Tag Archives: Germany

Was tun, wenn’s brennt? / What to Do in Case of Fire (2001) Gregor Schnitzler, Klaus Löwitsch, Til Schweiger, Martin Feifel, Action, Comedy, Drama

Was tun, wenn's brennt (2001)
What To Do In Case of Fire? tells the humorous and touching story of six former creative anarchists who lived as house squatters in Berlin during its heyday in the 80s when Berlin was still an island in the middle of the former eastern Germany. At the end of the 80s they went their separate ways with the exception of Tim and Hotte, who have remained true to their ideals and continue to fight the issues they did as a group. In 2000, with Berlin as Germany’s new capital, an event happens forcing the group out of existential reason to reunite and, ultimately, come to grips with the reason they separated 12 years ago.
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Les tontons flingueurs / Monsieur Gangster (1963) Georges Lautner, Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier, Francis Blanche

Les tontons flingueurs (1963)
Ex-gangster Fernand (Lino Ventura) receives a call from a dying friend, a mob boss nicknamed “The Mexican”. The doomed mobster talks Fernand into taking care of some criminal business and looking after his soon-to-be-married daughter. When a longtime mobster heavy, Volfoni takes exception to Fernand for being an outsider, they come after Fernand who is equal to the task. He defends himself in a series of comical killings from the onslaught of the mob.
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The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966) Don Sharp, Christopher Lee, Douglas Wilmer, Heinz Drache

The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966)
Christopher Lee returns as Sax Rohmer’s insidious Asian villain Fu Manchu for the second of his five vehicles. This time Fu Manchu and his army of henchmen are kidnaping the daughters of prominent scientists and taking them to his remote island headquarters. Instead of asking for ransom, Fu demands that the fathers help him to build a death ray, which he intends to use to take over the world. But Fu’s archenemy, Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard, is determined not to let that happen…
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The Apple (1980) Menahem Golan, Catherine Mary Stewart, George Gilmour, Grace Kennedy

The Apple (1980)
Alphie and Bibi, two sweet, naive youths from Moose Jaw, Canada, have come to America to compete in the 1994 Worldvision Song Festival. Although the pair have talent, they are beaten out by the underhanded tactics of the festival favorites, another duo with the backing of BIM: Boogalow International Music, and its leader, Mr. Boogalow. Though crestfallen by their loss, Bibi and Alphie are soon delighted to hear that Mr. Boogalow has taken an interest in their music and wants to sign them to his label. All is looking up for the two until they begin to discover the dark underside of the rock and roll world.
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A History of Violence (2005) David Cronenberg, Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris

A History of Violence (2005)
This is the story of a mild-mannered man, named Tom Stall, who becomes a local hero through an act of violence, he lives a happy and quiet life with his lawyer wife and their two children in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana. But one night their idyllic existence is shattered when Tom foils a vicious attempted robbery in his diner. Sensing danger, he takes action and saves his customers and friends in the self-defense killings of two-sought-after criminals. Heralded as a hero, Tom’s life is changed overnight, attracting a national media circus, which forces him into the spotlight. Uncomfortable with his newfound celebrity, Tom tries to return to the normalcy of his ordinary life only to be confronted by a mysterious and threatening man who arrives in town believing Tom is the man who wronged him in the past. As Tom and his family fight back against this case of mistaken identity and struggle to cope with their changed reality, they are forced to confront their relationships and the…
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Le trio infernal / The Infernal Trio (1974) Francis Girod, Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider, Mascha Gonska

Le trio infernal (1974)
Marseilles, 1919. Georges Sarret is a distinguished and respected lawyer, recently honoured for his services in the First World War. He takes as his lover Philomène Schmidt, a young German woman, who has just lost her job and home. To enable Philomène to remain in France, Georges finds her a husband – who dies conveniently of natural causes a month after the wedding. Georges repeats the trick with Philomène’s sister, Catherine – marrying her off to an old man who dies suddenly so that the scheming trio can profit from his life insurance. When an accomplice in the scheme, Marcel Chambon, threatens to blackmail them, Georges and his two lovers have no option but to kill him and his mistress. Having dissolved the bodies in sulphuric acid, Georges hires another man to pose as Chambon so that he can secure his assets. Flush with the success of this venture, Georges proposes his most ambitious scam: he will insure Catherine’s life with five separate insurance companies; a young orphan woman who is dying from tuberculosis will provide Catherine’s death certificate when the moment comes. Unfortunately, the scheme does not go quite as planned…
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Montag kommen die Fenster / Windows on Monday (2006) Ulrich Köhler, Isabelle Menke, Hans-Jochen Wagner, Amber Bongard

Montag kommen die Fenster (2006)
Frieder and his wife Nina, a doctor, are fixing up their house, though their relationship is obviously strained. Instead of picking up their young daughter Charlotte, Nina drives off to visit her brother Christoph in an isolated cabin. From there, she cycles to a sports hotel in the woods where she stays. Aimlessly wandering around the hotel, she has a brief encounter with an old tennis pro who has been giving demonstrations. Her brother, Frieder, and Charlotte find her, but she does not come home with them. After all the old windows have been removed, Frieder rejects the replacement ones that are delivered. Frieder has a liaison an old girlfriend Maria, who is now Charlotte’s nursery school teacher. Nina returns to the house without windows.
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The Poll Diaries / Poll (2010) Chris Kraus, Paula Beer, Edgar Selge, Tambet Tuisk

The Poll Diaries (2010)
In the summer of 1914, thirteen-year-old Oda von Siering (Paula Beer) leaves Berlin to join her family and an assortment of German and Russian aristocrats on an estate in Estonia. The von Siering family home is a character in its own right, a hulking, neoclassical manor that hovers on stilts above the sea. Oda arrives there bearing her mother’s coffin and a gift requested by her surgeon father: a jarred, two-headed fetus to add to his laboratory of gruesome curiosities. Ebbo von Siering (Edgar Selge) sees himself in his daughter when she calmly and expertly learns to suture the corpse of a cat. What he fails to recognize – and what Oda luckily understands – is that their interest in science is their only similarity. His dedication to experimentation is linked to an appalling obsession with power and destruction, while Oda is genuinely curious about life. Her quick, quiet intelligence complements her humanity and her lucid understanding of right and wrong. When she strays from a family…
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Une femme à sa fenêtre (1976) Granier-Deferre, Romy Schneider, Philippe Noiret, Victor Lanoux

Une femme a sa fenetre (1976)
On August 4, 1936, General Metaxas declared martial law in Greece. A union leader using the name Boutros is sought in Athens by Primoukis, a ruthless police leader. Boutros narrowly escapes and, early the next morning, jumps through the window of Marchese Margot Santorini, the wealthy Austrian-born wife of Rico, a penniless Italian diplomat and playboy. Margot is bored and without purpose: aiding Boutros’s escape invigorates her, and soon she is in love. The film briefly jumps to 1945 when Rico and Raoul (who assisted her out of love) meet in France to talk about her fate, and then jumps 30 years to Margot’s daughter’s visit to Greece to find out about her father.
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