><span>Werner Herzog</span><span>, </span><span>Clive
Oppenheimer</span></dd>
</div>
<div><dt>Writer</dt>
<dd><span>Werner Herzog</span></dd>
</div>
<div><dt>Stars</dt>
<dd><span>Werner Herzog</span><span>, </span><span>Jan
Braly Kihle</span><span>, </span><span>Jon Larsen</span><span>,
</span><span>Clive Oppenheimer</span></dd>
</div>
<div><dt>Running Time</dt>
<dd>1h 37m</dd>
</div>
<div><dt>Genre</dt>
<dd><span>Documentary</span></dd>
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