'My Way' Berlinale (Panorama) review:

It's bombastic and occasionally very silly - a tonal mess of genres and styles, which switches between slapstick comedy moments and bloody massacres without pause. Yet South Korean WWII movie 'Mai-Wei' (or 'My Way') is not only entirely entertaining but also quite brave and, if you can look beyond the CGI-fuelled excess, even fairly profound. It follows two marathon runners, lifelong rivals and occasional friends - one Japanese and one Korean - as they are enveloped by a war that will take them across the world on an all-star tour of man's darkest hour.

The spoiler-adverse should turn away now, but what's great about Kang Je-kyu's epic is the way it fundamentally rejects the wisdom of nationalism. It begins with our heroes separated by Korea's war against Japanese occupation and then by segregation within the Japanese army, as they fight together against the Soviets. Taken prisoner by the Soviets, the duo are then forced to fight in the Red Army against the Nazis. Then, you guessed it, they are captured and (recognised as Japanese allies) pressed into the German army to fight the Americans on the beaches of Normandy (giving us a rare looking at the D-day landings from the perspective of German soldiers).

That every army we see is forcing their men to fight, shooting those who run away in battle, suggests not only a commonality between those fighting in war, but also that the low-ranking soldier is a pawn in a much bigger game. That it doesn't ultimately matter who they are fighting for and who they are shooting is a challenge to the very idea of nation states. This is a point reinforced by the ending in which the surviving soldier competes in the London Olympics, appearing as the only runner whose shirt does not feature a national flag.

So there's this very important, anti-war, anti-nationalist sentiment which is entirely winning. Then there's also a crack-shot Chinese sniper woman who shoots down fighter planes with a rifle, and a guy who single handedly destroys armies of Russian tanks with nothing more than a sword. There's a romance sub-plot, a survival in the Siberian wilderness bit, an unflinching glimpse at the horrors of a Soviet prisoner of war camp, buckets of gore, and also a game of beach football between loveable Nazi soldiers. It's a pretty sprawling, occasionally mad, film but an honourable and thoroughly enjoyable one.

'Elles' Berlinale (Panorama) review:

With a frank and vanity-free central performance from Juliette Binoche, French drama 'Elles' was one of the festival's early highlights playing in the interesting and diverse Panorama strand. In it a veteran journalist spends a day at home performing thankless chores and preparing dinner for her husband's work colleagues. Whilst doing this cooking and cleaning she is also trying to write a glossy magazine article on French students who support their studies by working as prostitutes. Over the course of the film she thinks back on interviews with two young women and, through backflashes, we are told their stories.

Over the day the journalist goes from feeling smug and superior to showing some signs of kinship with the girls - eventually coming to the realisation that her life may be no better behind a veneer of middle-class respectability. In fact in some respects she seems to be having less fun: sexually repressed and in a loveless marriage, disrespected by her teenage son and pushed to meet tight writing deadlines. Yet the film is also careful not to glamorise prostitution, instead depicting it with rare nuance. Sometimes the girls encounter violence or humiliation, but often they are shown to enjoy a job with flexible working hours and for which they are handsomely paid.

Polish director Malgoska Szumowska shoots everything in a claustrophobic, handheld style which wrings the maximum from Binoche's raw, unguarded performance. I'm loathe to call an actor "brave" simply for appearing naked or allowing themselves to be photographed in unflattering light, but there isn't really another way of describing this performance. The slightly pretentious acting buzzword "honesty" also seems entirely appropriate here.

