Reviews by Anne-Katrin Titze

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  By The Grace Of God (2019)

  Review preview for By The Grace Of God

  Ozon does not smooth over the rough edges and the icy roads stay icy.

  When Alexandre learns that the priest who abused him as a boy is still working with children, he and other victims take action against the perpetrator.
• 
  Beloved Sisters (2014)

  Review preview for Beloved Sisters

  This sympathetic and thoughtful portrayal of the many faces of marriage avoids clichés about the good old days as well as the bad ones.

  Two sisters both fall for the same man - poet Friedrich Schiller.
• 
  Best Of Enemies (2015)

  Review preview for Best Of Enemies

  Neville and Gordon wisely embed the verbal duels into the surroundings.

  A behind-the-scenes account of the explosive 1968 televised debates between the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F Buckley Jr, and their rancorous disagreements about politics, God, and sex.
• 
  Beyond The Hills (2012)

  Review preview for Beyond The Hills

  If the way Alina cries and hugs her friend hello, in between train tracks, does not trigger your empathy, you are possibly already dead.

  The story of two female orphans and their friendship in a remote Romanian monastery.
• 
  Big Eyes (2014)

  Review preview for Big Eyes

  Burton does not think he needs to make up his mind about the tone of the movie. It is like a child ordering an ice cream with five kinds of toppings.

  A man makes his wife's art a massive success - while claiming he created it himself.
• 
  The Blue Room (2014)

  Review preview for The Blue Room

  François Gédigier's inspired editing trusts that mismatched sounds and images form an emotional whole.

  Psychological thriller about a couple's torrid affair.
• 
  Bridget Jones's Baby (2016)

  Review preview for Bridget Jones's Baby

  Zellweger has impeccable comedic timing and the many small and big risks she takes with Bridget pay off.

  Bridget Jones' life plan goes awry when she discovers she's pregnant - and not sure who the father is.
• 
  Bronx Gothic (2017)

  Review preview for Bronx Gothic

  You cannot be certain if it is the performer, Rossi or yourself who has strayed from the path to discover a new world within the clutches of history.

  Documentary, exploring the work of Okwui Okpokwasili.
• 
  Bully (2011)

  Review preview for Bully

  The film exposes the unbearable weaknesses and stupidity of many adults in the community and school system who do nothing at best or make it even worse.

  A documentary about some of the devastating effects of school bullying in the US.
• 
  Burnt (2015)

  Review preview for Burnt

  The oddities don't add up to anything and the love story between Adam and Helene is as predictable as it is sad.

  A Michelin-starred chef who squandered his career tries to rebuild his life in and out of the kitchen.
• 
  Byzantium (2012)

  Review preview for Byzantium

  Neil Jordan skilfully examines the nature of time and the theme that he surveys like no other filmmaker - what it means to physically be in two places at once.

  Two vampires, mother and daughter, open a seaside bordello.
• 
  Call Me By Your Name (2017)

  Review preview for Call Me By Your Name

  It is fundamentally a film about the workings of infatuation with a charmed fever that contaminates its characters.

  First love blooms over a long, hot summer for a teenager in Italy.
• 
  Cameraperson (2016)

  Review preview for Cameraperson

  The people encountered while working as a cinematographer for different documentarians, shooting all over the globe, are woven into a fascinating, irregular net of meaning.

  Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson documents her career working with filmmakers.
• 
  Camille Rewinds (2012)

  Review preview for Camille Rewinds

  Self indulgent, nonsensical and soulless scenes are woven together into a sentimental fog that hovers above the surface of a faux world, past and present.

  French remake of Peggy Sue Got Married.
• 
  Calendar Girl (2020)

  Review preview for Calendar Girl

  Most interestingly, the documentary takes us back in time to when Ruth Finley was hired as a girl Friday by the number-one fashion publicist, Eleonor Lambert, who was pivotal in getting American designers the recognition they deserved in the 1940s.

  Ruth Finley has been the queen of the fashion industry since the 1930s. As a young mother, Ruth created the iconic pink Fashion Calendar, a publication that continues to organise and marshal American fashion today.
• 
  The Calming (2020)

  Review preview for The Calming

  The real-life clumsiness, the awkward pauses in human interactions are captured attentively; these are the most precise moments of the film.

