Olivia Pascal Movies
- 2005
Germany is throwing its biggest party of the year, but some of the folks in attendance don't feel much like celebrating in this comedy-drama from writer and director Johannes Brunner. It's the final day of Munich's annual Oktoberfest, and while most of the folks on hand are having a beer-fueled blast, that isn't quite the case for everyone. College professor Richard (Peter Lohmeyer) is trying to show his kids Jenny (Samira Bedewitz) and Marc (Rick Nadler) a good time, but they're still upset over the fact he's left their mother and is sleeping with one of his students. Birgit (Barbara Rudnik), a waitress, has grown tired of her husband Max (August Schmolzer), a chronically unfaithful musician, through she can't decide if she should leave him. A restless teenage girl (Anna Bruggemann) falls for a boy in a wheelchair (Christoph Luser) until she discovers he has no trouble walking. The girl's mother, Maria (Hildegard Kuhlenberg), has been supporting the family by operating a haunted house attraction near the Oktoberfest, but she's not sure what to do when she learns she's lost her lease. And a couple from Japan (Gen Seto and Nahoko Fort-Nishigami) wonders if Munich was such a good idea for their honeymoon after a long day of drinking. Oktoberfest was shot on location in Munich during the 2005 celebration of the titular festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Rudnik, Peter Lohmeyer, (more)
- 1984
Kei (Hiroyuki Watanabe) is a professional motorcycle racer with a young daughter from an earlier marriage and a busy schedule that takes him to Berlin during the racing season and to Canada in-between. Sam (Leslie Malton) is a motorcycle mechanic who meets Kei on the racing circuit and the two eventually fall in love with each other - in a most charming and captivating manner. The unique quality of this standard love story is that absolutely nothing is made of the fact that Kei is Japanese and Sam is both American and Caucasian - it is a breakthrough in finally ignoring race. As in many other Japanese films, the original title is an English word, "Windy" - and inscrutable in its application to this story. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hiroyuki Watanabe, Leslie Malton, (more)
- 1983
- R
In this undistinguished softcore film, Albert (Chris Lemmon -- Jack Lemmon's son) is an adman for a clothing company charged with recruiting five well-endowed, beautiful women to model the company's line of bras. One of the women is at work in a horror-parody film, another is a disco singer, another a wrestler, and the remaining two are a Countess, and the daughter of the president of the company. Albert carries out his assignment with good comic timing, in spite of his nemesis Lydia (Jennifer Richards). ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chris Lemmon, Olivia Pascal, (more)
- 1983
The death of an influential community leader usually does not set off large problems. Then again, they don't usually die in a house of prostitution. In German. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1977
Before it became possible (in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) to imprison young heirs and heiresses in mental institutions in order to gain control of their inheritances, greedy families had for centuries "given" their daughters to convents without the girls' consent. Usually, such nunneries were only nominally religious, and their involuntary inhabitants lived a life of relative ease and luxury compared to their genuinely religious (or poorer) sisters. In the film Interno di un Convento, a zealous, handsome priest, who is the confessor for a convent full of such women, encourages the equally zealous abbess of one such institution to enforce the same strict rules on these unfortunate women that are applied to others. In doing so, they uncover a snake pit of sexual couplings, both lesbian and heterosexual, as well as many tools for masturbation. At the same time, a particularly disturbed inmate manages to poison herself and many of the other novitiates in yet another scandal which is covered up by church authorities. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marina Pierro
In a way, the title of Some Like It Cool was a piquant comment on the career of star Tony Curtis, whose stardom had chilled since his 1959 appearance in Some Like It Hot. This time around, Curtis plays famed 18th-century lover Giacomo Casanova. The plot would have us believe that Casanova has suddenly turned impotent, and is deploying all manner of subterfuge to hide the fact. One of Casanova's stratagems is to hire a look-alike (also Curtis) to uphold his reputation between the sheets. The stellar supporting cast -- Marisa Berenson, Hugh Griffith, Britt Ekland et. al. -- seem far more embarrassed by their tawdry, topless surroundings than Curtis, who steamrolls his way through the film with the same dogged determination that he'd demonstrated in his "Yonda lies the castle of my fadduh" formative years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tony Curtis, Marisa Berenson, (more)
- 1976
In this sex comedy, an unusually good-looking German girl goes on vacation in Greece, and a large number of people try to get her to go to bed with them. With a light, teasing manner, she turns all of them down, until at last she meets a boy she really likes. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
