Heiner Lauterbach
In the tense days leading up to the Allied bombing of Dresden, a young nurse weighs her loyalty to the motherland against her deepest desires after discovering an injured British pilot in a hospital cellar. Anna (Felicitas Woll) is a compassionate nurse working in a German hospital, and Robert (John Light) is a British pilot who has become trapped behind enemy lines. When Anna discovers Robert hiding out beneath the hospital, her first instinct is to dress his wounds. But Robert is the enemy, and despite her growing attraction to him she realizes that the penalties for aiding an enemy combatant is severe. Now, as Anna schemes to conceal Robert's true identity and Robert does his best just to survive, the city of Dresden is suddenly consumed by the chaos of war. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Felicitas Woll, John Light, (more)
- 2000
Noted German filmmaker Doris Dorrie directs this understated comedy about two middle-aged brothers who go to study at a Zen monastery in Japan. The two brothers could not be more different. Uwe (Uwe Ochsenknecht) is a bored husband and kitchenware salesman, while Gustav (Gustav Peter Wohler) is a flighty feng shui consultant and Eastern religions devotee. Just as Gustav is preparing to leave for the land of the rising sun, Uwe, whose wife just dumped him, begs his brother to let him tag along. The first night in Tokyo proves to be a disaster. After a night of drinking, the pair get lost, spend the last of their cash on an ill-fated taxi ride, lose their credit cards, and end up sleeping in some boxes on the city streets. But this deprivation prepares them for the hard living of monastic life, including 4:30 a.m. wake up calls, elaborate dining rituals, long periods of silent mediation, and a punishing cleaning routine. As the days wear on, Gustav soon finds himself buckling under the strain while Uwe demonstrates himself to be much more adaptable to a monk's life. The experience eventually brings the night-and-day brothers closer together. This film was screened at the 2000 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Uwe Ochsenknecht, Anica Dobra, (more)
- 2000
Director Joseph Vilsmaier's long-awaited biopic of screen legend Marlene Dietrich opens with the star's last public outing, her 1975 appearance at Carnegie Hall. Subsequently backtracking to 1929 Berlin, the film follows Dietrich's rise to fame and international adulation, turning a particularly attentive eye toward her relationship with director Josef von Sternberg (Hans-Werner Meyer) and her years in Hollywood. Screened at the 2000 Cannes Festival, Marlene stars Katja Flint in the title role and takes meticulous care in re-creating pre-WWII Berlin. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ben Becker, Monika Bleibtreu, (more)
- 1999
Acclaimed German director Soenke Wortmann spins this cleverly constructed, sumptuously shot crime drama set in St. Pauli, Hamburg's notorious red light district. The film opens with a gang of thugs dumping someone's ashes in the harbor. One of the group, brash punk Johnny (Benno Fuermann) crosses town in a cab driven by Robby (Ill-young Kim). As the film jumps from one story to the next, Robby and his taxi emerge as the central thread that holds the film together. Later, a naked man with a gun terrorizes a crowded street and accidentally kills Johnny. The film immediately dives into the naked man's history before moving on to the movie's sundry other outcasts and miscreants such as brassy transvestite Roberta, disaffected punk Sven, and sleazy club owner Billi. With a cool, almost clinical eye, Wortmann artfully cuts back and forth through both space and time as his characters are systematically picked off. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Benno Fürmann, Kathleen Gallego Zapata, (more)
- 1998
In this German comedy-drama, adapted from a Dietrich Schwanitz novel, Hamburg sociology professor Hanno Hackmann (Heiner Lauterbach) pleases his social-climbing wife Gabrielle (Sibylle Canonica) when he reveals he intends to compete against corrupt Schacht (Rudolf Kowalski) for position of university president. But what about his affair with drama student Babsi (Sandra Speichert)? Babsi, portraying a rape victim in a college play, is dropped from the cast, has a breakdown, and lands in a psych ward. This chain of events prompts rumors she was sexually harassed and innocent Hackmann is the suspect. Naturally, Schacht latches onto the rumor in order to crush his opponent prior to the university president election. Shown at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Heiner Lauterbach, Axel Milberg, (more)
- 1998
"Cascadeur" is the French term for a film action coordinator, which actor-producer Hardy Martins did on German films for a decade, also training for 24 months at the Los Angeles International Stunt Association, before directing this $4 million German action-adventure in the Indiana Jones tradition. In Caracas, art-history student Christin (Regula Grauwiller) tracks a dying Nazi, acquires a unique key that leads to the Amber Room and a $150 million treasure stolen from Leningrad by the Nazis during WWII. Captured by a German intelligence Colonel (Heiner Lauterbach) during a Caracas chase, Christin is sent on a plane to Bavaria but escapes in a parachute, landing near former stuntman Vincent (Hardy Martins). Tracked by the Colonel's men, Vincent and Christin set out across Bavaria to find the Amber Room. Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hardy Martins, Regula Grauwiller, (more)
- 1997
