Schtonk! is a farce of the actual events of 1983, when Germany’s Stern magazine published, with great fanfare, 60 volumes of the alleged diaries of Adolf Hitler – which two weeks later turned out to be entirely fake. Fritz Knobel (based on real-life forger Konrad Kujau) supports himself by faking and selling Nazi memorabilia. When Knobel writes and sells a volume of Hitler’s (nonexistent) diaries, he thinks it’s just another job. When sleazy journalist Hermann Willié learns of the diaries, however, he quickly realizes their potential value… and Knobel is quickly in over his head. As the pressure builds and Knobel is forced to deliver more and more volumes of the fake diaries, he finds himself acting increasingly like the man whose life he is rewriting. The film is a romping and hilarious satire, poking fun not only at the events and characters involved in the hoax (who are only thinly disguised in the film), but at the discomfort Germany has with its difficult past.
Category: Comedy
Comedy
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Infelici e contenti
Aldo and Vittorio are two men suffering from disabilities. One is blind, the other is forced to a wheelchair. Vittorio one day by chance meets Aldo in the hospice and invites him to take a pleasure trip to Sanremo in Liguria. In fact Vittorio, though blind, is a cheat who’s in trouble.
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All’s Well, Ends Well
Three brothers living with their father fib and play pranks to win parental approval for themselves and their romances.
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Up, Down and Sideways
A prosperous widow with a gay son falls for a young gym instructor in Athens.
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Innocent Blood
Marie is a vampire with a thirst for bad guys. When she fails to properly dispose of one of her victims, a violent mob boss, she bites off more than she can chew and faces a new, immortal danger.
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Royal Tramp 1
The story of Wai Siu Bo, a pimp who after saving Chan Kan Nam, the leader of the Heaven and Earth society, a revolutionary group, is made a member. After a botched first assignment for the group, he is made a servant to the Prince, the very person the Heaven and Earth society want to overthrow. What follows is plenty of mayhem and laughter.
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Abdulladzhan, or Dedicated to Steven Spielberg
Considering that Musakov’s Abdulladzhan (1991) was dedicated to Steven Spielberg, we might suggest that these four boys embody nothing more complicated than a conflict of youthful innocence with some ominous threat—the basic workings of E.T. (1982) or War of the Worlds (2005), say. That threat, however, is best understood not through vague nationalism or warmed-over socialism, but through the other reference-point of Abdulladzhan—Tarkovskii’s Stalker (1980). Musakov leaves his boys in a simplified radiance so bright and so overexposed that it no longer looks like the skies of sunny Tashkent, but a disturbing, borderless luminosity to match the flat tonal range of Stalker’s “Zone.” Our Uzbek boys are nowhere in particular; this is a broader domain than anything international.
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Carry On Columbus
Christopher Columbus believes he can find an alternative route to the far East and persuades the King and Queen of Spain to finance his expedition…
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Kuta och kör
Comedy about a cab driver who is a bigamist.
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Meatballs 4: To the Rescue
Ricky is the hottest water-ski instructor around and has just been rehired by his former employer/camp to whip up attendance. Unfortunately, the camp is in serious financial trouble. The owner of a rival, more popular camp wants to buy them out. Therefore they will have to engage in a mean, winner-takes-all competition that will settle the score once and for all.