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.
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.
