Import/Export

Two parallel lives are shown in this movie. Olga struggles to support herself and her baby working as a nurse in Ukraine. When internet pornography does not help with the bills she leaves for Austria to work as a maid. Pauli is a young security guard in Austria, who is in debt to everyone and has little going for him. A job installing video game machines finds him in Ukraine. The camera weaves back and forth between their lives in a sort of bored haze. There are some moments of promise, but they are quickly extinguished.

Rating: * +

Revanche

Tamara (Irina Potapenko) wanders the screen scantily clothed for most of her part. Her nakedness is comforting for the viewer and her lover, Alex (Johannes Krisch) both of whom are connected to a seedy brothel in Vienna. So when she abruptly disappears from the script, it is a jolt to both. The movie slowly drifts to a beautiful Austrian countryside where Alex's dad lives in run down cabin. Life might be simpler there but Alex's existence gets complicated after interactions with a local cop and his wife. The tangential interactions between the characters is what fuels the movie forward in this stunning study of human nature.

Rating: * * * +

The Counterfeiters

The film is a fictionalized version of Operation Bernhard, a secret Nazi plan to implode the English and US economies by flooding the market with counterfeit notes.

At the center of the tale is Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) who was known as the king of counterfeiters in pre-WWII Germany. When the Nazi machinery starts rolling he finds himself in a concentration camp thanks to his Jewish heritage. But his talents are not forgotten by the Nazis and he finds himself in the 'forgery' section of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Jews who have any kind of talent that will help with counterfeiting are his inmates. Together they became part of largest counterfeiting operation in history. One of the better WWII movies in recent times.

Rating: * * *

The Seventh Continent

When Eva (Leni Tanzer) feigns blindness at school, her parents slowly come to realize that they are leading a futile and meaninglessness existence. Michael Haneke's meditative film loosely based on a true story looks at the monotonous life of a family that decides to break out of the funk and take matters into their own hands.

Rating: * *