62nd Berlinale Winners Announced

Golden Bear: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die)
Jury Grand Prize: Bence Fliegauf, Csak A Szél (Just the Wind)
Best Director: Christian Petzold, Barbara
Best Actor: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, En Kongelig Affære (A Royal Affair)
Best Actress: Rachel Mwanza, Rebelle (War Witch)
Best Outstanding Artistic Contribution: Lutz Reitemeier - cinematographer, Bai Lu Yuan (White Deer Plain)
Best Script: Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, En Kongelig Affære (A Royal Affair)
Alfred Bauer Prize for Innovation: Miguel Gomes, Tabu
Special mention: Ursula Meier, L'enfant D'en Haut (Sister)

'Rebelle' Berlinale (Competition) review:

The final competition film screened to press at this year's Berlinale, African child soldier drama 'Rebelle' - being sold internationally as 'War Witch' - is a strong candidate for the Golden Bear, ticking many boxes. It's about a current real world social problem, shot beautifully, and difficult without being unpalatable. It blends social realism with poetic use of fantasy and visual metaphor. It also features a strong central performance from Rachel Mwanza - as the girl abducted by rebel soldiers, forced to shoot her parents, before being put on hallucinogenic drugs and sent out to fight government soldiers.

Writer-director Kim Nguyen's movie is also pretty tightly paced, without the aimless, naval-gazing demeanour which has been typical of so many at this year's festival. It has a definite narrative through-line. In fact I'd say this movie is among the most commercial films on show here, in terms of potential appeal outside of the so often wilfully oblique programme. Its chances of reaching a UK arthouse would be further improved if Mike Leigh's jury awards it Berlin's top film prize - as many journalists here seem to expect, judging by conversation after the screening. Personally I'd prefer to see 'Tabu', 'Just the Wind' or 'A Royal Affair' win the prize, but I wouldn't complain if 'Rebelle' were rewarded.

'A Royal Affair' Berlinale (Competition) review:

An epic tale of romance, ambition and the tragic fallibility of idealism, 'A Royal Affair' (or 'En Kongelig Affære') is a historical drama recounting the story of how provincial German physician and amateur philosopher Johan Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen) became the power behind the Kingdom of Denmark - for a brief time transforming one of Europe's most backwards feudal powers into a progressive model of the enlightenment that pre-dated the French Revolution by several decades.

After being appointed the personal physician to Christian VII (a frequently hilarious, scene-stealing performance from Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) in 1768, Struensee used his close friendship with the mentally unwell monarch to banish the country's conservative ruling council and institute a bold raft of social changes which included ending censorship, vaccinating common people against smallpox and abolishing torture. Pretty soon he was actually signing new laws himself, without need of the king's signature. However the old ruling elites, stripped of much of their power, used the newly free press to make Struensee deeply unpopular with the people - enabling his overthrow and eventual beheading.

The key to undermining his popularity - at least according to director Nikolaj Arcel's splendid film - lay in publicising details of his passionate, doomed affair with Christian's estranged wife, the English-born Queen Caroline Mathilde (rising Swedish actress Alicia Vikander). Though they begin this romance very quietly, the two are soon madly in love and even have a daughter (officially Christian's), with their passion an open secret at the palace. A few lurid details later, and with fabricated talk of Struensee poisoning the king to steal power, the people are baying for blood and aching to restore the old order - founded on religion over reason.

The power of the yellow press to turn a mob against its own interests is just one of many potent themes, as is the battle between progress and traditionalism - and that between the wealthy and the poor. But also visible here is something of how power corrupts, for instance as Stuensee brings back censorship when he is the target of criticism. There is also some truth to the idea that he is taking advantage of this mentally ill king, with his use of the ruler as a puppet in no way dissimilar from that of the previous council. Do his good intentions excuse his behaviour in this regard? I'm not sure.

As he faces the block, the doctor - who has already signed a letter condemning enlightenment ideals in the hope of a pardon - looks out onto the crowd in their thousands who have come to cheer his death, and is stunned about where his determination to improve their lot has landed him. Perhaps he moved too fast or gave "the people" too much credit. In any case even if his optimism about the human condition seems to be placed in doubt, the film is not itself given to pessimism: merely the cruel irony of fate.

Everything about 'A Royal Affair' is stunning. Its ambitious scope in terms of subject matter, its intelligence, its brilliant cast of actors (I'll now happily watch anything with Alicia Vikander in it), and its lavish production values. I cried at the end, with the once vital Caroline separated from her children and living in exile, and I laughed far more and far harder than I have at the last dozen or so comedies. The story of a doctor who gives a king new confidence and inspires him to greater things, it could easily be billed as Denmark's answer to 'The King's Speech'. It's far better than that.

