Excellent, Without a doubt!!

As Good As It Gets

Admirable film.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

German screenwriter, producer and director Matthias Glasner's fifth feature film which he co-wrote with Jürgen Vogel and screenwriter Judith Angerbauer and co-produced with Jürgen Vogel, Christian Granderath and Frank Döhmann, was shot on location in the city of Mülheim, the Baltic Sea Island of Usedom and Berlin in Germany and in Belgium. It is a German production and premiered In competition at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006. It tells the story about Theo Stoer, a rapist who after spending more than nine years in a psychiatric hospital for crimes he committed while living and working as a kitchen helper on a Baltic Sea Island, is sent to an assisted living residence in Mülheim, Germany. Helped by a parole officer named Sascha, Theo gets a job at a printing office, begins to practice Martial Arts and is encouraged to find himself a woman whom he can take out on a date. Though struggling with a high level of anxiety Theo follows Sascha's advice and has no luck. He decides to give it a rest and focus on his daily tasks, but one day he is introduced by his boss Claus Engelbrecht to his daughter Nettie, a 27-year-old kitchen assistant who is about to move out from her father's house and into her own apartment. Theo and Nettie are both lonely individuals who seek the company of others and without knowing anything about Theo's history, Nettie becomes attracted to him.Finely and acutely directed by European filmmaker Matthias Glasner, who was co-writer, co-cinematographer, co-producer and co-editor on this feature film, this quietly paced independent film draws an incisive and unsettling portrayal of a man who is trying to get back into society after serving time for committing horrendous crimes against women and an intimate and humane portrayal of a friendship and of a lonely, considerate and independent-minded woman who finds a connection and falls in love with a person she hardly knows. While notable for its gritty and naturalistic urban milieu depictions, the versatile production design by production designers Tom Horning and Conny Kotte and the fine editing by Matthias Glasner, German film editor Mona Braüer and film editor Julia Wiedwald, this at times silent and character-driven story depicts two merging studies of character and examines themes like loneliness, guilt and human relations.This dense, somewhat disturbing and demanding psychological drama which alternates between the two main characters' viewpoints and between realism and non-realism, is impelled and reinforced by its rigorous narrative structure and the introspective and heartfelt acting performances by German screenwriter, producer and actor Jürgen Vogel and Swiss actress Sabine Timoteo. An unsentimental and afflicting love-story which gained, among other awards, the Prize of the Guild of German Art-house Cinemas Matthias Glasner and the Silver Berlin Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement Jürgen Vogel at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006.

One of the worst movies I have ever seen. Inconsistent story line, way too long, camera shots that last forever, mute characters, scenes that have nothing to do with the story, etc. E.g. why do we have to watch the protagonist practicing his martial arts moves? Especially when it's a bad move like when he teaches his girlfriend to defend herself from being choked. I hope no female viewer will memorize that move, because it will not work at all but even put her in greater danger.A typical poor German movie, I have seen many of this kind. Heavy stuff, always trying to explain the world to us, and/or trying to educate the audience when it is not called for.The story could have been told in 90 minutes (max). But it drags on and on and on.But the worst is the sound, there is a constant background noise. The sound editor should be put in jail for this masterpiece, at least he should not edit another movie.What a waste of time and money.Dr. Marre (ph.d.guy)

