Armin Mueller-Stahl Movies

Momo (Radost Bokel) is a ten-year-old orphan girl who tries to save her village from the evil clutches of the Grey Men in this uneven children's story. Led by Chief Grey Man (Armin Muller-Stahl), the Grey Men have managed to make the villagers give up all their leisure time. Momo must get to the rococo palace where the time guardian Hora (John Huston) stands in her way. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In this drama, Franza (Elisabeth Trissenaar) leads an unhappy life after she has an affair with a British officer at the end of World War II. She marries an abusive and unfeeling doctor (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and the emotional strain of her marriage leaves her depressed and dispirited. Her brother Martin (Gabriel Barilly) tries to come to her aid and meets her in Cairo where she slowly tells him about her unfortunate past. In the meantime, her trials and tribulations do not appear to be heading toward an easy resolution. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This West German film was first released in 1985 under the title Bittere Ernte. Armin-Mueller Stahl plays a Polish farmer living under the wartime Nazi occupation. Stahl isn't too offended at the prospect of answering to the Germans; in fact, he has profited by confiscating the property of his neighbor, a wealthy Jew. His conscience doesn't disturb him until a starving Jewish woman (Elisabeth Trissenaar) stumbles onto his property. At first Stahl shelters her, but his baser instincts surface; she is in no position to refuse when he ultimately rapes her. She even comes to fall in love with Stahl--and kills herself when another woman moves in with him. Stahl survives the war with health and wealth intact, only mildly disturbed by the misery he has caused. This Oscar-nominated film was to have been lensed in director Agnieszka Holland's native Poland; upon the imposition of martial law, production was switched to Sweden. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The second film in the trilogy made by director Istvan Szabo and actor Klaus Maria Brandauer -- hammocked between Mephisto and Hanussen -- Colonel Redl continues Mephisto's fascination with a man overwhelmed by history. In that film, Brandauer played an actor who tried to ignore the rise of the Third Reich, and here he's an ambitious military officer in pre-World War I Austria whose career path is set early on. In military school, he's forced to inform on a student who's the source of a practical joke; though he beats himself up for being a Judas, he soon realizes that to rise in the ranks he must overcome his peasant background and hide his homosexuality by ingratiating himself with his superiors. In time, he becomes Chief of Military Intelligence for the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Though he professes to hate politics and politicians, Redl also can't avoid them. When the leader for whom Redl is supposedly spying among the officer corps, draws up a list of who can't be exposed for traitorous activities (including Austrian nobles, Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Croatians, and even the usual scapegoats, Jews -- the aftershocks of the Dreyfuss affair are still rumbling), he tells Redl that he must find a double of himself, a Ukrainian. Now certain that he will be exposed, Redl surrenders to fate, quoting to his wife from Montaigne: "It's no sin to be involved. It's a sin to remain involved." Brandauer is a wonder as the self-loathing Redl, and Szabo's camera picks up every nuance on his expressive face. The film eschews music except for several party scenes, and the absence of a score is most effective in the final shots of Redl's fellow officers awaiting his fate. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

In this curiously irresolute drama, Gabriele (Barbara Rudnik) is a young woman who lives at home in her wealthy parents' apartment, but dreams of returning to Australia to join her Aussie boyfriend. He keeps in touch by mailing her taped messages and a video of their good times together on the beach. She, in turn, is studying marine biology and working at a peep show at night so she can save some money to join him. Her nighttime job introduces new people into her life -- everyone from her manager who lusts after her, to the women who work in the peep shows, and the taxi driver who takes her to work each night. An uneasy sense of foreboding slowly takes over, raising the question of whether she may finally return to Australia or not. All this might be more compelling if the acting were less stylized and the script a little more convincing. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This sometimes confusing yet predictable thriller is about two policemen who bust a heroin deal and, after dumping the white powder, take off with the money, but they cannot escape the mob boss hot on their trail -- he wants his money back. After a detective friend is murdered, one of the two policemen (Franck, played by Victor Lannoux) returns the money but the other (Rupert, played by Jean Rochefort) insists on keeping the loot and makes a run for it. In the meantime, Rupert abandons his wife for a new lover, giving an opportunity for Franck to go after the wife -- someone he has always loved. With his marriage in tatters and the police chasing him, Rupert is faced with challenges he is ill-equipped to handle. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Even in war, the life of a rich family is different, according to this fictional story about Francois Korb (Armin Müller-Stahl) an arms manufacturer who sold both to the Germans and the Allied forces. Korb's home life is less than ideal, since his wife is having an affair with his brother, and his young son is inseparable from a teddy bear. To remedy the son's situation, the parents take in a little refugee girl as a temporary companion and playmate, and the two children become fast friends -- and when they meet again long after the war, the influence of family is all the more apparent. Meanwhile, the arms dealer will learn the hard way that weapons kill. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This West German film chronicles the trials of a group of people fleeing the invading Russian army in 1944-45 in the area of Pomerania in eastern Germany. Caught in the dead of winter, several men, women and children load themselves and their belongings onto horse-drawn wagons to start their journey to safety. At one point, the group reaches a farm where everyone in the family has committed suicide, and at another juncture they are hiding in the basement of a house when some Soviet soldiers come to the door looking for refugees. The French POWs who were in the house try to send the soldiers away, but they fail -- the soldiers discover the refugees and are about to rape the women when the Soviet officer in charge prevents that atrocity. These and other stories of a fictional group of refugees were taken from real accounts at this time. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Rosa (Christine Boisson) and Elser (Michael Koenig) get off a passenger ship on the German Baltic coast, steal a car, and then try to dodge their pursuer in a long and verbose chase across Germany. The man is in search of a new utopia, but the woman seems only interested in a good time, and apparently the couple find both objectives more or less compatible. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In a Germany still divided between East and West, the glow of western gilt-edged security, and the pizzazz of fashion, cars, and computers create a "light trap" that lures East Germans into fantasizing about a better life. When a spy from East Germany goes through the motions of picking up his contact in Munich, he is led into her double life in an opulent villa, with an attractive and lusty daughter. As detectives and the police come in and out of the scenario, it becomes difficult to know who has been caught in the "light trap" and who might be a double agent -- or not. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide