Anatomy (2000)

Wonderfully offbeat film!

Very well executed

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Absolutely brilliant

I've watched a fair few German films now as part of my mission to improve my language skills so I feel confident in pointing out one or two commonalities I've noticed among them: No matter what year/decade German films are made, they always feel like they were made in the 90s. Granted, Anatomie was made in 2000 but even more recent German films (and TV shows) always have a 90s feel to them due to various reasons, the most prominent being the typically all-white cast. German films are very 'Disney' in the sense that there seems to be this 'ideal' vision of what Germany looks like or rather, what the German audience looks like but the reality is that times have changed and even Disney is finally updating its thinking. German films need to diversify, stop portraying women as simple stereotypes, and stop promoting smoking in films. I am sick to the back teeth of seeing the main protagonists light up in every single German film I watch. Not just because 'morals' but also because it's distracting. As soon as someone takes that first drag, you know their breath absolutely stinks so if this is happening right before a love scene, it's completely off-putting.Another thing I've noticed is that German films will often have a fascinating premise and will start off strong but will then falter towards the middle, like they don't know how to properly pace a film or write an engaging story from start to finish. I sometimes wish people would send me their scripts for review before selling them to studios! I did feel that the film was very predictable but luckily, Anatomie doesn't try to be a 'true' mystery. The bad guy(s) is revealed fairly early on but there was at least one twist which I didn't figure out until near the end.A special mention for Benno Fürmann; a powerful actor who simply terrifies in every scene. He also worked with Franka Potente in the superb Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (2000) where he put those tremendous eyes of his to good use too.After the opening and an initial genuinely gruesome and terrifying scene, the horror of which Hostel (2005) later replicated, Anatomie loses momentum and meanders down an irrelevant path instead of focusing on the daily duties of the students at the medical school. That was a huge missed opportunity and like so many other German films I've watched, it felt like a case of 'the audience is invested now, we can switch to auto-pilot'.I only watched this a few hours ago and already, I can't remember the ending. There was another ending during the credits so maybe that's interfering. No, I've got it: it was an extremely predictable, although fitting ending.If you have time to kill, this is definitely worth a watch. It will however, be almost instantly forgotten.6/10

This German horror film from 2000 stars Franka Potente, the breakout star of the 1998 film "Run Lola Run". It answers the question how do they really get the bodies for those amazing Body Worlds Exhibits? Real human bodies injected with a plastic like substance leaving their muscles and vital organs on display in amazing detail. Medical horror movies seem hit a nerve, so to speak, as they prey on primal fears that everyone can relate to. All the way back to the original Frankenstein, medical horrors have been a staple of the genre. The environments are cold and sterile with lots of stainless steel instruments from scalpels, saws, and drills. Putting you life in the hands of a possibly insane stranger, is their anything else more scary? Yes there is being operated on while still awake! Ahhhhh! Paula is a bright med student who gets accepted to the prestigious Heidelberg Medical School who discovers the existence of a secret society. Heidelberg opens its new state of the art anatomy wing where the students have access to all the corpses they can handle. But when Paula recognizes a guy who ends up on her table she starts to investigate his death. She finds a mysterious tattoo on his ankle and a very unusual blood sample. It is found to have a sort of plastic polymer in it. Paula's investigations lead to a ancient secret society called the Anti-hippocratics. All doctors take a Hippocratic oath to help patients, but not this group. Their research is paramount as they use live people to practice on and learn from. Putting aside medical ethics for "the greater good".Although this movie is pretty dark and disturbing, their are several moments of dark humor that lighten the mood a bit. The effects used are pretty awesome and the highlight of the movie. It does however suffer from a poor script and doesn't hold up to a reality check. "Anatomy" is and intense and graphic ride that is worth at least one watch. The Body Worlds exhibits that continue to travel around the world did originate in Germany but thankfully use willing donors.

I thought this movie was sooo bad. The acting was so terrible, the effects looked incredibly fake, the plot was just okay, the sequence and writing made NO sense at all.Overall, it was disgraceful. I have taken anatomy/physiology class, and honestly, the things they talked about and tried to make seem "cool" or somehow realistic, were really off.The plot was okay. The whole foreign country evil people horror thing has been played out way too many times. You will not like this movie. I couldn't even finish it, and I've seen worse. Do yourself a favor and don't see it. Even if you have the time, and boredom.

1st watched 6/24/2007 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Stefan Rujowitzky): OK thriller, but a little too predictable. This story is based in Germany, which is also where the movie is made. It is about a young medical student who gets a shot to go to a premiere school in Heidelberg and arrives seeing some strange things occurring. Someone she met on the train there and saved, shows up on the school's experimentation table and she's suspecting foul play right away. She does some investigation and the disappearance of her friend leads her to a secret society called AAA(and no it's not Alcoholics Anonymous) that has something to do with the anti-Hippocratic oath and is used to perform experimentations on live people that doctor's wouldn't normally be able to do. She finds out her grandfather(who was a dean at the school) was a big part of establishing it and it's pretty readily filled by members of the school. It's an interesting story but the problem with this movie is how quickly the audience is told what's going on and then it's kind of a horror movie with the heroine fighting off the bad boy of the group that's taking things to the next psychotic level. Although this movie was made in Europe, it plays to a young American audience with it's focus on gore, sex and the horror film premise(which is really it's big downfall) and explains why it probably made good money and spawned a sequel but doesn't necessarily make for a good movie.