This movie is the best example for what happens, when someone does not focus on the script while making a movie.The DVD booklet says a lot about intimacy, about how this intimacy with the characters was developed while making the movie. I can only say: Thanks for wasting at least an hour of my life. The movie starts with a most brutal raping scene that made me wanting to puke. From there it staggers along, with a lot of scenes showing Jürgen Vogel naked exercising, masturbating, and similar, until the love story with Nettie (played very well by Sabine Timoteo) develops.The movie is 163 minutes. With enough meat to make it 90 minutes. In an interview the director (who shows his semi-existent camera skills in too many shaky scenes) talks about the script becoming "a kind of map with a lot of blanks to be explored while filming", and thats shown in the movie. 5 minute long end scene with Nettie holding Theo at the beach, 15 minutes chasing Theo through Berlin, etc. No focus. No story. Very arty. Thanks for wasting German TV-fee money on that one.And we see way too much of Jürgen Vogels penis. Some things need not to be shown. Art is too impress without showing. Too show it all just shows that the director lacks the means to create all the horror and disgust without the clear picture. On the contrary when Theo breaks into a woman's apartment to rape her we see him leave, but we have no idea whether his demons got the upper hand or not. So there is sadistic curiosity when someone is raped, but when the free will has it's short time, it's too much to just state the fact and the audience is left in the dark.The camera is so bad that it hurts. Has no one ever told the director that a digital camera is not the right choice for dark scenes ? When a leg in the dark, or a face, consists of about 5-7 shades of grey, the camera might have been the wrong choice. And the movie has a lot of dark scenes. And they all look the grainy way which is the best such a camera can do in such a scene. Maybe some less intimacy and some more professional pictures might have been achieved by using a real camera man instead of doing it all alone.So, after all, the movie sucks. The actors are great (3 stars for that), but thats about it. 3 years of research and writing, just to throw the script away as soon as you start filming. But hey, who cares, it's not as if this movie was supposed to make any money. A classical German.

I saw the first screening of this movie on Berlinale this year. I have to say that it is easy to condemn this movie and in the extremely politically correct atmosphere of a movie festival the audience refused to applaud afterwards despite the amazing performance of both Jürgen Vogel and Sabine Timoteo. I don't know whether the refusal to applaud was due to the fact that the audience was still speechless or that the topic is simply to risqué. Probably both.The movie takes the bold step to try to get into the skin of a rapist (Vogel) who has just been released from prison after serving a nine year sentence for sexual assault.Jürgen Vogel conveys the feeling that he is both scared to death of himself and women as he knows that he is not able to master his urge to repeat what brought him into prison. Most people will not want to get this close to one of the most outcast pariahs we have in society - and boy, do we get close. In one memorable and very explicit scene he masturbates as if he wants to rip his penis from his groin. Other scenes show him struggling with himself when he is confronted with women. The film makes it very clear that there is no hope for Theo in this battle against an urge that is too powerful and soon his "free will" leaves the stage and we are invited to see a seemingly endless rape scene that - honestly - got me on the verge of leaving the theater. It's slightly reminiscent of the ugliness of Henry - portrait of a serial killer.Where most directors would now offer some psychology-101-explanation as to what turned Theo into such a hideous monster in order to give the audience some sort of rationalization of the horror on-screen Mathias Glasner does no such thing. Instead Theo is even allowed to fall in love with Nettie (telling-name, nett means nice), but it's not hard to guess that they are not going to have a pair of twins and marry in the end.What makes this movie so difficult to digest is the fact that its premise seems to be that Theo is still a human being with emotions. That he has a cross to bear that none of us could carry. But at the same time it is also clear that he is a ticking time bomb and that nothing can keep him from repeating his monstrous deeds. What are we to do with this dilemma? The movie offers no answers, therefore it's easy to point the finger and accuse it of moral indifference. But not all issues, especially the question of what to do with sex offenders, can be solved. This movie sticks a finger into this festering wound with a relentlessness that few will find bearable. The guts it took to shoot this movie both from the director's point of view and - to an even higher degree - from Jürgen Vogel's perspective deserve respect. He plays this character with an emotional force that leaves you wondering how much Theo is actually in him. In America this movie would have destroyed his reputation for a decade. And at times you wonder from where Jürgen Vogel got the strength to pull this one through.All in all a shocking, disgusting, and deeply depressing movie that has the guts to tackle a true taboo - and there aren't many left. One word of advice though - don't take your girl-friend. If you are a girl - don't watch it.