[It] demonstrated that Herzog can fail big, as well as on a DIY scale.

| Nov 10, 2023

The director fails to find a dramatic framework through which to view his subject.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 4, 2022

With so many classics to his name, Werner Herzog need not apologize for helming Queen of the Desert -- it's just shocking that his name is attached to something as arid and uninspired as this stillborn drama.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 22, 2021

Queen of the Desert is as dull as it is misguided.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Sep 24, 2020

You know you're in trouble when the opening credit's font looks like it's ripped from a bootleg version of Microsoft Paint.

| Mar 30, 2020

Gertrude Bell's story is fascinating and deserves to get a big screen treatment. Unfortunately this is not the movie that does justice to her influence.

| Sep 10, 2019

A not too well defined script, and in which we find parts as strange as those of the vulture, which touch the comedy absurd. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 22, 2019

It's an epic letdown to fans of Herzog's work and to his subject.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Apr 17, 2019

Queen of the Desert has the note of a travelogue about it -- that is to say, it feels well-travelled, but not well-lived.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 4, 2019

Everything is inert - the editing, the images, the direction.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 3, 2018

A lovely, beautifully shot and costumed, but dull film, and Kidman is undeniably good in it. She is every inch a queen, to be sure, and radiates intelligence, not to mention posture, in every scene.

| Aug 23, 2018

Every dilemma is resolved minutes after it begins. There is no danger, no complex character to dissect, nothing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 5, 2017

Yet for a director so adept at discovering, eliciting and pursuing a kind of inspired mania and adventurousness in his fellow man, coming across his first female heroine Herzog stumbles.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 16, 2017

While I'd hoped this was Herzog's manic fever dream of a sweeping melodramatic romance, it wanders off a cliff.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 5, 2017

Typical of films focused on women, it dwells too much on her romantic involvements rather than the complexity and significance of her intellectual and emotional achievements.

| Aug 29, 2017

Herzog seldom has made a movie this sparkless and generic in its feel.

| Aug 22, 2017

... offers a half-hearted examination of colonialism and pre-war British foreign policy, although much of the context becomes lost in a film that turns rambling and tedious when it should be at its most suspenseful.

| Apr 28, 2017

Romantic longing has never really been part of Herzog's cinematic vocabulary (love in his films typically looks like manic obsession), which may explain why some of it is more stiff than emotionally moving.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 26, 2017

This may be Werner Herzog's most conventional film, but its mostly untold true story knows what it means for a woman to choose a life of adventure and intellect.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 26, 2017

A strongly conventional film that ends up sinking into irreparable lethargy. [Full review in Spanish]

| Apr 20, 2017