Simon Schwarz Movies
- 2001
An Austrian housewife discovers a new hobby that's fun, profitable, and lethal in this black comedy. Sixty-ish Trixi (Christiane Hoerbiger) is hardly an ordinary grandmother; she's grown bored with her longtime marriage to loutish Siggi (Klaus Ofczarek), and as a diversion, uses her grocery allowance to gamble. One of Siggi's friends, Karli (Peter Faerber), spies her at the racetrack, and threatens to tell her husband about her hobby; to his surprise, Trixi offers to have sex with him in exchange for his silence. Karli lets slip with a little secret about Siggi -- he has a secret fund of $70,000 that he's been saving without her knowledge. Trixi, already unhappy with her mate, decides this is the last straw, and poisons him in order to get her hands on the money. But Trixi later discovers that Siggi's hidden bankroll was much smaller than Karli had led her to believe, and when a widower asks Trixi for her hand in marriage, she accepts. After locating his nest egg, Trixi soon does away with husband number two, and is prepared to move on to husband number three, good-looking Ulrich (Jan Niklas), when fate throws a few spanners into the works -- Karli begins demanding money to keep quiet about Siggi's "mysterious" death, and Trixi finds she has attracted the attention of Julius (Udo Kier), an artist with a taste for rough sex. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Christiane Horbiger, Udo Kier, (more)
- 2001
After burning his bridges as a detective, a man tries to redeem himself driving an ambulance in this dark comedy from Austria. Brenner (Josef Hader) was once a police detective, but after the local chief of police discovered Brenner was having an affair with his wife, he found himself off the force and in need of a steady job. Despite Brenner's appetite for booze and drugs, he soon finds work as a driver for an ambulance company, where it becomes obvious that he's not that different than his colleagues -- a rough and rowdy bunch who are struggling to outwit another local ambulance service and who make up in daring what they sometimes lack in civility and common sense. When a nurse well known to the drivers is brutally murdered, Brenner decides to put his experience as a detective to work, and with the help of his girlfriend Berti (Simon Schwarz) and fellow driver (and onetime schoolmate) Klara (Barbara Rudnik), Brenner sets out to track down the killer. Komm, Susser Tod is based on a novel by Wolfgang Haas, who also co-wrote the screenplay with director Wolfgang Murnberger and leading man Josef Hader. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Josef Hader, Barbara Rudnik, (more)
A determined medical student uncovers shady goings on during a prestigious summer anatomy course in this German thriller. When Paula Henning (Run Lola Run's Franka Potente) learns that she's been accepted to a highly competitive internship at a Heidelberg research institution, she's ecstatic. The daughter of a simple family doctor, she prefers to model herself after her terminally ill grandfather, who was once dean of the same Heidelberg university. Stern lecturer Prof. Grombek (Traugott Buhre) promises that half the students won't be around when the course ends; his prediction turns out to be true, but it's not because of the brutal exams. It seems that a group of renegade doctors is performing dissections on unwilling, still-living victims, which helps explain the artful laboratory in which plasticized human remains are lovingly displayed. Paula stumbles onto this plot when a recent acquaintance turns up on her dissection table, his blood the consistency of rubber. Studious to the extreme, Paula investigates his death with scientific determination -- despite the flirtations of handsome fellow student Caspar (Sebastian Blomberg) and the feel-good urgings of Gretchen (Anna Loos), her sexually promiscuous but utterly brilliant roommate. Just as Paula is preparing to expose the existence of the Anti-Hippocratic Society, a Nazi-affiliated group of medical malcontents, Gretchen falls prey to their extreme methods. Soon Paula, too, is in danger of becoming just another addition to the display case. Extremely popular in its native country, Anatomie was dubbed into English for American release under the title Anatomy. A sequel was in production as of 2002. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Franka Potente, Benno Fürmann, (more)
In an Austrian farming village during the '30s, narrator Severin (Lars Rudolph) watches an old woman, Rosalind (Elisabeth Orth) visit the bed of sleeping farmhand Lukas (Simon Schwarz). Rosalind is accused when the owner of the farm is found dead. Local farmers believe his land will be divided among them, since he had no heirs, but his will states that both farm and livestock are left to his peasant workers. When the seven peasants decide not to sell, they join the ranks of the landed gentry. The community's established farmers, led by Danninger (Ulrich Wildgruber), first attack the seven peasants with slander and ridicule and then turn violent. Shot in Super 16 with a blowup to 35mm, this film had its world premiere at the 1998 Rotterdam Film Festival where it won a Tiger Award. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Simon Schwarz, Sophie Rois, (more)
