First, the complaints came from the blog mavens and malcontents, and then from the mainline reviewers: The new motion picture version of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited was ineptly, insultingly unfaithful to its source.

As if to spite F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous observation (or at least to prove that it doesn’t apply to hardy Germanic sorts like him), Werner Herzog is happily enjoying his second act. Herzog made his reputation in the 1970s directing a series of films about obsessed lunatics starring Klaus Kinski (they worked together six times, which is six times as much as any other filmmaker employed Kinski). But Herzog’s heart has always been with documentaries that let him explore his favorite theme, which might be described as “Nature 1, Mankind 0.” And since Grizzly Man was a hit a few years ago, money has started seeking him out. Thus Encounters at the End of the World, a film Herzog was invited to make by the National Science Foundation. The primary setting is McMurdo Station, the nerve center of what little human activity there is on Antarctica. Accepting the invitation only after making clear to his hosts that “I would not come up with another film about penguins,” Herzog proclaims on arrival to be horrified by the place, which contains such “abominations” as “an aerobics studio, yoga classes and even an ATM machine.” Nonetheless, he manages to find a number of kindred souls among the thousand or so residents, people as compelled as he is to “jump off the margins of the map.” He has a talent for getting scientists to ramble on excitedly about their pet passions, like a physicist trying to describe neutrinos. (Turns out they’re not, as I would have guessed, those mini-donuts you get at Tim Horton’s, though exactly what they are kinda went over my head.) The match of location and director are perhaps too perfect, as if everyone assumed that simply putting Herzog and a camera in this fabulously remote place was all that was needed for a great film. But while he is happy to grouch on the soundtrack about the pitiless vastness of nature in the face of man’s insignificance, Herzog never really finds a central theme for this footage. Still, even lesser Herzog has its tart pleasures, like an encounter with a deranged penguin or a training exercise in which blinded scientists lose their way in a simulated snowstorm. And though Herzog himself can’t take credit for it, there is some astonishing footage of creatures that live under the ice that should be studied by special effects guys in need of inspiration for new movie monsters.

“Guys in long-term relationships become so lame. They get sucked into this feminine sphere of TV series and nice dinners. They get less and less time to read and listen to music. Eventually they don’t even miss it. They end up as understimulated, bourgeois retards.” So proclaims one of a group of friends in the Norwegian film Reprise, young men out of the university, heads filled with dreams of art, music, and literature (and often as not stomachs filled with alcohol). This fellow in particular is more than a bit of an idiot, with opinions about women that are even less generous, and it’s no surprise to see him later in the film hosting a dinner party with his new girlfriend. Reprise is about the blessing of youth to have the time, the ambition, and the willingness to soak up influence from everywhere around you, as well as the curse of not knowing what to do with all that inspiration. It centers on two friends, Phillip (Anderson Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman Høiner), both 23, both aspiring novelists. As the film opens, they are mailing their first manuscripts off to publishers, and we see a rapid montage of their future success as they perhaps picture it, filled with unexpected twists and influences. But in a minute it’s down to the real world: Six months later Phillip, whose novel was published to lavish acclaim, has been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, while Erik, whose novel was rejected, is still holding out hope, and still hanging out with friends who have their own dreams of Art. Reprise is the feature debut of 30-something Joachim Trier, who appears to have been weaned more on the experimentalism of the French nouvelle vague than on the more cynical manipulations of his distant relative Lars. The story is filled with flights of fantasy into the memories and potential futures of his characters, who like artsy young men for so many years scowl a lot, dress in dark clothing and worship musicians who favor drone and minor keys. There’s a lot of Joy Division on the soundtrack, which may or may not be an ironic comment; my guess is that Trier wants to have it both ways, indulging the morose natures of these youngsters while intimating that they will grow through their pretensions and be the better for them. The same may be said of the director, whose talent here is obvious and abundant but not yet wholly developed.

A hit at this year’s Sundance Festival, The Wackness stars Josh Peck as Luke, a Manhattan kid who lives for hip-hop music and sells marijuana to his classmates. With no friends of his own age, he’s developed a relationship with Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), a middle-aged therapist who trades advice for drugs. Squires, who in the tradition of movie psychiatrists is way crazier than any of his patients, has a younger wife (Famke Janssen) who stays with him out of inertia, and a stepdaughter (Olivia Thirlby) who is the unknown apple of Luke’s eye. Filmed largely in the kind of sepia tones that are movie shorthand for nostalgia, The Wackness alternates between letting Kingsley cheerfully overact his part and recreating writer-director Jonathan Levine’s 18th year. The soundtrack is filled with hip-hop songs Levine loved at that age, and in the press notes he goes on about how the genre was at a creative peak that year. That may be true, but it’s equally true that just about everyone thinks that music was never as good as it was when they were 18. If you were 18 and a New Yorker in 1994, The Wackness might strike you as the greatest movie ever made. You might even react that way if you’re around that age now, for its navel-gazing into the difficulties of being 18 and getting pushed out into a world that you’re not ready for. The rest of you, though, may only see a lot of reheated coming-of-age clichés frosted in too many empty stylistic devices.