Berlin International Film Festival — A–Z of films

There's no doubting the film looks good..But there's a feeling of both too much gloss and of glossing over details.

To call the film haunting is an understatement.

The film can't be faulted for atmosphere... structurally, though, the cracks begin to show.

Jude and Lazarescu also show how the structure of society has a habit of making you conform to it, whatever your intentions - a barbed idea intended to stick in the minds of those who live in today's Europe where the Roma still face wide-spread prejudice

There is little within the film that is obviously futuristic, but you do not need special effects to represent the future - a depressing dystopia is already being lived.

Malgorzata Szumowska takes a playful approach to the subjects of eating disorders and grief with suprisingly effective results.

The film is dark. Its message of disconnection has layers of sub plots, barely hinted at yet still damaging

The reason Branagh's adaptation of the Charles Perrault tale is a success, is that it sticks fully to the formula of the story and doesn't try to do anything irritatingly postmodern with it.

Larraín's judgement when it comes is fiercely Old Testament - harsh, unexpected and fast.

We are in Calvino territory, seeking out the invisible all around us.

The film, co-written with Hélène Zimmer, functions like exquisite lacework with new patterns emerging at every turn.

Eisenstein is embodied by the fabulous Elmer Bäck, who gallops at the role in the way Liberace might have plunged into a haberdashers.

Fifty Shades is romcom without much com: an old-fashioned soft porn flick designed to appeal to women “of a certain age” (and younger).

What is quite wonderful in all this flowing and "fade, fade, fade," fading is that the characters and their stories belong to no one specifically. They belong to a cinematic spirit world and maybe nobody even wanted them.

This is toxic masculinity masquerading as boredom, with Wenders' refusal to give it emotional adornment only adding to the sense of existential strangeness of the whole affair.

A film that grips right from the beginning with its noirish visuals and unmistakable sense of menace.

A sensitively handled female coming-of-age tale.

There is too much of the ring of the academic argument and, especially for a film so concerned with the spiritual, not quite enough soul.

Malick and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, if nothing else, deliver stunningly beautiful vistas and backdrops for his narratives and characters, yet like the characters, there seems to be something empty at its core.

Its refusal to treat fights as spectacle, together with its austere editing and static camera, provides a melancholic grounding.

Wim Wenders films this dysfunctional love story in a tricksy cinematic manner, adding another layer of pretension to the already overloaded dumpster.

The trouble is that the film takes great effort to counter everything that makes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation stimulating.

Saskia Diesing's rapid fire photography captures the pace of Nena's quickly shifting world but isn't afraid to linger when the moment calls for it.

Every cliche that sang out of tune at the concert of dreams is here

Despite the lush colour this is bleak, even heart-breaking.

[A] thorny, intangible and episodic cinematic dream.

German director Wim Wenders allows Paris, Texas to unfurl with such assured calm that each delicate narrative revelation, no matter how trivial or terrible, seems a natural and almost obvious progression.

Looking at all these themes on paper, there is no way they should be able to co-exist within the same film, let alone do so in harmony, but Guzmán lets each wave of thought flow over the other, tributaries of history gathering to a ocean of argument.

If you see one dance film in your life, see this one with those 3D glasses.

A psychologically astute and darkly funny look at the deep bonds of female friendship and the damage that can be wrought by those closest to you.

Singin' in the Rain remains one of the most enduring, effervescent and exuberant of films.

It’s a wonderfully subversive act...but on its own merits (which I’m sure is how Panahi would want it to be judged) it seemed to me overlong, repetitive and self-indulgent.

Perhaps because of the improvisation - although surely they must have rehearsed like crazy - even when the plot threatens to become contrived, the characters remain true to themselves.

The Wizard Of Oz has something fresh and intangibly pure for me every time I see it.