Anatomy (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Anatomy (Special Edition)
Movie Review: I can't believe he did that to the girl
Summary: 5 Stars
They disect people like little pigs. I was really surprised by how well this movie is, especially since I had no information about it prior to renting it.This is definitly a good movie to buy and watch at night with the doors closed. The story is interesting and the effects are great.
Movie Review: Cuts like a knife and feels so right
Summary: 4 Stars
Anatomy has a lot of good things to offers viewers: it's a horror film featuring red-hot German actress Franka Potente of Run, Lola, Run fame, and it quite ably delivers the goods. While not as groundbreaking as Run, Lola, Run, Potente's cinematic journey into the darker side of humanity is well-plotted and beautifully shot. Still being somewhat new to foreign films, I always find it fascinating to see how a foreign director molds and shapes a story. The look and feel of Anatomy is well-nigh perfect, and only a few minor issues with the plot and characterization keep it from earning five stars in my book. If you only familiarize yourself with one German actress, Potente is definitely the number one choice; she may be young, but she is a wonderfully developed actress who, I am sure, could carry the burden of a bad movie quite far on her own. Such an effort on her part is not needed in Anatomy, though, as this movie is quite good from start to finish, even turning out to be far less predictable than I was expecting.Franka Potente plays Paula Henning, a young doctor-to-be who earns the right to study at a highly respected medical school in Heidelberg, the very school her proud, aging grandfather taught at years ago. She wants only to study and learn, but she ends up living with a fellow student from Munich named Gretchen (Anna Loos), who is quite a character in and of herself, and taking up with a strange fellow student named Caspar (Sebastian Blomberg) . The new students get an electrifying introduction to life at Heidelberg and soon begin their studies. When a young man whose life Paula had saved just days earlier turns up in the form of a cadaver on her lab table, she begins to grow uneasy. Convinced that the lad could not have died of his specific medical condition, she does a little research of her own and finds out that the guy was shot up with a substance that turns the blood into a rubbery substance. We the audience already know what happened to the poor guy; in fact, the opening scene of the movie takes us directly to a surgeon's table where a confused patient wakes up to find doctors basically turning his abdominal contents upside down. Such a scene might be a little disturbing to some, but the gore is, sadly, kept rather to a minimum throughout the entire movie.
A three-letter marking on her friend-turned-cadaver's body leads Paula into a realm of mystery, cruelty, and inherent danger. The Anti-Hippocratic Society, supposedly banned long ago, is apparently still operating under the noble auspices of Heidelberg's respected medical school; the members of this "secret lodge" don't let ethics or even common decency get in the way of their medical research, making a habit of dissecting human beings while these subjects are still alive. It's a pretty unpleasant business. To make matters worse, there is seemingly a rogue element of the Society at work, leading to several medical students themselves being killed not for dastardly research purposes but for emotional reasons. Yes, there is a madman somewhere out there, and Paula finds herself drawn farther and farther into his dangerous web. The genuine suspense that builds up over the last half of the film is energized further when Paula makes a shocking discovery that really hits her in the emotional gut.
The prominent bad guy sort of reveals himself a little early in the game, warning our heroine to stop nosing around, but his mysterious partner remains a mystery until the final moments. Bad Guy Number One, I think, goes a little overboard in his whole cool, calm, and collected closet psychotic behavior. I think he patterns much of his character's traits and behaviors on those of Herbert West of Reanimator fame, but these two characters are working at separate ends of the whole "life and death" spectrum and this guy is certainly no Jeffrey Combs. Still, it's fun to see a mad scientist-type villain take pride in his work.
Much of the gore involved in this subject matter presented on film is implied but not actually shown; while I personally would like to have been visually saturated in blood and guts, I think the lack of gore for gore's sake lends the movie a level of integrity that many a horror film cannot claim. The whole atmosphere of the film is palpable, the suspense builds up quite nicely, the ending comes with a potential little surprise, and Franka Potente is amazing. What's not to like? I should mention that this German film is dubbed in English, and while the dubbing isn't bad it necessarily denies us a complete sense of our characters' feelings at important moments. In the final analysis, this is quality dark entertainment that should please horror buffs as well as all Franka Potente fans in general.
Movie Review: Predictable, but monstrously entertaining.