  A young film director makes her way around Japan, China, and Hong Kong after a relationship breakup.
• 
  Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

  Review preview for Can You Ever Forgive Me?

  McCarthy plays this unlikable character deftly and with aplomb. And yet the story is stuck in the mud so deep that you can almost smell the decay.

  The true story of Lee Israel who became a literary forger.
• 
  Capernaum (2018)

  Review preview for Capernaum

  You might notice the elegance of composition while knowing that the place contains so much human suffering.

  A child rebels against the life imposed upon him.
• 
  The Captain (2017)

  Review preview for The Captain

  There is nothing charming left in this all-is-lost and boys-will-be-boys scenario when violence perpetuates itself and decency is nowhere to be found.

  At the end of the Second World War, a young German soldier steals a captain's uniform. Impersonating an officer he gathers a group of deserters and proceeds to kill is way through a beaten Nazi Germany.
• 
  Captain Phillips (2013)

  Review preview for Captain Phillips

  The premise questions our storytelling conventions.

  Thriller based on the true story of the seizure of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship in 2009 by four Somali pirates.
• 
  Carnage (2011)

  Review preview for Carnage

  Unlike many of his other films where there are underlying touches of humor, Polanski plays this one more as a straight comedy.

  The Brooklyn bourgeoisie under the microscope in Roman Polanksi's adaptation of The God of Carnage.
• 
  Colette (2018)

  Review preview for Colette

  This evocation of Colette in 2018 knows that its heroine will always be larger than what is on screen.

  The story of author Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's rise to fame.
• 
  Corman's World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel (2011)

  Review preview for Corman's World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel

  Captivating and informative.

  Tracks the triumphant rise of Hollywood’s most prolific writer-director-producer, the godfather of independent filmmaking.
• 
  Corsage (2022)

  Review preview for Corsage

  Vicky Krieps...is in excellent form and up to the task of presenting to us the icon in all her idiosyncrasies.

  A period drama about Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as Sisi.
• 
  Coup! (2023)

  Review preview for Coup!

  How it feels to take credit for something you haven’t done is one of the questions Coup! invites us to contemplate.

  Sheltering from the 1918 Spanish Flu at their seaside estate, a progressive journalist and his socialite wife take in a mysterious grifter as a private cook... and soon find themselves facing mutiny.
• 
  Cemetery Of Splendor (2015)

  Review preview for Cemetery Of Splendor

  "At the heart of the kingdom there is nothing," it says, but all the fascinating splendour that exists around that gap!

  A housewife tends to a soldier with a mysterious sleeping sickness and begins to experience strange dreams.
• 
  Certain Women (2016)

  Review preview for Certain Women

  Certain Women is a film suffused in uncertainties.

  Triptych of stories about women in small-town America.
• 
  Cold In July (2014)

  Review preview for Cold In July

  Be prepared for scenes you finish in your own head to haunt you.

  After killing a home intruder, a small town Texas man's life unravels into a dark underworld of corruption and violence.
• 
  The Creation Of Meaning (2014)

  Review preview for The Creation Of Meaning

  Sense of memory, sense of history, sense of time, envelop us like a high altitude fog.

  An ageing shepherd's livelihood is threatened by the rise of corruption.
• 
  Cézanne And I (2016)

  Review preview for Cézanne And I

  It is the two world-famous guys Thompson tries to pin down like butterflies, as if she were a lepidopterist. They escape, of course, because their works are still alive.

  Drama about the friendship between Cézanne and Émile Zola.
• 
  David Lynch: The Art Life (2016)

  Review preview for David Lynch: The Art Life

  We get to watch Lynch work on a sculpture, sit and smoke, or interact with his toddler daughter Lula in the present. Family photos and home movies light up the past.

  Documentary about the American filmmaker.
• 
  Damsel (2018)

  Review preview for Damsel

  The Zellner brothers...enter into a fascinating structural dialogue with the history of the genre.

  Several suitors pursue a young woman in the Wild West.
• 
  A Dangerous Method (2011)

  Review preview for A Dangerous Method

  Keira Knightley... will be tough to beat at next year's Academy Awards for her portrayal of Spielrein

  Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley star in David Cronenberg's look at the early days of psychoanalysis.
• 
  Dead Language (2025)

  Review preview for Dead Language

  Both words of the title loom large together and apart and are sprinkled into the smallest verbal and non-verbal exchanges.

  A chance encounter leads Aya to pick up a stranger at the airport. When he disappears, he leaves behind a gnawing hunger - one which perhaps only a complete stranger could fulfill.
• 
  Deception (2021)

  Review preview for Deception

  Desplechin eases us into the goings-on without sacrificing any of Roth’s complicated and thorny subject matter.

  An American novelist living for a time in London converses with his wife, his mistress, and other female characters he may have dreamed up.
• 
  The Descendants (2011)

  Review preview for The Descendants

  Payne's premise resembles a dare: How can I make you care for a person who looks and acts like this? He works the Disney device of love at first sight in reverse.

  A father is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future.
• 
  Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy (2022)

  Review preview for Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy

  Evocative, wide-ranging, and evermore timely.

  A look at the behind-the-scenes odyssey to get Midnight Cowboy produced, as well as the tumultuous era in which the movie was released and embraced.
• 
  The Devil's Bath (2024)

  Review preview for The Devil's Bath

  Martin Gschlacht’s glorious and smart cinematography adds clarity here while sprinkling doubt over there.

  A woman struggles with her life, leading her to take desperate measures in 18th Century Austria.
• 
  The Disciple (2020)

  Review preview for The Disciple

  We are given time, which is wonderful, to count and study the painted ceiling fans and observe the hand-movements of the attentive music listeners.

  Chaitanya Tamhane's masterfully composed second feature examines a lifetime journey devoted to the art of Indian classical music.
• 
  Disobedience (2017)

  Review preview for Disobedience

  When the price of obedience is a life of lies where humiliation has no bounds, the pent-up desire explodes.

  After the death of her estranged rabbi father, a New York photographer returns to the Orthodox Jewish community in north London where she grew up and, in doing so, reignites long-dormant passions and controversies.
• 
  Django Unchained (2012)

  Review preview for Django Unchained

  We get to witness the birth of a new genre and are confronted with a violent American history that Hollywood fictions have previously not dared to tackle.

  Freed to become a bounty hunter's apprentice, a former slave sets out to rescue his wife from a ruthless plantation owner.
• 
  Donkey Skin (1970)

  Review preview for Donkey Skin

  Donkey Skin is right there at the crossroads, capturing a moment of change as well as the timeless nature of storytelling.

  A fairy plots to rescue a princess who would otherwise have to marry her father.
• 
  Downsizing (2017)

  Review preview for Downsizing

  Alexander Payne's latest, unclassifiable film gallivants with us through a number of different worlds that all seem familiar, yet perplexing.

  Satire about a man who starts to think he would have a better life if only he could shrink himself.
• 
  Dreileben 1: Beats Being Dead (2011)

  Review preview for Dreileben 1: Beats Being Dead

  Petzold exposes the social machinations behind the seemingly simple love stories.

  A young couple's passionate relationship plays out against the backdrop of a manhunt.
• 
  Dreileben 2: Don't Follow Me Around (2011)

  Review preview for Dreileben 2: Don't Follow Me Around

  The fantastic interrupts the profane.

  A police psychologist renews old acquaintances when she is drafted in to help small town police find an escaped convict.
• 
  Dreileben 3: One Minute of Darkness (2011)

  Review preview for Dreileben 3: One Minute of Darkness

  After seeing three films in and around the small town of Dreileben, the landscape has become familiar and inescapable.

  A suspenseful cat-and-mouse search between police and an escaped convict.
• 
  Duse (2025)

  Review preview for Duse

  Duse is as much about the rise of fascism as it is about the decision making of an artist at a precarious time in her life.

  Eleonora Duse’s legendary career seems over, but in the ferocious times between the Great War and the rise of fascism, the Divina feels a call stronger than any resignation and returns to where her life began: on stage.
• 
  The Dead Man And Being Happy (2012)

  Review preview for The Dead Man And Being Happy

  Rebollo, reinvents the Road Movie, just as Leos Carax does in Holy Motors.

  An ageing hitman goes on a darkly comic journey to nowhere.
• 
  Delicacy (2011)

  Review preview for Delicacy

  A stagey, fast-food version of romance.

  A woman struggles to find love again after she is widowed
• 
  Diary Of A Chambermaid (2015)

  Review preview for Diary Of A Chambermaid

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

  An alert servant works for a wealthy couple in rural France.