This was one of those rare films I wished I'd seen on the Big Screen. Like an Imax.
Werner Herzog does a tour with Vulcanologists to some of the world's active volcanoes, spectacular footage of people looking into the abyss of fire, and in so doing ends up digging up 100, 000 year old Hominid remains in Ethiopia, to North Korea, where the people believe their race was born from Paektu Mountain near China (and a long digression into the cultural heritage), then returns to Vanuatu where the people worship their volcano as a portal to John Frum - the Melanesian Cargo cult that is trying to bring back the American troops and their cheap chewing gum and trinkets...
Like most of Herzog's work it digresses beautifully, and while it would claim to be an investigation into the volcanoes it's also so much more...
Five Stars.