Densely plotted and featuring a large ensemble cast, this German drama offers a smorgasbord of lush visuals, intrigue, sex, egos run amok, and raw emotion. Set in Bavaria, within a posh Italian restaurant owned by Pierrot, much of the story centers on a filmmaker and his producers as they try to keep bankers from backing out on their promise to pay for a new film about the Lorelay, the ideal woman of German mythology. At the same time, the director is searching for a woman to play her. Despite his outward confidence, the director Uhu is deeply insecure about his career. Beautiful Snow White is determined to win the title role and will stop at nothing, not even the prostitution of her body, to get the part. Her girlfriend, Watsussnik is not pleased but is too emotionally unstable to speak out. Meanwhile Jakob, the writer of the novel on which the film is to be based, sits in a back room musing about how to get the film rights for himself. As the stories progress and unfold, more people are added to the mix, including a lonely beauty who is worshipped by a cosmetic surgeon. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
A remake of the highly-regarded 1958 film Das Maedchen Rosemarie (released as Rosemary in the U.S.), this fact-based drama follows the rise and fall of a German beauty who went from ex-convict to courtesan of some of Germany's most powerful men to the victim of an unsolved murder. The story begins in 1952 as Rosemarie sleeps her way into an early parole from a detention center. Newly freed, she is sent to a foster home where two years later, the buxom blonde runs away to Frankfurt where she starts living with Nadler, a charming small-time crook. Two years after that, Rosemarie is selling her body in a sleazy bar. One day she brings home a wealthy businessman who agrees to become her sugar daddy. As a result, Rosemarie leaves Nadler. The arrangement works out well, and she continues to entertain important clients. Her undoing comes in the form of a wealthy Frenchman who makes her an enticing, but ultimately dangerous offer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nina Hoss, Heiner Lauterbach, (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
- 1989
- R
Loosely based on the novel by Alberto Moravia, Me and Him concerns an architect (Griffin Dunne) whose penis begins giving him advice on business and love. It urges him to leave his wife and seduce a series of co-workers and acquaintances. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Griffin Dunne, Ellen Greene, (more)
- 1989
Filmed on location in Ghana, African Timber concerns dirty work in the lumber industry. Heiner Lauterbach plays the new manager of a West German lumber company. The manager's predecessor has died under mysterious circumstances. The apparent reason for the man's death, which the new manager does not ascertain until he's in too deep, is that the dead man was about to blow the whistle on an illegal mahogany-smuggling operation masterminded by the company's corrupt owners. This is the sort of pessimistic film wherein no good deed goes unpunished. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Heiner Lauterbach, Deborah Lacey, (more)
- 1986
This film by Doris Dorrie concerns two men who fight over one of their wives. Angelica (Sunny Mellis) is a fairly conventional housewife who is concerned about her marriage, because her husband Victor (Heiner Lauterbach) has been ignoring her. So Angelica calls in a remedy, her petite friend Lotte (Katharina Thalbach) to light some fire under Victor. Lotte has no problem in doing that, because she enjoys the result, but this time the fire turns into a conflagration that runs out of control. With Lotte taking off from the incendiary effects of her actions and Victor obsessed with chasing after her, Angelica's original problem is reversed, and now Lotte is suffering the consequences. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Heiner Lauterbach, Katharina Thalbach, (more)
- 1985
Set in the fast and loose ambience of 1947 in West Germany, this story is about Hans Kolp (Frank Roth), an inventive, teenage urban con artist who, like others of his generation and older, takes advantage of an out-of-control black market where almost any Allied goods can be stolen and traded for a tidy profit. Hans learns to speak good English from an American soldier friend, and bored with school -- which is nothing more than a big room in the railroad station with only one teacher to mind all levels of students -- the enterprising Hans starts a gang of petty thieves. Armed with a stolen jeep, the youngsters deal successfully in stolen goods, with Hans doing a good impression of a G.I. Business is so good, in fact, that when someone arrives to encourage Hans to get into the big-time with stolen vehicles and U.S. Army uniforms, the first crisis comes up in the small gang. Members want to back away from that level of dangerous dealing, but Hans wants to go for broke -- a difficult decision that will determine the young con's future.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katja Flint
- 1985
- NR
The men in The Men are stuffy ad exec Heiner Lauterbach and nonconformist artist Uwe Oschsenknecht. Both are amorously involved with lovely Ulrike Kleiner: Lauterbach is her husband, Oschsenknecht her new lover. Deducing that Ulrike is attracted to Oschsenknecht's Bohemian lifestyle, Lauterbach plots to transform the artist into a rock-ribbed conservative. A dash of gratuitous slapstick hurts the farcical proceedings not one whit. Originally titled Manner, The Men was made on a shoestring for German television, then released as a theatrical feature, making a tidy sum in the process. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Heiner Lauterbach, Uwe Ochsenknecht, (more)
