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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Petzold’s strong command of his craft is evident here in this measured and nuanced Stasi anti-thriller featuring a wary female doctor in ‘80s East Germany who desires to defect.
It draws heavy inspiration from the 1962 indie horror ‘Carnival of Souls‘, but the storytelling and execution are unmistakably Petzold’s as he tackles failed dreams and false hopes in this slow-burning psychological biz thriller.
Eternality Tan 