Phoenix, Christian Petzold's meditation on individual and cinematic ouroboros, lands on Blu-ray with a masterful transfer from the Criterion Collection.

| Apr 27, 2016

This is cinema at its most ineffable and its most potent.

| Jan 15, 2016

The movie is fluid, suspenseful, and preposterous-although, more historically than psychologically, and not necessarily in a negative sense.

| Dec 31, 2015

Christian Petzold's collaboration with the actress Nina Hoss reaches a new level of intensity in Phoenix, a moving drama set in the rubble of post-war Berlin.

Full Review | Dec 14, 2015

Both a powerful allegory for post-war regeneration and a rich Hitchcockian tale of mistaken identity.

| Dec 14, 2015

Life is a bombed-out, soulless cabaret in Christian Petzold's Phoenix, a haunting portrait of identity, loss and the search for answers in post-WWII Berlin.

| Dec 14, 2015

What makes Phoenix so remarkable, then, is director and writer Christian Petzold's marvelous command of tone.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 14, 2015

The personal drama is layered with subtle subtexts and the film evokes the work of those classic proponents of screen melodrama, Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, in its combination of highly coloured glamour coating a very dark centre.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 11, 2015

Everything in Phoenix is designed to prepare us for the knockout ending, which couldn't be simpler in itself, but has the force of a long-delayed emotional release.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 9, 2015

Phoenix mines a Hitchcockian vein, but it is Hoss' sensitive performance and Petzold's intelligently paced direction that makes this film shine.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 3, 2015

Sometimes implausible and always engrossing, "Phoenix" takes us to postwar Berlin, a shell of a city where concentration camp survivor Nelly is a shell of herself.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 20, 2015

You may not buy all the story twists, but perhaps the script is not meant to be taken literally.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 13, 2015

There is intrigue. There is suspense. Guilt -- a man's guilt, a nation's -- hangs heavy in the air.

| Aug 12, 2015

Provocative, profoundly moving and the acting is virtuosic.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 7, 2015

[Nina Hoss' is] the kind of performance that makes you appreciate the turmoil of emotions that can be conveyed in a look.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2015

Like its heroine, "Phoenix" speaks low but with bitter clarity.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 6, 2015

Hoss is perfect in a challenging role, a woman trying to recover bits of the person she once was, but having to do so in service to a greedy scheme that robs her of the very identity she is trying to recover.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 6, 2015

"Phoenix" takes its time and leaves us guessing until the final electrifying scene.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 6, 2015

"Phoenix" is an intoxicating witches' brew, equal parts melodrama and moral parable, that audaciously mixes diverse elements to compelling, disturbing effect.

| Jul 30, 2015

Beautiful and mysteriously powerful from beginning to end.

Full Review | Jul 30, 2015