Ute Lemper Movies

Explore the life and career of a musical artist who penned some of the biggest hits of the 1960s before turning his back on fame and completely reinventing himself as a reclusive outsider artist. In the mid-'60s, few bands rose higher up the British pop charts than the Walker Brothers, and as the front man of the group, Scott Walker was constantly in the spotlight. In the years that followed, the American-born Walker would split from the group to establish himself as a successful solo artist while inspiring such popular musicians as David Bowie and Bono. Now, as the release of Walker's 2006 solo album, The Drift, draws near, the existential crooner notorious for not granting interviews allows filmmaker Stephen Kijak to follow along for tantalizing glimpse at one of the world's most enigmatic musicians. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

George Milton directed and co-wrote this quirky and riveting British thriller set in a crumbling old hotel run by a suspicious-looking manager named Jay (Trevor Eve, who played Harker in the 1979 Dracula). A group of strangers, gathered by an obnoxious young sailor (Christien Anholt) to celebrate his birthday, plays cards to determine which of them will spend the night in Room 207. The room is reputed to be haunted and a place where one "dreams the dreams of the ones who slept before you." Susie (Yse Marguerite Tran), an Asian woman who came to the hotel ostensibly to meet "someone special" is first, witnessing an appalling scene combining apparent oral sex and childbirth. She was dreaming the same dream the manager had when he slept there last. As the days and nights progress, more of the guests' dark secrets begin to come to light, leading them all to know far too much about each other's personal lives. One is there to avenge his dead son; another is seeking the birth-mother who rejected her; another is a suicidal former centerfold. There's robbery, drug abuse, perverse sexual behavior, and it's all somehow tied in to the hotel's creepy chef (George Lentz) and his dull-witted assistant (Detlef Bothe), leading inevitably to murder. Ute Lemper stands out as the mysterious Greta, Milton's direction is assured, and the film's look and feel often bring to mind a self-contained variant on Twin Peaks at its best. George Harris and Edward Hardwicke co-star. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Richard Chamberlain plays a dying man trying to tie together the loose ends of his past in this melodrama. Thaddeus (Chamberlain) is in the last stages of AIDS, and he's determined to live out his final days in the company of old friends. First on the list is Allen (Michael Imperioli), an artist in Los Angeles who, much to Thaddeus' surprise, is now living with Eva (Ute Lemper). Thaddeus' arrival has forced the couple to come clean about Allen's past as a hustler; meanwhile, Thaddeus enlists Allen to help him track down Jamie (James Duval), a former trick who needs to be aware of Thaddeus' condition -- for his own sake. River Made to Drown In features Talia Shire in a cameo. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

This large, sprawling comedy directed by Robert Altman concerns a variety of romantic and personal intrigues that intersect against the backdrop of Paris's annual "Pret-a-Porter" fashion extravaganza. With 31 principal characters and a number of cameos from well known models, designers, actors and actresses, there's far too much going on to describe the film in a limited space, but Julia Roberts and Tim Robbins get stuck in a hotel room together, Danny Aiello wears a dress, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni reignite their old passion (or at least try to), Stephen Rea humiliates a number of female journalists, Kim Basinger often looks dumbfounded, and Lyle Lovett plays a Texan (talk about imaginative casting!). Originally called Pret-a-Porter, this underwent a last-minute title change when the distributor discovered very few Americans understood what the French phrase means, with the English translation taking its place. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this free-wheeling drama, dozens of little dramas center around an affair between the wife of an NKVD official and a baggage handler she has met. The woman, a former aristocrat, is relatively safe in Moscow in 1930, even though Joseph Stalin is running the country since she is married to a member of his secret police (the NKVD). Her husband's unit has been ordered to train a feisty black stallion for the Red Army commander to ride on parade. Hopeless love and aberrant sexuality seems to be a secondary theme, as one story concerns a lawyer who has fallen in love with his praying-mantis-type client, a woman who kills her bedmates. Another story concerns a poet who has fallen in love with a ballerina who cannot accord his affection the kind of response he desires, which makes him suicidal. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The 1926 commercial and social structure of French Guiana, the French former penal colony in South America, differed little from that of Haiti a century before. White settlers owned or exploited everything and everyone. No one else was permitted to benefit greatly, and even the modest success of members of the mulatto, black, and Indian majority population were only permitted at the whim of the colony's rulers. Into this recipe for disaster appears a liberty-loving Frenchman named Jean Galmont. Not only is he helped by Guinean locals to get his feet on the ground, but he returns the favor by being almost mulishly color-blind. When he gains great success as the boss of a gold mine, he freely shares his wealth with his black and mulatto partners and the miners themselves. For a while he is riding high, but even his great wealth cannot win acceptance by the white rulers for schemes which would put blacks at the forefront of business or cultural dealings, and he is systematically hounded by them until he is destroyed. However, the stirrings of liberty which he spawned would prove to be more difficult to squash. ~ 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