Their destination is an underwater planet light years away, reachable only via a time tunnel. Our cicerone to this aqueous world is a former alien resident (played with a droll, aging-hippie deadpan by Brad Dourif), who looks upon these earthling attempts to reinvigorate his dying civilization with skepticism. Dourif's informal historicizing ("the spread of the alien microbes turned out to be not such a big deal") is contrasted with the technical maunderings of an actual plasma physicist, biochemist and NASA mathematicians, one of whom posits that a shopping mall in space would be "the perfect space colonization paradigm.
" Herzog throws into the mix old archival film of pioneer airplane pilots, gorgeously trippy shots of deep-sea life, some rather tedious footage of real astronauts brushing their teeth and exercising in zero gravity, then laces it all with mystical cello and choral music. It's probably catnip for astronomy geeks nostalgic for Matthew Barney's "Cremaster" Cycle. For devotees of lunatic Herzog adventure a la "Fitzcarraldo," it's only a serviceable time-killer 'til the arrival of "Rescue Dawn," the director's Americanization of his 1997 documentary, "Little Dieter Needs to Fly.
" 1:22. At IFC Center, Manhattan. 
ABSOLUTE WILSON (unrated).
Robert Wilson stuttered as a child, until a ballet teacher pragmatically suggested that he take more time to speak. Not only did his impediment disappear after nine months or so, he was amazed to discover "how my perception of the world changed by slowing everything down." That insight would one day shape such transformational works for the stage as "Einstein on the Beach" and "the CIVIL warS," which flattened time and stretched movement to a trancelike pace: A Wilson play could require seven hours or, in the case of his commemorative 1972 spectacle in Shiraz, Iran, "KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE," seven days to perform.
There is nothing attenuated about Katharina Otto-Bernstein's brisk and invigorating portrait, which communicates the thrill of Wilson's innovations and the magnetism of his personality so robustly, you may be inspired to run away from home and start a groundbreaking theater commune of your own. Much of the film's immediacy owes to its Waco, Texas-born subject, who recalls his father with astringent humor and relates the history of his work with autistic poet Christopher Knowles and his black deaf-mute adopted son Raymond Andrews. Among the other collaborators and admirers chiming in are Philip Glass, David Byrne, Jessye Norman, Tom Waits, former Brooklyn Academy of Music patriarch Harvey Lichtenstein and the late Susan Sontag, who brags with a certain amount of self-congratulation at having sat through his epic works eight to 14 times.
When, we are left to wonder, did she ever find the time to write? 1:45 (brief nudity). At Lincoln Plaza, Quad Cinemas, Manhattan.
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