Dominik Graf

Jojo (Peter Lohmeyer) was counting on his inheritance from a rich uncle to pay off his gambling debts, but the old man played a dirty trick on him, giving him custody of an oversized dog, and leaving the real cash in the hands of one of his neices. His comfortable fantasy of future solvency has been sorely tried; to restore it, he begins to try wooing his cousin Kathrin (the woman with the loot). However, as things progress, he finds himself actually falling for her, which is perhaps the only really decent thing that he's done in his adult life. When he and a gambling buddy take Kathrin (Anica Dobra) on a jaunt to the south of France, things get pretty dicey when a corrupt cop comes onto the scene. In this romantic thriller, only one will survive. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In a failed attempt at comedy, the German pop group called The Trio do double duty in this film about double-takes -- each member of the Trio looks exactly like a dictator in Latin America. Once the dictators catch on to this coincidence, they develop a scheme to safely get their hands on the illegal fortune they have siphoned out of their countries and into Swiss bank accounts. The plan is to assassinate the Trio and fool their enemies back home into thinking they themselves have been killed -- leaving the door open to safely raid their loot in Switzerland. Most of the story then revolves around cases of mistaken identity. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this strangely aloof teen crime drama, three high school buddies share a passion for motorbikes. They work at the same auto repair shop, and when their boss dies and they get shafted with a phony car deal, they decide on a very dangerous way of paying back their debt. Albi (Max Wigger), Franz (Dietmar Bär), and Tayfun (Tayfun Bademosy) live for motorbikes, spending every spare pfennige on their passion, even setting aside very little time or money for women. All three have low-level mechanics jobs at a grimy auto shop, and when their boss dies from a heart attack, they are left with the shop to manage. Cheated in a car-deal scam, they suddenly find themselves burdened with a large debt to a mobster and either they pay it off or lose their kneecaps. Driven by a desire to keep their body parts intact, they begin to fake accidents with unsuspecting motorists and then talk their victims into paying up front, without calling the police or the insurance company. Their scheme is going well until one day they are looking at a major coup that involves a fatal, head-on crash -- a plan that brings their decision about how to continue surviving to a head. Director Dominik Graf has captured the teens' world well, and the action scenes and acting are good, yet the three teens remain distanced as human beings. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A young woman who works in a bookstore has been terrified by nightmares about having committed suicide in a past lifetime, combined with a sense of deja vu regarding a specific apartment building. When she meets a young man who works in an optical company, whether she knows it or not, she is that much closer to the truth about her visions. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A thin tale of romance, pregnancy, and single motherhood (the numbers in the title add up only after the baby is born), this drama by Heidi Genee is well-acted and directed but has little to go on. Katerina (Adelheid Arndt) is an attractive, strong-minded, reasonable woman who has two different men in her life. One man is the father of the child she is carrying, someone who had been married and then blew it and has now moved in with his less-than-appealing son. Her other love interest is a divorced botanist who does not always think clearly, to say the least. For Katerina, both these prospective husbands are far from ideal. She has seen her own sister's marriage hit the skids and wonders if life alone with the baby would not be preferable to a shaky marriage. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This movie, based on a novel by Manfred Bieler, chronicles the complex romantic and daily lives of three daughters of a German merchant living in Prague in 1936. The oldest daughter is Christine, who falls in love with and marries a porcelain dealer. The next younger daughter Sophie has an affair with a composer but falls for the porcelain dealer. The youngest daughter Katherina falls for a Czech communist member of the anti-Nazi underground. When the war comes, Christine becomes the lover of a Gestapo officer, Sophie goes to a convent as a nurse, and Katherina joins the partisans. After the war, the composer who had wood her originally kills Sophie's boyfriend, the porcelain dealer husband of Christine. The communist abandons Katherina for his career, and all three girls are returned to Germany as unwanted aliens. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide