Rating: 
Summary: Fantasy obsessions of a playwright
Review: * has repulsive and gross scenes at the movies start including
the young "Ogre" licking blood and mud from a injured soccer
players knee - young "Ogre" wiping the butt of his friend
Nestor because Nestor is too fat to reach it himself - Goerings
excesses and his manic depression esp. during a "hunting" party
where him and his fiends wantonly slaughter every creature that
draws a breath in Goering's forest (shown in vivid detail)* these scenes (all made up via the director's/writer's minds)
have nothing to do with:
* furthering the plot (of which there is none)
* showing you ANYTHING truthfull or incitefull of the Nazi's * the supposed scene of the "Ogre's redemption" is trivial * the message? None. * the price of the movie? Not worth your money. If you want to view something REAL on the Nazi's of World War II,
then, if you can affor it, pick up a copy of:
* SHOAH by Claude Lanzman
* Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Rating: 
Summary: A masterpiece !
Review: Although lack of european cinema information tends and forces to see comercial trash and unreal productions of high budget and poor talent, fortunelety for exigent movie fans there are directors of the quality of Volker Schlondorff that are cappable of fullfilled behind his lens real masterpieces. The Ogre ( Der Unhold ) '1996' is a powerfull drama loaded of humanism, evil, and loss of valors, that reflects the fascination of a French ignorant man for children and their innocence (Malkovich), devenloped during the atmosfere of last days of WW II. The always Yugoeslavian ancess aclaimed actor Jhonn Malkovich shows in this film why is the one of the most respected. Not letting a side the exquisit and impactant perfomance of german Oscar nominated actor Armin Muller-Sthal (The third miracle), (The 13th floor), (The game), (Shine) , who gives in this movie a touch of decency to the Third Reich atrocities. The soundtrack's Michel Nymann music (CD only available in Europe) in The Ogre thrills the most hardest feellings. I have never seen before more realism in a scene as the one shown in the hunt of the mooses, the special effects, in that fragment of the movie was magnificent .No doubt the crew behind this production is of high level. In 1997, I saw it for the first time in a European Cinema Festival in Cinecanal, unfortunelety it has not been presented in U.S. theaters and even worse in the rest of Southamerica. In 1998 it was offered in VHS format at a price of $89 USD by special request. Now it is available in VHS and DVD format at a reasonable cost. This masterpiece of seven art has to be seen only for people with high cinematograph critery..... if you are one of them, don't miss the opportunity to watch and get this film !
Rating:
Summary: Horrible
Review: I honestly don't understand what people see in this shallow, boring movie. I honestly could not get into it whenever Malkovich started talking in his overly-American jargon, while everyone around him was either talking in a French accent or a German one, appropriately (Malkovich was playing a Frenchman). Just that intonation contrasted heavily to even when he was narrating in the background (he a different, heavier voice then) on the events happening around him. It is obvious the movie has no direction and some of the events are utterly unbelievable. It starts out well, when Malkovich's role is played by a younger actor in an earlier time in his life, but when Malkovich comes in, I think he ruins it.
Rating:
Summary: A movie with deep atmosphere.
Review: If you liked The Seventh Seal... An excellent job by Malkovich. One of the best movies I've seen in a long time.
Rating: 
Summary: Children of Light, Children of Darkness
Review: Is a man's character forged at birth, in his genes---or is it determined by his experiences, by his loves, by his ambitions, by his will? What is the difference between a man and a child? Why is the dreamworld common to a child's playtime any more---or less---real than the often nightmarish, brutal 'reality' common to grown-ups? These are questions that Volker Schlondorff's fine, haunting, surreal and compulsively watchable "The Ogre" spends a great deal of time with, though Schlondorff is far too subltle and skilled a craftsman to beat the viewer over the head with these things---at least, until the movie's final minutes, which felt oddly ham-handed (given what had preceded them) and grafted on to a film that devotes itself to the mysteries, secret fantasies, and occasional horrors of childhood. "The Ogre" mixes a very modern evil, Nazi Germany, with a very ancient one, the legend of the Ogre (known in Germany as the Erl-Konig, the horrible "Erl-King"), stirs them together in Schlondorff's black cauldron, and produces a potent, visually haunting witche's brew indeed. The movie chronicles the short, bizarre, and strangely happy life of Abel Tiffauges(played brilliantly by John Malkovich), a Frenchman who strikes up easy friendships with children, chiefly because he himself is in many ways a child: innocent, simple but not simplistic, drawn to myths and fairy tales and ripping yarns of adventure in the Canadian wilderness---and especially the silly faces and scary spook voices that endear him to his young friends and, as "The Ogre" progresses, his charges. Wrongfully accused of attacking a young girl, Abel is spared prison by the outbreak of World War II, and agrees to join the army to fight the Germans. His brief military career is brought to a halt when his command unit, blithely sipping champagne and discussing the use of carrier pigeons on the front, is captured by German soldiers. Abel is sent East on a prison train, and it is at this point "The Ogre" slips into high gear---and takes a decidedly surreal turn. While Abel's companions plot everything from escape to using Abel's pigeons to convey information back to the doomed French High Command (they ultimately eat the pigeons, causing Abel, in his fanciful way, to renounce the Motherland forever), Abel sees his imprisonment, ironically, as a doorway to freedom. He gazes upon the passing German countryside he glimpses from the slats in his boxcar, and imagines his dream: a cabin, smoke curling up from the chimney, deep in remote woods. Interned at a German prison camp, while his comrades toil to build a landing strip, Abel wanders off into the nearby woods, discovering the cabin of his dreams---and a moose, "The Ogre", who roams the surrounding wilderness. Rather than plot escape, Abel returns to his prison camp, but makes weekly visits to the cabin in the woods, and ultimately encounters the keeper of the estate, Hitler's Chief Forrester, who takes the simple man under his wing and transfers him to SS Reichmarshall Hermann Goerring's hunting lodge, where Abel begins his slow, strange transformation into a procurer of young boys for nearby Nazi Kaltenborn Castle and Hitler Youth training camp, and into the Legend itself: the Ogre, eater of children. There is far too much to "The Ogre" to describe in a brief review; it is a masterful, compelling, gorgeously shot film, and from Goerring's opulent hunting lodge, to the medieval castle that is the SS redoubt, to the sublime carnage of the hunt, to the sequences in which Malkovich pursues terrified boys through a darkening forest on a black horse with snarling dogs at the leash---every shot, every sequence tells. The acting is also excellent, from Volker Spengler's childish, impudent Goerring to the deranged eugenicist played by Dieter Lasser; particularly important are the child actors, all of whom turn out utterly believable, naturalistic performances. But this is Malkovich's movie, and his Abel is no simpleton, but rather a grown child, which is why he is so good with children of all ages himself, and ultimately so much more innocent than the young SS footsoldiers he recruits from the surrounding countryside. Malkovich plays the role with restraint and with a childlike, affable quality which underscores why so many decent minds could have been ensnared by Nazi Germany, and this touches on the film's underlying notion of childhood: Nazi ceremonies, with their dark pageantry, their torchlit marches and ceremonies, their pounding drums, were calculated to appeal to the mind of the youth, the adolescent, the dreamer of dreams. Even the wicked, depraved Goerring is himself an easily distracted child, and is soothed by Abel in a moment of pique, dipping his fat hands into a bowl of gem stones to calm himself. "The Ogre" is shot as a dark fairy tale, from Abel's rambles in the woods, to Hermann Goerring as the reincarnation of Abel's sensual childhood friend Nestor (look at Malkovich's face when the eugenicist praises an SS youth's "Nestorian" nose), to shots of Malkovich riding out through haunting forests straight out of the Brothers Grimm, to the image of Jews, fleeing concentration camps in the final days of the dying Reich, viewed as "legions of the dead" marching past Castle Kaltenborn.
There are some missteps, particularly the ending, which strikes me as completely out of character for Malkovich's Abel; Mueller-Stahl also phones in a performance in which his lines are so mumbled that you need subtitles to decipher them. But that is quibbling. "The Ogre" is an amazing movie, one that requires repeat viewings to unlock its treasures. Darkly fanciful, hoplelessly tragic, it is a deeply rich study of the Children of Light and Darkness.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely powerfull !
Review: Muller Stall best perfomance....and Heino Ferch incredibe acting, makes this a must see movie !
Rating:
Summary: good movie no subtitles
Review: The movie was very good. It was in English not subtitled or dubbed. Really good screenplay and directing.
Rating:
Summary: A poignant and compelling film
Review: This 1996 film, which was not released in the U.S. until 2000 in the rental market, offers a fresh German perspective of World War II. It puts a more human face on the people of the Third Reich, much in the same way as `Das Boot'. We are used to depictions of German soldiers as brutally evil, soulless killing machines (and there is a bit of that here) but this film mostly presents a softer more balanced portrayal. This is the story of Abel, an affable simpleton from France with a love of children and animals (no, there are no undertones of pedophilia). Prior to WWII, he is wrongly accused and convicted of child molestation. While working in the work camps, he is captured by the Germans and through a series of events ends up as a prisoner of war worker in a training school for Hitler youth. He is emotionally seduced by the romantic notions of Hitler's national socialism and the great devotion to the fatherland that is being taught there. And of course, he loves working with the boys. The Germans notice this and how much the boys like him as well, so they ask him to recruit more boys for the school from the local countryside. Things go along well until the Russians invade and the only defense of the school must be made by the students (who are well trained in the art of war). This is a terrific story that gives us a more realistic look inside Germany during the war. No, it wasn't an idyllic free society. But it wasn't exactly a factory for mechanized inhuman killers as it has been routinely portrayed either. We come to understand that what we considered evil was being presented to the children in terms that seemed good and noble. They felt as if they were on an idealistic quest, not on a diabolical mission of subjugation. The direction of this film was expertly done. Volker Schlondorff's presentation of the story, though slow moving at times, offered an excellent character study of Abel and was patient in proffering revealing looks at the people and the feelings of those around him. Malkovich is fantastic as the naïve and slow witted Abel. He is wonderfully childlike and sincere in his portrayal; reminiscent of his role in `Of Mice and Men'. This is the best I can remember him in quite some time. This is a poignant and compelling film of substance. I rate it a 9/10. The sophisticated viewer will enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: A poignant and compelling film
Review: This 1996 film, which was not released in the U.S. until 2000 in the rental market, offers a fresh German perspective of World War II. It puts a more human face on the people of the Third Reich, much in the same way as 'Das Boot'. We are used to depictions of German soldiers as brutally evil, soulless killing machines (and there is a bit of that here) but this film mostly presents a softer more balanced portrayal. This is the story of Abel, an affable simpleton from France with a love of children and animals (no, there are no undertones of pedophilia). Prior to WWII, he is wrongly accused and convicted of child molestation. While working in the work camps, he is captured by the Germans and through a series of events ends up as a prisoner of war worker in a training school for Hitler youth. He is emotionally seduced by the romantic notions of Hitler's national socialism and the great devotion to the fatherland that is being taught there. And of course, he loves working with the boys. The Germans notice this and how much the boys like him as well, so they ask him to recruit more boys for the school from the local countryside. Things go along well until the Russians invade and the only defense of the school must be made by the students (who are well trained in the art of war). This is a terrific story that gives us a more realistic look inside Germany during the war. No, it wasn't an idyllic free society. But it wasn't exactly a factory for mechanized inhuman killers as it has been routinely portrayed either. We come to understand that what we considered evil was being presented to the children in terms that seemed good and noble. They felt as if they were on an idealistic quest, not on a diabolical mission of subjugation. The direction of this film was expertly done. Volker Schlondorff's presentation of the story, though slow moving at times, offered an excellent character study of Abel and was patient in proffering revealing looks at the people and the feelings of those around him. Malkovich is fantastic as the naïve and slow witted Abel. He is wonderfully childlike and sincere in his portrayal; reminiscent of his role in 'Of Mice and Men'. This is the best I can remember him in quite some time. This is a poignant and compelling film of substance. I rate it a 9/10. The sophisticated viewer will enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but mislabeled
Review: This film is a surperb piece of psychological drama set during War World 2 in Nazi Germany. I found Mr. Malkovich performance to be outstanding in his protrayal of Abel. The symbolism of hope and innocent is evident in this film. This is a story about a loner who has few friends, one being killed in the fire. Abel does seem to be part stone and part compassionate! The blending of the two adds an interesting conflict. The movie seem to be more focas on this individual and the people around him.
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