Duds and delights from the 65th Berlin International Film Festival

Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell in Herzog Werner's biopic Queen of the Desert. Courtesy Benaroya Pictures

The 65th Berlin International Film Festival ends on Febturay 15 after screening more than 400 films, including premieres of the much-anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey and the Gertrude Bell biopic Queen of the Desert.

However, this year will not go down as a vintage year for the Berlin International Film Festival. The big-name directors all disappointed.

Terrence Malick had Christian Bale running around Hollywood having his tarot cards read and meeting numerous ladies in the mind-numbing Knight of Cups. The hugely anticipated Werner Herzog biopic on Bell, Queen of the Desert, with Nicole Kidman in the lead role, misfired.

Wim Wenders was given an honorary Golden Bear and hence rushed to get his new film, a baffling, flat, 3-D drama called Everything Will Be Fine, made in time for the festival.

Then there was the much-talked-about world premiere of Sam Taylor-Johnson's misguided adap­tation of E L James's novel Fifty Shades of Grey.

The gems were found in the less-heralded fare.

The Iranian director Jafar Panahi charmed in Taxi, in which he plays himself. The most exciting and tenacious film was Victoria, the German director Sebastian Schipper's nearly two-and-a half-hour heist movie that was set in 20 locations across Berlin and made, remarkably, in a single take.

There was also the brilliant documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, about the Nirvana lead singer, that includes dramatic footage of Cobain with his wife Courtney Love. The best visual experience came in Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson's crazy and bizarre ode to lost cinema, The Forbidden Room.