IslandGuru Who payed the critics

ThiefHott Too much of everything

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

sunznc I found The Princess and the Warrior to be engaging and interesting but too long.Simone or Sissi was born in a mental hospital and she tells her love interest that her father is 'out there' as she indicates the common hall where the patients now congregate in the place she is now employed. This in itself could make one feel claustrophobic and develop a sense of dread. Sissi walks like she feels a sense of dread and she sometimes acts that way too. With good reason. Her life is one that anyone would want to escape and this is what she wants also.It is all interesting but the film is too long. Some of the scenes are played out way too long and I found myself becoming bored. I never want to fast forward through films but this one made me feel that way. I really believe that if they had trimmed this down and compacted it a bit the film would have better and made more impact. By the time the ending comes you find yourself feeling bubbly not because of what is happening on screen but because you know this film is actually ending. I say shorten it up and trim some fat and you've got a good film here but as is it's slow.

Charles Herold (cherold) The first three-fourths of this movie is absolutely fascinating. It moves along seamlessly, hovering somewhere between reality and dream logic. The characters are fascinating and rather tragic, although the movie doesn't allow you to connect with them particularly.And then, well, something happens. A bunch of stuff is just sort of tossed in, weird plot points that come out of nowhere and the balance between fantasy and reality shifts radically to just plain nonsensical. The ending was particularly odd and unsatisfying. The movie neither ties things up nicely nor leaves you with an interesting ambiguity, it's more like it just sort of hiccups a few times and then just trails off to nothing.Still worth watching though.

Argemaluco Tom Tykwer is a director whose movie Run Lola run made him famous around the world.Run Lola run is a very dynamic movie which had some innovative things which made it better than a lot of action films.It would have been very easy if Tykwer made more movies like Run Lola run,but he decided to take another way with serious movies like The princess and the warrior(the movie I'll talk about on this commentary),Heaven and Perfume.The best thing about The princess and the warrior is the excellent photography it has.The photography gives aspects about the characters.Franka Potente and Benno Furmann give excellent performances.The expressions these two actors make are simply phenomenal.The movie has a slow development but it's never boring.The princess and the warrior is a very good movie with honest emotions and great performances.Tom Tykwer is a very interesting director.

Flagrant-Baronessa Tom Tykwer sacrificed the sure footing that Lola Rennt had granted him to make a far more ambitious and abstract film: Der Krieger und die Kaiserin. Like Lola Rennt, it heavily explores the themes of fate and romance, navigating the path that life can take depending on where you are and what you want. Now, it is said that no good film can ever be too long, but this film is very good and it is too long so scratch that saying. It is no Lola Rennt for me (I'm inexcusably partial to that film) – but it is a wonderful story and Tykwer in his element.First, it details the sedated and secluded life of young nurse Sissi (Franka Potente, who else?) in an asylum, where she is unmistakably popular with the patients but feels something is missing in her life. When one day she crosses the street, a twist of fate brings her together with equally lost Bodo – pinned underneath a truck. He saves her life but parts with her on the way to the hospital, leaving Sissi lusting and searching after her savior for weeks to come until one day she decides to seek him out, much to Bodo's dismay.Throw in a bank heist, troubled asylum patients, overlapping incidences of fate and a splash of surrealism and you have Der Krieger und die Kaiserin – one of those fairy-tales masking as a contemporary film (Big Fish, Undertow, Running Scared), and aptly so. No doubt it contains many unspeakably beautiful and touching moments that Tykwer enforces with his dutiful use of techno- and piano music, such as the first meeting between Sissi and Bodo. The result is undoubtedly less raw and kinetic than the adrenaline-pumping Lola Rennt, but rest assured that Tykwer still delivers his trademark devices: shots of people running, screaming in stop-motion and fast-motion with speeding overhead trains and a booming score.For that matter, Franka Potente is also a dutiful inclusion to any Tykwer film and as Sissi she is remarkably emotive, soft-spoken, honest and gentle but with the same no-nonsense approach to tasks as Lola: get it done. Yet it needs to be said that because Bodo has trouble reciprocating her emotional needs, her character treads a fine line between sweet idealist dreamer and creepy stalker. Both characters also look almost incongruously lost at times, but this is unmistakably what Tykwer wants to highlight: being lost in life.Der Krieger und die Kaiserin is a perfect showcase for excellent photography and indeed my visual expectations were floored by the well-handled cinematography of the film. There are sharp, colourful frames after another and picturesque settings that tip over into surrealism at times, becoming medidative, abstract and introspective. This is it starts moving too slowly and you wish some condensation would have been made. Nevertheless, this is a beautiful story and a damn well-executed film, Tykwer-style.8 out of 10