‘Antarctica Calling’ Review: Luc Jacquet’s Latest Feels Like a Feature-Length Selfie, with the South Pole Over His Shoulder

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Nearly two decades ago, “March of the Penguins” crossed a frontier hardly any nonfiction film ever does: not just the Antarctic Circle, but the even more remote $100 million mark at the global box office.

A bona fide global phenomenon, Luc Jacquet wondrous nature doc — and its adorable, relatable emperor penguin stars — got audiences from practically every continent to turn their attention to the South Pole and the super-adorable, surprisingly relatable emperor penguins its director found there. (Even before “Happy Feet” and Werner Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World,” this was the start of penguin-mania at the movies.) The focus of “March” (and its 12-years-later sequel) was the 100-kilometer trek these remarkable black-and-white birds do between their mating grounds and the water.

What undeniable force compels them to make that journey? In “Antarctica Calling,” it’s a different but no less irresistible urge that fascinates Jacquet: specifically, the almost-magnetic pull that draws the French filmmaker back to the South Pole time and again.

He’s been coming since he was 23 years old. Now in his mid-50s, Jacquet goes again, and it’s the whole film, not just the penguins, that’s black and white — a striking choice that puts practically every high-contrast, high-definition frame on par with a Sebastião Salgado photograph.