I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

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.

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.

I have seen "Princess and Warrior" about 10 times. Honestly, I really want to watch it again and again another time. This is one of my favorite movies. I love this movie for some reasons: 1. The cinematography of this movie is brilliant. I love the movement of the camera, the angles, the compositions and the lighting. This is how the movie is told in the visual world and cinematic culture. 2. The directing of this movie is superb! The ways the characters interact with each other are naturally. I feel like I am witnessing everything is going on in every single scene. Therefore, My mind reached the catharsis moment that the film produced. 3. I love the acting of both actors, Franka Potente (Sissi) and Benno Furmann (Bodo). Sissi has a great heart. She believes in what she feels. She is determined with what she believes that is the truth. Most of all, she can stand up for love. Benno is excellent for his acting as Bodo. I like the look of the character Bodo constructed. The masculinity of the character Bodo is reinforced by Benno acting and the directing of Tykwer. How Bodo's inner world influences his behaviour can be sympathetic. I was attracted by the acting of these two central characters (Franka Potente and Benno Furmann)I can feel every breath they breath, every word they say and every tear they cry. The love and the miracle intertwine with the happiness and the tragedy. In this world, everybody has his/her own pain but depend how s/he expresses. Some people try to hide the pain and someone is trying to understand one's pain in order to help them to overcome/recover. Everything we need is time. Just only time can help to heal the wounds, particularly, some wounds are deep in our hearts. Another elements to help us recover from pain are love and miracle. Together, time, love and miracle can help us all escape our own world to live in the better world, the world of love. There are many lives are shown in the movie but Sissi and Bodo represent of two lives in many tragic cases. One has a mother was killed by her own mad father; one has a wife was killed by chosen the suicidal way. Both are ladies but they both died in different situations. This movie for those who believe in love, believe in miracle, and believe that somewhere in this world there is someone who is waiting to love and to be loved. Let's love each other! I love this movie and I believe so do you.

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