Lang’s visionary visual creation remains impressive a century later, from the densely imagined cityscape to the massive sets that dwarf the actors and the swarms of extras, and its socio-political themes are just as soft-headed and simplistic.

Full Review | Oct 5, 2023

With its memorable sets and special effects courtesy of Eugen Schüfftan, the film remains a landmark of global cinema nearly 100 years later.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2023

The movie is a period piece, with roots in dystopian novels like H.G. Wells's When the Sleeper Wakes and The Time Machine; yet the stark and garish black-and-white staging here engenders an emotion oddly stronger than words.

Full Review | Oct 7, 2022

Metropolis contains such magnificent visuals that all else about the film recedes, allowing its all-consuming mythical status to take over.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2022

Anyone who had a good time at The Lost World will have a better time at Metropolis, for it carries the spectator into the world of a thousand years hence. No such settings have ever been attempted before on the screen, not even in Intolerance.

Full Review | Dec 14, 2021

It is perhaps unduly squeamish of me to dwell first on the faults of Metropolis... In all my years as a paid guest at movie palaces I have never seen such amazing pictures as are crammed into every reel of this gigantic production.

Full Review | Oct 5, 2021

Gustav Frӧhlich is wonderful as the young Joh Frederson but the standout in the film is Rudolf Klein-Rogge as Rotwang the evil scientist.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2021

Perhaps Metropolis predicts a new day in the picture world -- a day of marvellous camera craft and reforming motives, for the film is, above everything else, a confirmation of the old fable that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2021

Outside of the sensationalistic storyline, the film is a clear archetype for just about every science-fiction effort to follow it.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jul 27, 2020

Lang and his colleagues achieved something using creativity, ingenuity, and a willingness to step beyond certain boundaries. And now their work is celebrated, generations later.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2020

The film has, in consequence, a remarkable pictorial power, and, in spite of its occasional solemnities, is one which will well repay study by those who are interested in the development of a separate cinematographic technique.

Full Review | Jul 8, 2020

There are gigantic architectural effects and strong dramatic passages... The photography is of the very finest. The movement of bright and dark, of light and shade is developed with amazing variety and with fabulous richness.

Full Review | Jul 2, 2020

Fritz Lang must have been a rare kind of genius.

Full Review | Jun 30, 2020

Metropolis is a sentimental mess; it is staggering; yes, but it has the blind staggers; and they lead to nothing but the sentimental repentance (capital and labor shaking hands!) of the morning after.

Full Review | Apr 10, 2020

It gives in one eddying concentration almost every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general, served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own.

Full Review | Mar 31, 2020

Metropolis (1927) is a stylized, visually-compelling, melodramatic silent film set in the dystopic, 21st century city of Metropolis - a dialectical treatise on man vs. machine and class struggle. Austrian director Fritz Lang's German Expressionistic

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Sep 29, 2019

Metropolis is unique because of its character, but it won't thrill anyone or make money. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Sep 10, 2019

Often enough it is exciting in a broad, elemental way, just as an earthquake or a loud clap of thunder would be exciting; but when individual characters come on to the screen they rouse little Interest for their own sakes.

Full Review | Apr 2, 2019

Fritz Lang's dystopian sci-fi epic remains a spectacle, boasting some exquisite set design.

Full Review | Feb 28, 2019

I appreciate what it accomplished for the time and how influential it is. It's a classic, but one that maybe doesn't hold up to modern viewing...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 7, 2019