It’s difficult to have an opinion on Schanelec’s new film, which is decidedly inscrutable though it retains the German slow cinema auteur’s unique sensibilities as it explores themes of fate, guilt and grief in an elusive way.
We haven’t had a great anti-war film in years—this WWI piece comes just as timely in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and is as technically accomplished and emotionally involving as some of the finest entries of the genre.
This is one of Akin’s most rollickingly pleasurable films, a high-energy comedy filled with absurd moments about an F&B manager who is faced with making hard business and romantic decisions.
Akin’s entertaining debut feature about gangsterism, brotherhood and petty crime may be raw and occasionally uneven, but it possesses a spirit so vital to the portrayal of multiculturalism in late ‘90s German filmmaking.
In Schanelec’s under-appreciated slow cinema oeuvre, this could be one of her ‘noisiest’ and most perceptive works as we become privy to the intimate conversations of several groups of strangers who are waiting to depart at the busy Paris-Orly airport.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Eternality Tan 