Thomas Heinze Movies
24 star Kiefer Sutherland stars as celebrated French painter Paul Gauguin in director Mario Andreacchio's slice of life biopic. A highly successful Paris stockbroker, Gaugin decides to drop out of the rat race in favor of developing his self-taught painting skills. Despite his determination to use primitivism as a means to revolutionizing the world of modern art, Gauguin soon spirals down a disastrous drain of financial ruin. Realizing that a change of scenery is in order if he is to rekindle his creativity, the devoted artist travels to the South Seas in order to realize his true potential on the canvas. Nastassja Kinski co-stars in a fascinating look at one of the 19th Century's most celebrated artists. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kiefer Sutherland, Nastassja Kinski, (more)
- 1999
A pair of grifters are drawn into a big con that may be more than they can handle in this sexy thriller. Maya (Bonnie Phillips) and her boyfriend Tony (Thomas Heinze) are a pair of con artists who've been working the same scam for some time; sexy Maya approaches wealthy-looking men in hotel cocktail lounges and persuades them to come up to her room. Tony lifts the men's wallets while Maya toys with them, and he copies the information from their credit cards; Tony returns the cards before the men are the wiser, and Maya conveniently loses interest before things can go too far with her marks. Maya and Tony are making a good living off their version of credit card fraud when Maya tries to pick up Pierce; as it turns out, Pierce is a con artist himself, but rather than turn the tables on the couple, he makes them an offer. Pierce is working with a woman who wants to divorce her rich husband; they need a woman who can seduce the heretofore faithful husband -- and do it on film. There's a big payday in store for the woman who can do the job, so would Maya be interested? The Hustle also stars Robert Wagner, Steven McHattie, and Benjamin Sadler. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bobbie Phillips, Thomas Heinze, (more)
- 1999
It's said that love can change a man, but one woman finds herself wondering just how powerful love might be in this comedy. Cora Dulz (Corinna Harfouch) is a psychiatrist who begins working with Stanislaus Nagy (Til Schweiger), a good looking but mysterious man who is obsessed with the late operatic diva Maria Callas -- and claims to have been her mentor during the height of her career. Not surprisingly, Nagy admits he has a hard time separating truth from fiction, but for reasons even Dulz finds hard, she finds herself fascinated with her new patient, to the extent of following Nagy after appointments and pursuing a romance with him. As things look to become more serious between Nagy and Dulz, he decides to make a little confession to her -- he wasn't really Callas' mentor. Instead, Nagy announces, he is actually Satan himself, and Callas was the result of a project in which he attempted to create the perfect woman. Nagy's relationship with Callas was a failure, however, and he's decided he wants to give up his career as the Lord of Darkness and instead live out his days as a mortal man. In order to do that, Nagy would need to find a mortal woman willing to take his hand -- would Dulz be at all interested? ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Til Schweiger, Corinna Harfouch, (more)
- 1999
Noted filmmaker Roland Suso Richter directs this bittersweet exploration of life in newly reunified post-Cold War Germany. Opening in the actual Saxon town of Amerika, moving on to Berlin, and ending in America, the film follows the lives of Hans (Thomas Heinze), a bilingual German who prefers to be called Jack; Sara (Dennenesch Zoude) whose father is a black GI she never met; and Jo, a slick and savvy businessman who introduces Hans to Sara. Sara Amerika was screened at the 1999 Chicago Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dennenesch Zoude, Thomas Heinze, (more)
- 1998
Three German women embark upon a light-hearted road-trip to Barcelona where the eldest one plans to marry the man who impregnated her. The three girls all work at the same book-publishing house in Frankfurt. Gabriele Rettich, the chief editor, is the bride-to-be and wants to drive to the Spanish city for a pre-wedding vacation with her pals Sophie, who is secretly in love with a bookseller, and Relate Czerny, who is in a dull relationship. Once in Spain, Gabriele reveals a secret, Relate has a fling, and both women give Sophie an exciting makeover. None of them realize that the bookseller and Renate's lover also have business in Barcelona and that their paths are about to cross. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Iris Berben, Martina Gedeck, (more)
- 1996
An incarcerated homicidal maniac hits the road after taking hostage the pretty prison medic who told him he has a malignant brain tumor. With a few surprising twists and much inky-black humor, this German comedy chronicles the strange adventures between the hostage and the killer. Edgar's ruthless exploits are well-known in the criminal community and word of his break-out travels fast. Meanwhile Lucy (the hostage) takes Edgar to a restaurant to sample sushi for the first time. Just as they begin to dine a crook bursts in with a big gun, saying he is Edgar's brother. He then begins sternly lecturing Edgar for killing their foster family. Edgar goes into one of his strange fits and kills his brother. This is only one of a long string of murders as many crooks want to kill Edgar, and none can succeed. One person who benefits from the melee is the local arms dealer whose business is suddenly booming. Despite all the bloodshed, Lucy remains strong and calm. In fact she slowly becomes the dominant one and as Edgar's sexual needs begin to reawaken, a strange romance blooms. Edgar begs Lucy to make love to him. Unfortunately, she has chosen to be celibate. Fortunately, she decides to make a sort of exception for him and takes him to a hotel where she subjects him to one of the funniest, darkest love scenes in recent cinema. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Corinna Harfouch, Jürgen Vogel, (more)
