Irm Hermann Movies

A made-on-HD video documentary about fascinating European filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, directed by the equally notable Rosa von Prauheim, this feature attempts to shed light on his rocky life in a tell-all fashion. The film interviews several artists who worked with Fassbinder, dating back to the mid-'60s, when the director was invited to participate in the experimental Action Theatre group, which he quickly seized control of. He was known to have uncontrollable mood swings that could alienate others without warning, to take out aggressions on his cast and crew, and to demand sexual favors and money whenever required. The movie also focuses on the women in his life, especially actress Hanna Schygulla, who made quite a career out of her work for the tumultuous director. Known widely as a gay man, Fassbinder still required the attention of females, whom he often proposed to and turned to for comfort. Among the figures that the documentary interviews are actress Jeanne Moreau, whom Fassbinder cast in his final film Querelle, famous cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and producer Peter Berling, the latter of whom doesn't recount the happier times with the troubled but brilliant director, who he died of an overdose in 1982.
~ Jason Clark, Rovi

Rudolf Thome directed this German science fiction drama that's slightly reminiscent of Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Driving to Berlin, Luise (Cora Frost) and Theo (Tilo Werner) give a lift to the enigmatic blond Frank Mackay (Herbert Fritsch), and Luise is immediately attracted to him. However, time-traveler Frank is more interested in locating Laura Luna (Valeska Hanel), author of Tiger-Stripe Woman Waits for Tarzan, so he can take her to a future time when women have died off. Frank and Laura become a twosome, but then her apartment is mysteriously trashed, so they head for her father's remote hunting lodge where a menage a trois develops after Luise turns up (with Theo lurking about in the surrounding forest). Laura begins writing a new novel, Utopian Wife. Shown at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

This third feature film version of Joseph Conrad's tragic romantic drama (the best of which remains John Cromwell's 1940 adaptation) is the one that stick's closest to the original story of a reclusive, hard-hearted fellow living on a private island in the Dutch East Indies who must protect his home, and the woman he comes to love, from two brutish villains. The story is told by a sea captain and begins at a turn-of-the century hotel in the port town of Surabaya where the Dutch entrepreneurs come to drink and wind down while listening to an all-female orchestra led by creepy conductor Sam Giancomo (Simon Callow). The joint is owned by an unpleasant, bigoted German named Schomberg (Jean Yanne) who constantly pesters the conductor to sell him Alma (Irene Jacob), the prettiest girl in the band. Eventually Sam relents, causing the frightened Alma to beseech taciturn patron Axel Heyst (Willem Dafoe) to help her escape. At first Axel refuses, but then has a change of heart and takes her with him to his lonely island where she will live with himself and his valet Wang (Ho Yi). Initially, Axel wants nothing to do with Alma, but things change and they become lovers. Meanwhile, the vengeful Schomberg plots revenge. He gets a chance to enact it with the arrival of the villainous Mr. Jones (Sam Neill) and his henchmen who turn Schomberg's bar into a gambling house. Seeing that Jones is ruthless and avaricious, Schomberg casually mentions that there is an untapped fortune lying in an abandoned mine located on Axel's island. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

While traveling on the Trans-Mongolian Railway, when a cozy group of female western tourists are abducted by a horde of female Mongolians wearing tribal dress, they fear the worst. They are forced to learn traditional Mongolian ways, and are made to do all sorts of onerous chores in the old-fashioned ways. They are equally perplexed when, after about a month, they are released to return to the train and resume their journeys. The situation becomes clearer when they are back on the train and the most garrulous among the released women strikes up a conversation with a Mongolian woman wearing western attire. It seems that every year, many Mongolian women on vacation from their modern jobs return to the steppes for a holiday to keep their culture alive, and the western women's abduction was just another aspect of their role-playing. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this feature-length anthology of short films, seven women filmmakers from around the world interpret the seven "deadly sins" for a modern age. New Yorkers Bette Gordon and Maxi Cohen direct "Greed" and "Anger," respectively; Germans Helke Sander and Ulrike Ottinger take on "Gluttony" and "Pride"; Belgian director Chantal Akerman tackles "Sloth"; Austrian Valie Export composes "Lust"; and Laurence Gavron of France directs "Envy." ~ Sarah Welsh, Rovi

In another avant-garde, underground film, director Ulrike Ottinger takes up the decadent, self-indulgent character of Dorian Gray (Veruschka von Lehndorff) and uses him/her to explore the seamier side of Berlin night and street life -- for 2 1/2 hours of running time. About half that time would have been more than enough, even for in-house, Berlin-based fans. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Edith runs a left-wing journal and when her marriage starts to fall apart (her husband is unfaithful), she can find no solace in her son who is more of a problem than an asset. On top of heading toward a divorce and being unable to handle her son's asocial tendencies, her neurotic uncle moves in, demanding personalized care. Just to keep her sanity intact, Edith starts writing in her diary to vent her own feelings and ambitions. As her son goes from bad to worse over a five-year period, it turns out that Edith's diary may be of more benefit than she could have ever imagined. In this adaptation of Edith's Diary by Patricia Highsmith, director and writer Hans W. Geissendoerfer has maintained Highsmith's psychologically tormented characters while changing the location and time of her story from the U.S. of the 1960s to Germany in the early 1980s. Perhaps because of the shift, the attempt to handle the five-year span of changes after the story's traumatic beginning ends up with some discontinuity. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this drama with an undercurrent of incest, a truck driver spends so much time with his mentally impaired younger daughter that neighbors' protests bring in a social worker who manages to get the young woman placed with a distant pastor's family before tragedy can strike. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Two bit players in the movies share a home together, spend their days getting as much work as they can, and keep scrapbooks of their minor triumphs - literally in the background of the cinematic world. Costumed in character as an executive, one of the players is riding the bus to work when a woman mistakes him for a studio head and before the ride is over, she has been easily convinced to be a bit player. She quits her job and does become a bit player, in fact, when one day her mother decides to make a surprise visit to the studio. By coincidence, the crew have rebelled against the head of the studio that day, and the crazy bit players put on a false show to fool her mother into thinking that her daughter is a lead actress - making in fact, a film within a film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Controversial German director Werner Herzog helmed this cinematization of Woyzeck, playwright Georg Büchner's anti-military tale of depersonalization run amok. Utilizing the more grotesque elements of German expressionism, combined with his own sense of the outrageous, Herzog plunges us directly into the middle of his story of a soldier (Klaus Kinski) who is conditioned to be an unthinking killing machine through lab experimentation. His one vestige of humanity is his love for the beautiful Marie (Eva Mattes), but even this is corrupted when he is goaded into murdering the girl. An earlier film version of Woyzeck, filmed in 1947, was released in the U.S. in 1981. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi