Under Petzold’s assured hands, this modern interpretation of the Undine myth mostly works and benefits most from the sublime performances of Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski.
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Undine (2020)
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Tag / Germany
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Holy Spider (2022)
Abbasi’s disquieting based-on-a-true-story work about an unorthodox serial killer who ‘takes care’ of prostitutes in the name of religion is as dark as they come, set in the most unexpected of locations—the holy Iranian city of Mashhad.
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Spencer (2021)
Kristen Stewart gives a top-tier performance of quiet rage as the tormented Princess Diana in this journey down a psychological hellhole that is as formally-crafted a film as you’ll see this year.
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Black Book (2006)
This WWII thriller is a return to form for Verhoeven after his hit-and-miss Hollywood journey, featuring an exceptional performance by Carice van Houten as a Jewish singer who attempts to infiltrate the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Netherlands.
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Hidden Life, A (2019)
As beautifully-shot as any in Malick’s oeuvre, this three-hour long piece based on a true story of an Austrian farmer who refused to fight for the Nazis in WWII is somewhat a return to form for the American auteur whose work here might still come across as a tad flat.
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Mr. Bachmann and His Class (2021)
This is pedagogy as cinema—an unobtrusive and highly-rewarding documentary centering on a veteran teacher and his ethnically-diverse students in a small town in Germany, earning every compelling bit of its nearly four-hour runtime.
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Fox and His Friends (1975)
A depressing, slow-burning gay drama that only Fassbinder (also fantastic in the lead role) could have conceived—full of pathos and rich in its depiction of the milieu of a class-divided queer community.
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Transit (2018)
Too overly-plotted, Petzold’s attempt at revising Casablanca for the modern age—and in his own oblique style and sensibility—doesn’t come out as deeply compelling as his best works.
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Phoenix (2014)
Petzold’s unique treatment of the doppelganger story as a Hitchcockian exercise in exorcising the Jewish-German trauma of WWII boasts an extraordinary denouement of unparalleled execution.
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And Tomorrow the Entire World (2020)
The sum is lesser than its parts in this interesting but ultimately unconvincing Venice offering that deals with a group of anti-fascist youths who become increasingly violent in their moral fight against the rise of ultra-right ideologies in Germany.
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Eternality Tan 