Antarctica: A Year on Ice 2013

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: A documentary that's essentially a tribute to a hardy group of people who've made a life on the ice. Read more

Peter Keough, Boston Globe: "Antarctica" ultimately does evoke a sense of the place - its magnificent emptiness and inhuman, unspoiled purity. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: Powell makes excellent use of time-lapse photography to capture such natural phenomena as a sea freezing over. What registers most strongly, though, is the sense of loneliness and professional drudgery. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: "Antarctica" is successful because it operates on two complementary levels, the epic visuals whose grandeur can stagger you and the small-scale personal stories of the people who live and work down there. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: Far less austere than the landscape it shows, Antarctica: A Year On Ice sometimes verges on the corny. But it reveals two polar worlds - the natural and the human - that are fascinating and unfamiliar. Read more

Nicolas Rapold, New York Times: The extremes of "Antarctica: A Year on Ice" might seem routine to fans of nature documentaries, but the photographer and director Anthony Powell produces some dazzling imagery in his droll study of isolation way, way down under. Read more

David Hiltbrand, Philadelphia Inquirer: Mostly what you get is a chronicle of tedious routine carried out in a killing climate. That gives this documentary a flavor that is strong and genuine. Just not very appealing. Read more

Matthew Lickona, San Diego Reader: Way too much screen time is given over to folks describing what it's like to live in such a place, as opposed to, you know, actually living there. Read more

Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice: Powell filmed Antarctica over a decade. Some of his footage has turned up elsewhere, in nature docs, but it's never been better presented than here. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: It is the simple glimpses of ordinary life in an extraordinary place that are the most stirring moments in the film. Read more