- 1996
This German farce has fun parodying the local filmmaking industry and some its more popular stars as it tells the riotous tale of a neglected, lonely Munich housewife who writes a tawdry best-selling account of her sexual past. The situation begins when Franziska, the wife tires of hanging around the house raising two mischievous children while her husband the television director gallivants to far-flung locales sleeping with every actress in sight. She has a conversation with an understanding lawyer and through miscommunication ends up launching divorce proceedings. It is the lawyer who advises her to write down her erotic history. Later, an old high school flame turned publisher sees her manuscript and suggests she publish it as an erotic novel using a pseudonym. Things go swimmingly until her husband buys the film rights and decides to turn it into a trashy movie. This film was extremely popular in Germany. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1995
This German romantic comedy follows the exploits of Peter Merz and Theamarianne Hoederbach, two rivals trying to show Japanese managers that their respective cities are the best ones for the Asians to invest in. The competition comes to a screeching halt when the chief manager, the son of the company owner, abruptly expresses his disgust with the two and their overly business-like, no fun demeanor, and vanishes. The two then team up to find him in bed with Merz's wife. During their hunt, the two rivals fall in love, so the story has a happy ending. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1993
Reviewers agreed that this cinematic disaster deserves an "A" for effort, at the very least, and also deserves its place on the shelves beside such astonishingly awful films as Plan 9 From Outer Space. In the story, the aged millionaire Barry Reilly (Mickey Rooney) lives on a huge estate in California. He observes the pleasant life led by his granddaughter's infant baby, and decides that this is the life for him. He gets his lawyer to craft a legal arrangement which will require his family to treat him in an exactly similar manner. That's just fine for a while, but after he gets hit in the head by some burglars, he finds he is unable to speak, and can only gurgle and coo. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mickey Rooney, Marianne Sägebrecht, (more)
- 1993
Quite a few years ago, Isaak Kohler (Maximillian Schell) cooly walked up to a man everyone assumed was his friend and shot him dead. This took place in front of dozens of witnesses in a busy restaurant, and there was no question about his guilt. What he never revealed was his motive. He has been in prison serving a twenty year sentence ever since. Perhaps in order to ease his daughter's pain about the incident, he has hired a legal representative to arrange for him to receive a retrial. He is still unforthcoming about his reasons for committing the crime, and invites the struggling lawyer to make something up. This crime and courtroom drama is based on a novel by Friedrich Durrenmatt, whose works are highly respected within the German-speaking intellectual community but whose appeal has proved difficult to translate. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maximilian Schell, Thomas Heinze, (more)
- 1991
- PG13
Set in the 1950s, Voyager concerns the travels of an American construction engineer (Sam Shepard) who is wandering throughout Europe, recounting his life story through a series of flashbacks while meeting a variety of new characters. At first, he meets a man whom he knew during his time as a student in Europe in the days before World War II. Shortly afterward, he meets a beautiful young German woman (Julie Delpy), whom he accompanies on a journey to her home in Athens, Greece. Voyager is a slowly-paced and well-performed with a surprising, tragic conclusion. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Shepard, Julie Delpy, (more)
- 1991
In this romantic comedy, three militant feminists decide that the ultimate proof of their superiority in the battle of the sexes will be if they can convert a leather-clad man (whom they assume to be an oaf, an "arrogant, self-centered braggart") into what they imagine is an archetypically sensitive man. However, despite some amusingly pointed rhetoric from the women, when they persuade this paragon of masculine crudeness to take a job which includes quarters in the basement of their house, they get embroiled in a plain and very ordinary romantic competition. In fact, the real winner is the puzzled but highly satisfied subject of their machinations. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Thomas Heinze, Jennifer Nitsch, (more)
- 1990
This made-for-television movie focuses on the exploits of a late-middle-aged woman who has always been an activist in some movement or other. Perhaps at one time her husband participated in the activism with her, but he evidently lost interest sometime around the beginning the women's movement and the "rebirthing" movement began to hold sway, and he now wryly only observes his wife's constant activity. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Auer, Thomas Heinze, (more)
