Rüdiger Vogler Movies

As adapted from Jean Bruce's endless series of novels, the French series of O.S.S. adventure comedies showcase the globetrotting exploits of Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (AKA O.S.S.), a Derek Flint-like superspy. This outing finds O.S.S. shuttled off to Rio de Janeiro where his assignment involves retrieving microfilm that lists French Nazi collaborators during World War II. He then teams up with the seductive lieutenant Dolores (Louise Monot) to track down a gang of escaped Nazis. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

The horrors and moral compromises of war set the stage for this harrowing drama from director Max Färberböck, based on a true story. An anonymous female reporter (Nina Hoss) is living in Berlin in the spring of 1945; most of the city has been reduced to rubble by bombing, the German army has been decimated, and most of those left behind are expecting the arrival of Russian troops and fearful of what awaits them. The reporter is one of a number of women who are hiding wherever they can in the city, expecting that they will be raped and brutalized by the Russians. It doesn't take long for their worst fears to be realized as the emotionally ravaged Russian soldiers take out their anger and frustration on their new captives. But the reporter, who can speak Russian, is determined not to allow herself to be violated by the soldiers, and she decides to curry favor with a Soviet officer who will then protect her from his underlings. The reporter's plan works as she becomes the lover of Major Andrej (Yevgeni Sidikhin), an officer with decidedly mixed feelings about his work. But as the reporter trades consensual sex for the safety Andrej can give her, both are aware who is the victor and who is a captive, and elsewhere in Berlin both German survivors and the soldiers occupying Berlin show the scars of war as they bring out the worst in one another. Anonyma -- Eine Frau in Berlin (aka A Woman in Berlin) received its world premiere at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A determined medical student uncovers shady goings on during a prestigious summer anatomy course in this German thriller. When Paula Henning (Run Lola Run's Franka Potente) learns that she's been accepted to a highly competitive internship at a Heidelberg research institution, she's ecstatic. The daughter of a simple family doctor, she prefers to model herself after her terminally ill grandfather, who was once dean of the same Heidelberg university. Stern lecturer Prof. Grombek (Traugott Buhre) promises that half the students won't be around when the course ends; his prediction turns out to be true, but it's not because of the brutal exams. It seems that a group of renegade doctors is performing dissections on unwilling, still-living victims, which helps explain the artful laboratory in which plasticized human remains are lovingly displayed. Paula stumbles onto this plot when a recent acquaintance turns up on her dissection table, his blood the consistency of rubber. Studious to the extreme, Paula investigates his death with scientific determination -- despite the flirtations of handsome fellow student Caspar (Sebastian Blomberg) and the feel-good urgings of Gretchen (Anna Loos), her sexually promiscuous but utterly brilliant roommate. Just as Paula is preparing to expose the existence of the Anti-Hippocratic Society, a Nazi-affiliated group of medical malcontents, Gretchen falls prey to their extreme methods. Soon Paula, too, is in danger of becoming just another addition to the display case. Extremely popular in its native country, Anatomie was dubbed into English for American release under the title Anatomy. A sequel was in production as of 2002. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Samira Gloor-Fadel debuts with this strikingly unorthodox documentary featuring two of cinema's greatest intellectuals (Wim Wenders and Jean Luc Godard) bouncing a flurry of illuminating thoughts and half-formed ideas about time, space, and the nature of cinema. The conversation is never depicted, and indeed Godard is never actually seen. Instead the visuals are largely comprised of Wenders' editing, directing, and lecture. A second element in this untraditional documentary is about the city of Berlin. We hear Wenders muse about his favorite German city accompanied by shots of its architecture. Meanwhile, a third portion shows a youth visiting the sites used in Wings of Desire (1986) while grieving the untimely death of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Berlin-Cinema (Titre Provisoire) was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Rudolf Thome directed this German science fiction drama that's slightly reminiscent of Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Driving to Berlin, Luise (Cora Frost) and Theo (Tilo Werner) give a lift to the enigmatic blond Frank Mackay (Herbert Fritsch), and Luise is immediately attracted to him. However, time-traveler Frank is more interested in locating Laura Luna (Valeska Hanel), author of Tiger-Stripe Woman Waits for Tarzan, so he can take her to a future time when women have died off. Frank and Laura become a twosome, but then her apartment is mysteriously trashed, so they head for her father's remote hunting lodge where a menage a trois develops after Luise turns up (with Theo lurking about in the surrounding forest). Laura begins writing a new novel, Utopian Wife. Shown at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

In this Austrian-French-Swiss thriller, upwardly mobile career woman Monika Besse (Sandrine Bonnaire) returns home to Luxembourg in order to join detective Schweiger (Rudiger Vogler) in an investigation into the death of her politician father. The situation leads to an identity crisis as Monika tries to understand her father, discovers that he planned his own death, and comes to the realization that she actually hardly knew him at all. Shown at the 1997 San Sebastian Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

This Austrian film, set in 1945, chronicles the Muhlviertler Rabbit Hunt, an incident involving the escape of 500 Russian inmates from the Mauthausen concentration camp. Of the 500, only 150 survived. The film focuses upon the cruelty and goodness of the towns people, many of whom set to finding the Russian escapees and slaughtering them with gusto as per SS orders. Other townsfolk were more humane and assisted the Russians. One such heroine was Frau Karner who took Michail and Nikolai and hid them in her family barn. Her son, an army reject, also aids the Russians. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This beautifully photographed German drama is set in Lisbon, a major center for contemporary European culture, and offers insight into the nature of cinema. Sound recordist Phillip Winter is driving to Lisbon to meet his old friend Friedrich Monroe who recently sent him a postcard asking Winter to help him with a documentary, but when he arrives, Monroe is nowhere to be found. Instead, Winter only finds a few cans of film shot on an old fashioned hand cranked camera. When he is not aimlessly ambling about the beautiful city recording sounds for the film, Winters passes the time playing with the local street children who are obsessed with chronicling even the smallest events on their video cameras. He also begins falling for Teresa, the singer whose band is composing the soundtrack for the documentary. Eventually Monroe returns with a brand new vision and some strong opinions on the sorry state of contemporary cinema. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Wim Wenders' sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to "see" visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refuge while attempting to bring the sight project to its fruition, in the meantime pondering earth's future in the wake of a nuclear disaster in outer space. Wenders' most ambitious film to date, budgeted at $23 million, Until the End Of the World is also among his most seriously flawed efforts -- despite a keen sense of cultural perception, a fascinating sci-fi take on life in the near-future and stunning Robby Muller cinematography, the picture never quite gels. Much of the blame seems to fall upon its distributors -- upon its wide release in 1991, the movie was drastically cut to a running time of 2 1/2 hours, resulting in a disjointed narrative that doesn't shift gears so much as grind them as the action moves from country to country. Still, while a three-hour version, issued on laserdisc in Japan, comes closer to realizing the full scope of Wenders' epic vision, rumors of a five-hour director's cut -- said to have been screened to thunderous applause at a handful of film festivals -- continue to persist, suggesting that a masterpiece may well exist here after all. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

In this film, Tolsoy's classic story Father Sergius is translated from 19th century Russia to 19th century Italy. As in the original story, Sergio (Julian Sands) is a nobleman and a military cadet who is posted in a position close to the (in this case Neapolitan) throne. He is about go through with an arranged marriage linking him with a higher-ranking noblewoman (Natassja Kinski) when he discovers that she has been the King's mistress. Disgusted, he renounces the world and becomes a churchman and a hermit. At his hermitage, he encounters a woman who considers any priest, especially an ascetic one, fair game. She attempts to seduce him and he nearly succumbs, narrowly avoiding that fate by chopping off a finger, in a scene harking back directly to the 1918 Russian silent classic Otets Sergey. Soon after that, he begins to acquire a reputation as a miracle worker. However, by now he has succumbed to his ever-present demon of sexual temptation in the form of a conniving young girl, and he knows he is not worthy of the adulation he is receiving. Devastated by his lapse, he leaves the hermitage and wanders around Italy as a homeless beggar. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this slow-paced and chaotic film, Ravi has been bedding a beauty queen who is on the outs with her former lover and has been drinking a lot. They are at a hotel in Provence which a local landowner has a grudge against. Before the hotel came, the main livelihood in the region was fruit-growing. With the arrival of the hotel, it is only a matter of time before tourism takes over. The landowner has hired some drifters to set fire to the hotel. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide