Not uninteresting, and it is very nicely performed, although you'll strain to learn from the movie the history on which it is based and struggle futilely to get inside the motivations of its characters.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 12, 2004

The film opens a window into the fact that not all good Germans were cowed during those dark times.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 14, 2004

Some of the choices made here are more befitting a Lifetime movie of the week.

Full Review | Oct 14, 2004

For all its flaws, Rosenstrasse is a welcome reminder that humans are capable of valor and generosity in the worst of times.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 8, 2004

Rosenstrasse is manipulative, to be sure, but it's also very smart.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 8, 2004

An absorbing, sturdy and ultimately pedestrian melodrama.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 24, 2004

Von Trotta skims when she should be bearing down; tidies up when situations should be allowed to get much messier. In the end, this tale of human decency fails to make you feel enough.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 24, 2004

Labored storytelling defeats sterling intentions.

| Original Score: C | Sep 7, 2004

Von Trotta may have taken on too much -- her film suffers from a surfeit of characters with complicated back stories. Nevertheless, I prefer it to the movies I usually see that set out to do too little.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 3, 2004

One of the cinema's most stirring celebrations of married love and a portrayal of the 'good German' in World War II that is true, convincing and profoundly moving.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 3, 2004

Rosenstrasse is again only a sad reminder of the earlier von Trotta.

Full Review | Aug 28, 2004

The picture's structural intricacy is a smoke screen for its psychological and emotional shallowness.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 27, 2004

Von Trotta, who's obviously less personally invested in her story, seems more than a little calculating in her efforts to wring tears.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 27, 2004

The heart of the film is so strong that its images of love and devotion shared by wives and husbands on the edge of an abyss remain indelibly etched in one's memory.

| Aug 26, 2004

While the film concentrates on Lena, eloquently portrayed by Katja Riemann, the movie earns your empathy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 24, 2004

Despite the unique focus, the time-tripping screenplay hits manipulative buttons about Nazis and their victims that have been pressed many times before and with a steelier edge.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 20, 2004

Mawkish and manipulative.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 20, 2004

A movie in which an extraordinary collective act of moral and physical courage is relegated to a backdrop for a mushy, synthetic family melodrama.

| Aug 20, 2004

A modest yet moving fact-based drama.

| Aug 20, 2004

The German director Margarethe von Trotta revisits a relatively obscure episode from Germany's Nazi past to dismally inept effect.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Aug 19, 2004