'Mercy' Berlinale (Competition) review:

Set in, Hammerfest, one of the world's northern most towns, 'Gnade' (or 'Mercy') sees a German family move to this remote part of Norway characterised by long cycles of unbroken darkness and unbroken sunshine. Matthias Glasner directs this compelling morality play in which a married couple struggle to come to terms with the fact that they are responsible for the death of a 16 year-old girl. Almost as bad as having caused her death is the fact that they look set to get away with it, a detail which weighs heavily on their shoulders - especially as they know her distraught parents.

The event itself is an accident as Maria (Birgit Minichmayr) hits the girl in her car whilst driving home during the ever-sunless Polarnacht. At first she isn't sure what she's hit and it takes a short while for her to stop the car. Then she can't bear to get out and look, beyond quickly scanning her rear view mirror. After getting home, alarmed at the prospect of having killed a dog, her husband Niels (Jurgen Vogel) ventures back out to the spot looking for evidence of the accident and - after a very short, slightly half-hearted search - finds nothing. The next day news reports confirm their worst fears, but they decide to remain silent.

At school their son Markus (Henry Stange) is also having to ask moral questions of himself - should he bully the unpopular kid to fit in or accept his offer of friendship and be picked on? Niels, for his part, is having an affair with a lady from work. So there's a lot to weigh up all round, though understandably the vehicular manslaughter plot takes centre stage. These problems are explored in interesting ways with defenciveness, self-justification and denial being among the early reactions from characters who say they "aren't that kind of person" even after repeat immoralities. Beautiful night-time helicopter shots of the Arctic town only enhance this rare drama that is actually every bit as profound as it aspires to be.

'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' Berlinale (Out of Competition) review:

Who knew 9/11 could throw up so much potential for whimsy? Adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling novel, 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' is the story of how the tragic events of that day cure a boy's autism. That's really pretty much what happens, as nine year-old protagonist Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) goes on a life-affirming quest to find out why terrorists blew up his super-swell father (Tom Hanks).

Of course this being an Eric Roth ('Forest Gump', 'Benjamin Button') screenplay, Oskar's disarming sincerity and can-do attitude ensure that he heals the gaping emotional wounds in everyone he meets - and he meets everyone with the surname "Black" in the New York City phone book, incidentally fixing marriages and mending souls as he goes. Black is the only word on an envelope in which Oskar finds a mysterious key belonging to his late father - a key he hopes will unlock some powerful nuggets of truth, but which'll most likely be for a back door or bleeding a radiator, or something.

He is buoyed in his quest early on by a friendly old man at a key cutting shop who - in a line recalling Gump's famed box o' chocolates - says that he likes keys because they all unlock something. Yes, I'm afraid that is the acidic taste of sick in your mouth. He is also helped by his walkie talkie wielding Germanic grandmother (Zoe Caldwell) and her mute house guest, with "yes" and "no" tattoos on the palms of his hands - I told you this was whimsical. He's also apparently aided in a clandestine fashion by his mostly absent mother (Sandra Bullock), the reveal for which is so far-fetched it makes the rest of the film seem grounded. Bear in mind that "the rest of the film" in this case includes the making of a 9/11 pop-up book.

I haven't even mentioned Tom Hanks' wacky antics in the frequent backflash scenes, because I don't want to relive them. As "the renter", Max von Sydow (who has received an Oscar nomination) is the film's clear (for "clear" read "only") highlight. It's not without emotionally distressing moments, but those stem more from being reminded of the horror of 9/11 than anything the movie is doing. In fact it's own attempts to wring tears from the tragedy feel crass and exploitative. The only noteworthy thing about 'Extremely Loud' is that Stephen Daldry has made perhaps the worst film in recent memory to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' is released in the UK tomorrow, rated '12A' by the BBFC.