Inupiat director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean has set his feature debut, "On the Ice" (not to be confused with the recent Greg Kinnear black comedy "Thin Ice"), in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States (population: approximately 4,200), and its fascinating milieu and strong sense of place are by far its best features. The market is called Arctic Grocery. The cleaners: Arctic Cleaners. Snowmobiles seem to outnumber cars, and get more use. Alcoholism lurks everywhere. (A boy comes home to find his mother passed out drunk. "She made it three months this time," he tells his friend.) The sun doesn't set for six months at a stretch. It's remote, but not undeveloped, and it's amazing to think of its way of life as part of the American experience. Because we almost never see this landscape or these people depicted in film, it's natural to want to spend time with them and learn more about them.
