Learning life's lesson the hard way. Poor guy. Niko is having a really bad day. All he wants is a ##$$%% cup of coffee, and his day just keeps worse and worse. Looks like he's not getting his driver's license back, his father has shut off his bank account for being a slacker, and he gets busted for not having a ticket for the subway. Grainy, gritty black and white photography of Berlin. Tom Schilling does a great job of showing us a pretty rough day in one man's life. Really quite good at showing us all the issues that weigh on him, but he keeps on trucking. The rough day turns into a bad night, but then... when morning comes, we are given just a smidge of hope. Directed by Jan Ole Gerster. He had only done a couple things prior to this, but does a fine job. The music is eerie in the right places. Not too much talking. We see a lot just observing. One of the characters, an old man he bumps into at the coffee shop goes into a long tirade talking about Kristallnacht, and how it affected him as a small child. That went on for quite a long time, but this IS a film about Berlin, so clearly someone thought it was important to include here. Good stuff.

"Oh Boy" is a black-and-white Berlin-set tale of melancholy starring tom Schilling and directed by Jan Ole Gerster. For the latter it is only the second movie as director and the first in 8 years. Also, he played a minor role in making "Good Bye Lenin". So, with that non-prolific background, it was certainly a bit surprising how many awards this movie achieved and that it became the great winner at the German Film Awards that year. The movie only runs for little over 80 minutes and depicts conversations and interactions between the central character and usually one or two other people. Schilling is basically in every scene of the film. All the supporting players do a very fine job too, even if they only appear in a single scene like Schüttler, von Dohnányi, Lau or Brambach, a personal favorite. I mentioned Katharina Schüttler and I liked how the words displayed on the screen "Oh Boy" perfectly fit her interaction with our "hero" early on in the film.I quite liked the music. The jazz performances with the black-and-white cinematography give the film a very unique, melancholic note. At the end, I somehow had the feeling that there was a parallel between Gwisdek's character and Schilling's. You basically knew nothing really about them, even if you watched Schilling the entire movie. You find out a lot more about everybody he interacts with. Gwisdek won a German Film award by the way for his one-scene performance at the end, but this may have also been a career awards. I preferred other nominees (his own son) and I also thought Ulrich Noethen gave a better performance here in this film as well. Maybe it was some kind of unofficial career achievement award or had to do with Gwisdek being born in Berlin. Lau and Schilling were as well, by the way. The biggest supporting player is Friederike Kempter ("Tatort"), who gives a fine performance as well as an attractive, but very unstable young woman.I enjoyed this movie a lot. I don't know if you have seen any of Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes" works, but it reminded me a bit of that, only that I liked it even more. Highly recommended and it gives us a great portrayal of loneliness and life in the big city.

A Cup of Pleasure in film making that scored high with me because of its thoughtful humor, wonderful acting, crisp black and white film work, and commentary on the problems of young men fitting into a modern world. No slapstick comedy here. No raunchy jokes like we get in films made and about young people. The comedy is underplayed. The dialog is sharp and meaningful. I read that this is the film makers first effort. That in itself is amazing since the movie shows such maturity in the craft. I hope that there will be more films coming from the people who made this one. Who said that the Germans don't have a sense of humor. I thing that changing the title from Oh Boy to A Cup of Coffee in Berlin was a good move.

They say Gerster was a film student? Funny school, didn't teach him a single thing about movie-making. That this film exists in it's current form is as ridiculous as letting a hack medicine student who can't tell a scalpel from scissors perform plastic surgery. This movie has no story, it has no characters, it has no meaning. Oh, you mean the meaning is that it has no meaning? That the guy is locked inside his inability to act? Brilliant! Now watch me take a big fat sh*t on that canvas, how you like that, you art experts? At least half of the film is super embarrassing self-referring stuff like our non-acting "hero" sitting on a movie set. Or watching a stage play. Or listening to people talk nonsense. Lots of talking heads all around. And no, this is no deep dialog. It doesn't even try to be written and/or performed in a poetic or artistic way of any sorts. It's just meaningless nonsense, 90% of the time. The movie is totally immature, narcissistic crap, and it doesn't even try rebellion... how pathetic is this? It doesn't really try anything at all. It's really just crap. And the Berlin footage? Cheap, pseudo, uninspired. Yeah it's in black in white, i can see that. Huh huh cool, huh huh. Really guys, to see artistic quality in it means you're intellect is somewhere in Beavis and Butthead land, without the coolness and subversion, that is. And that's a fact.