Summary: 4 Stars
Anatomy (Stefan Ruzowitzky, 2000)
Seeing Stefan Ruzowitzky's medical thriller Anatomy so quickly after seeing Nacho Cerda's twisted Aftermath made for an interesting contrast. Anatomy is obviously a much more mainstream, commercial film, but many of the underlying conceits are the same; the two make a great pair.
In Anatomy, two women-- Paula (Lola Rennt's Franka Potente) and Gretchen (Anna Loos, who also sings the soundtracks' exceptionally sexy "My Truth"), are accepted into an exclusive medical school in Heidelberg. While on the train there, they meet David (The Counterfeiters' Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey), a young man with a terminal heart defect who's on his way to see yet another specialist. On their second day of classes, David turns up on Paula's dissection table, and there are some very odd things about his body. Paula, with the help of her would-be boyfriend Caspar (Sebastian Blomberg of the upcoming The Baader-Meinhof Complex) and Gretchen, starts digging into David's mysterious death, and discovers that all at the school is not nearly what it seems.
First off, a warning: watch this with subtitles. The dubbed version is absolutely execrable, and plays more like a bad comedy than the tight, intriguing thriller that it actually is. Ruzowitzky, who also wrote the script, could have probably used another pair of eyes-- some of the plot twists are predictable, if still fun-- but there's a good vein of black humor running underneath the outrageous plot, and he's got a very good grasp of how to use light and shadow to create suspense, something that's almost lost in Hollywood these days outside the influence of a select few directors. The movie is quite nicely paced, after the opening scenes (which get bogged down in setup), and the acting is all at least competent, with some of it really engaging (Loos' character, once we get to know her, is especially fantastic). While the characters in the movie flirt with stereotype-- Grethcne the bimbo, Paula the bookish nerd, Phil the geek, Caspar the clown, etc.-- there's always just enough going on in their personalities that they never slide into cardboard. It's a pretty impressive little flick, and you probably missed it the first time around. If medical-style thrillers are your bag, this should be right up your alley. *** ½
Movie Review: A SLICK MEDICAL THRILLER
Summary: 4 Stars
When Paula (Franka Potente), an ambitious medical student receives her acceptance to a prestigious anatomy class, she believes it to be her dream come true...she is wrong!Following in a line of doctors in her family, her father runs a small local clinic, and her grandfather is a famous doctor whose practices are studied at the school she will be attending, Paula is prepared to study hard, and be the best that she can be, what she isn't prepared for is a fight for her life.
On the train ride to school, Paula will save the life of a young man with a heart condition, and a few days later the young man ends up dead on her examining table. Puzzled by his death, Paula begins an investigation and the information she finds will be devistating, for inside the walls of this prestigious school lurks a secret society willing to go to any extreme in the name of medicine...even kill.
With no one to trust, Paula, must face the society on her own to stop the killings, because the next life they take is her's.
The German film "Anatomy" is an exciting medical thriller/horror film that grabs hold immediately and doesn't let go. With it's slick production, great soundtrack, and just enough gore, the film scores high marks for rejuvinating a somewhat tired genre.
"Run Lola Run" star Franka Potente returns to the screen among a young cast that includes Benno Furmann, Sebastian Blomberg, and the beautiful Anna Loos, who also happens to sing the main song in the film "My Truth" (her music video is included on the DVD).
Fans of intelligent slasher flicks will enjoy this.
Nick Gonnella
Movie Review: A chilling tale of medical arrogance with a great female lead
Summary: 4 Stars
Paula Henning is the star pupil in Munich. She wins a coveted position at Heidelberg University. Which, unfortunately for her, is also the home to the Anti-Hippocratic Society, a group of doctors who believe they are God, and the human body needs some updating.
Initially, Paula is overjoyed to be in Heidelberg, eating up the professor's talk of modern medicine, fascinated by the anatomical museum (taken from the Bodies collection), and believing that doctors can do anything. The only problem is the pop-music soundtrack that accompanies such festive occasions as cadaver slicing. Then the body of a young man whose life she saved on the train to Heidelberg winds up on the table in the anatomy lab. Paula is suddenly disgusted by the talk of plasticizing his rare mutant heart, put off by the male posturing at her shock, and puzzled by the fact that his cardiovascular system doesn't seem sufficiently damaged to cause death. That and her intense desire to save lives pushes her to understand what happened to him.
Anatomy is not only a good horror film, it's one of a very few with a strong female lead, a woman in a role that could have been played by a man, and yet is made unique by being cast as a woman. Highly recommended.