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The Berlinale is a world-
reknowned international film
festival. Every year, films from
around the world compete for
the coveted Golden Bear.
 
Netflix
has over 5,500
foreign DVDs
available for rental.
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German Film (3)
BROWSE GERMAN FILMS: Contemporary
German films 1 -
2 - 3 - 4
- 5 - 6
- 7 | New
releases | East German films
German film classics & collections
1 - 2
| German directors &actors
| Documentaries | German
movie soundtracks
The Experiment / Das Experiment
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Drama, thriller (2001)
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Starring: Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Berkel |
REVIEW: Inspired by a famous
1971 psychological experiment, Oliver Hirschbiegel's German-language
movie The
Experiment finds a group of 20 volunteers randomly divided
into 12 prisoners and eight guards and asked to play out their
roles for a fortnight while scientists study their reactions.
A conflict arises between undercover reporter Fahd (Moritz Bleibtreu),
a con with a hidden agenda, and the apparently mild-mannered Berus
(Justus von Dohnanyi), a guard with a megalomaniac streak. The
film begins as a psychological drama as ordinary people settle
into the game, with joking displays of resistance by the "prisoners"
greeted with increasing brutality from the "guards,"
but detours into suspense and horror as Fahd, who needs the experiment
to get out of hand in order to make his story more saleable, deliberately
ratchets up the tension between the factions only to see the situation
spiral nightmarishly out of control as various test subjects in
both camps edge closer to snapping.
With a terrific display of ensemble acting and unforced use of
the popular claustrophobic semi-documentary look, Hirschbiegel's
movie takes its time to get underway, with apparently irrelevant
cutaways to Fahd's outside girlfriend (Maren Eggert), but works
up to a powerful second half that delivers a sustained symphony
of psychological and physical anguish.
Review by Kim Newman
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Anatomy / Anatomie
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Horror / Thriller
(2000)
Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Starring: Franka Potente, Benno Fürmann |
REVIEW: The German thriller
Anatomy
is a Grand Guignol display of medical horror, dwelling on dissected
flesh and body organs in jars. Paula (Franka Potente, the star
of Run
Lola Run) is a smart young medical student with a lot
of family history: her grandfather is a celebrated surgeon and
her father runs a low-income medical clinic. An award-winning
essay gets her into a prestigious university, known for a strict
but brilliant professor of anatomy. On the train to school, Paula
saves the life of a punk rocker with a heart problem--only to
find this same young man on her dissecting table a few weeks later
in anatomy class. Her investigations into this coincidence lead
her to discover an underground society of doctors who pursue medical
research at all costs, and who sometimes give interesting medical
specimens a little nudge on their way to death. Despite a clunky
script, Anatomy
has a slick look and some gruesome moments. Potente has an engaging
presence and is surrounded by a good-looking young cast. This
is pretty much a German version of movies like Final Destination,
Urban Legend, and I Know What You Did Last Summer,
and anyone who's a fan of those flicks will find much to enjoy
here as well.
Review by Bret Fetzer
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In July / Im Juli
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Romantic
comedy (2000)
Director: Fatih Akin
Starring: Moritz Bleibtreu, Christiane Paul |
REVIEW: A man
who has never been lucky in love thinks his fortune may have changed,
only to find his life becoming all the more complicated in this
nomadic romantic comedy. Daniel (Moritz Blebitreu) is a shy schoolteacher
who is often unsure around women, but when he meets Melek (Idil
Under), a beautiful Turkish woman, he falls head over heels in
love and agrees to meet up with her in Istanbul. However, while
en route from Hamburg, Daniel spots Juli (Christiane Paul), a
woman he knows, trying to hitch a ride. Daniel picks her up, seemingly
oblivious to the fact that she's long carried a torch for him;
when Juli discovers why Daniel is making a long trip through Central
Europe, she figures this could be her last chance to win him over.
Her attempts to win his affections lead to a number of arguments,
reconciliations, unintended turns, and brushes with the wrong
side of the law. Im
Juli was written and directed by Fatih Akin, who previously
won acclaim for the drama Kurz und Schmerzlos.
Review by Mark Deming
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Enlightenment Guaranteed
/ Erleuchtung garantiert |
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Dramatic comedy (2000)
Director: Doris Dörrie
Starring: Uwe Ochsenknecht, Gustav-Peter Wöhler |
From the back cover:
Uwe and Gustav are two middle-aged brothers whole lives are a
mess: Uwe's wife just left him and Feng Shui consultant, Gustav,
is feeling unfulfilled. This odd couple travel together to a monastery
outside Tokyo. Enroute, their mid-life crisis turns into a midnight
crisis when they get lost in Tokyo's neon jungle and can't find
their way back to the hotel. It's down and out in Asia's brave
new world. They survive by their wits and certianly never expect
the Zen concept of "leaving everything behind" to be
like this. The brothers' eventual arrival at the monastery is
an immersion of a more subtle kind. The mundane and the sublime
- where does the one stop and the other start: Still, the enigma
of enlightenment keeps them going. Although it often seems just
within their grasp, it continues to elude them. And yet, even
they don't fully realize it, at the very core of their being,
it's changing them....
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The Legend of Rita / Die
Stille nach dem Schuß |
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Drama (2000)
Director: Volker Schlcndorff
Starring: Bibiana Beglau, Richard Kropf
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The Farewell / Abschied:
Brechts letzter Sommer |
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Drama (2000)
Director: Jan Schütte
Starring: Josef Bierbichler, Monika Bleibtreu |
REVIEW: Superb acting is the
primary reason to see The Farewell, an incisive portrait of playwright/poet
Bertolt Brecht. As directed by Jan Schütte, this German domestic
drama is not a dry, documentary-like profile but rather an elegy
of Brecht spanning one single day, just three days before Brecht's
death in the summer of 1956. The once-towering giant of German
theater (played to perfection by Josef Bierbichler) is preparing
to leave his lakeside cottage in the East German town of Bukow
and return to Berlin for the new theater season, but a storm is
brewing on the home front: Having maintained no fewer than three
mistresses at any one time during his adult life, Brecht is now
in the midst of dissent among his extended family of women including
his wife, daughter, current and former mistresses, and a political
reformer who shares his wife with Brecht in a personal arrangement
that's starting to unravel at the seams. With German secret police
poised to arrest two of Brecht's houseguests for high treason,
the idyllic cottage becomes a setting for petty jealousies, violated
trusts and the final remnants of hope and tenderness in the writer's
circle of intimates. It's a sad but moving film of an artist in
decline, not for all tastes but rewarding for anyone who's curious
about the eccentric lives of artists and Brecht in particular.
Review by Jeff Shannon
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|
Run Lola
Run / Lola rennt
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Drama / Thriller (1998)
Director: Tom Tykwer
Starring: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu
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REVIEW: It's difficult to create a film
that's fast paced, exciting, and aesthetically appealing without
diluting its dialogue. Run
Lola Run, directed and written by Tom Tykwer, is an
enchanting balance of pace and narrative, creating a universal
parable that leaps over cultural barriers. This is the story
of young Lola (Franka Potente) and her boyfriend Manni (Moritz
Bleibtreu). In the space of 20 minutes, they must come up with
100,000 deutsche marks to pay back a seedy gangster, who will
be less than forgiving when he finds out that Manni incompetently
lost his cash to an opportunistic vagrant. Lola, confronted
with one obstacle after another, rides an emotional roller coaster
in her high-speed efforts to help the hapless Manni--attempting
to extract the cash first from her double-dealing father (appropriately
a bank manager), and then by any means necessary. From this
point nothing goes right for either protagonist, but just when
you think you've figured out the movie, the director introduces
a series of brilliant existential twists that boggle the mind.
Tykwer uses rapid camera movements and innovative pauses to
explore the theme of cause and effect. Accompanied by a pulse-pounding
soundtrack, we follow Lola through every turn and every heartbreak
as she and Manni rush forward on a collision course with fate.
There were a variety of original and intelligent films released
in 1999, but perhaps none were as witty and clever as this little
gem--one of the best foreign films of the year.
Review by Jeremy Storey
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|
BROWSE GERMAN FILMS: Contemporary
German films 1 -
2 - 3 - 4
- 5 - 6
- 7 | New
releases | East German films
German film classics & collections
1 - 2
| German directors &actors
| Documentaries | German
movie soundtracks
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