Too much of everything

Don't Believe the Hype

As Good As It Gets

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

While was unaware of Funny Games prior to watching it over 20 years after its release, I am not disappointed that I chose to view Michael Haneke's psychological thriller.A number of factors sold this film to me as one of the better thrillers that I have seen in a while. The most notable of these factors are Ulrich Mühe (Georg) and Susanne Lothar's (Anna) performances. Both of these actors displayed their devastation brilliantly and stayed on the proper side of the fine line between an upset character and an annoying character. Never did the emotions of these two characters get on my nerves or give me a headache, so coo-dos to that. At points, however, I did feel as if these two characters were not reacting realistically to a specific event that occurred in the second act of the film (which I shall not get into because it is a spoiler... oh no). Additionally, I believe that Haneke's choice to not show much of the violence actually take place on camera was wise. Haneke's message behind this movie was to highlight the dark nature behind violence, a subject which is often exploited and glorified in movies. Funny Games does not treat the viewer to a video of a shotgun exploding a guy's head that makes the audience turn in disgust. Instead, the film focuses on the emotions that violence causes and the darkness that it brings to the lives of many. It was the deterioration of the film's protagonists that was caused by violence that I found truly disturbing.Finally, (I felt the need to comment on this as it is often brought up in forums about this film) there is a certain character in that breaks the fourth wall. Does this work for the movie? Sort of. I believe that it worked well at times to provide relief from the heavy load of this film. However, I felt as though this character often removed from the realistic and captivating features of this film when he spoke directly to the audience. Overall, Funny Games is a hidden gem that will not make you shut your eyes due to the blood and gore on the screen, but disturb you in a different way. It will make you stay up the night and think about the themes and messages that you observed. It will make you question the true nature of violence and (perhaps) look down upon certain films that glorify it. While Funny Games is not without its issues, it is an above average psychological thriller that I would recommend. Rate: 8.4/10

Anyone who has ever seen a Michael Haneke film will know he can provide a near to perfect, yet challenging piece of cinema and Funny Games is perhaps just a close to perfection like any of the other films which he made that I have seen. You will not hear me complain about the fantastic acting, cinematography, pacing, editing et cetera et cetera. The reason why Funny Games does not receive a ten star rating like Caché, Das Weisse Band or Amour did, is because of Haneke's intention for making it. He made this film where two sadistic young men capture and torture an upper-middle class family because he wanted to make the audience aware of the fact that we enjoy this types of cruel movies. This cruel film is an essay, stating that audiences revel in the torture of innocent fictional characters. And from what I could glean from the actual essay he wrote on the film, there is also some commentary in there about the role of violent media in a violent society, but I will not follow him down that rabbit hole just yet. Let's for now stick with his primary message. I will never deny that audiences don't enjoy violent or even cruel movies. I myself am an enormous fan of all kinds of horror, be it slocky gore fests or serious suspense filled dramatic thrillers. Funny Games is not a horror movie. It is an art film, wearing the mask of a horror film, which it pulls of halfway through, so it can accuse us of enjoying the sick imagery on screen. Through the various fourth-wall breaks the killers interact with us, asking for our opinion and approval, as to say that we are the ones causing all this. We are not Mr. Haneke. Nobody forced you to make a horror film. Just like nobody is going to force me to like your pretentious accusations. And note that when I use the word pretentious I am not referring to the filmmaking, but to the intention of the filmmaker. Funny Games is an expertly crafted insult to the audience for liking a genre of movies the director does not. The film could have been great, but its downfall lays in the fact that it thinks it is better than its colleagues. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to watch a dumb, gory horror flick, and enjoy myself.

A double-bill of Michael Haneke's notoriously provocative home-invasion thriller FUNNY GAMES, its original version and the US shot-by-shot remake made a decade later with a different cast, they are basically the same film, the only noticeable revision is a landline telephone would be plausibly upgraded to a cellphone. Affixing death metal to high-brow classical music, FUNNY GAMES alerts us from the beginning of its irreconcilably conflicting parties in this game of torture and murder: the bourgeois nuclear family (emblazoned by their lakeside holiday residence and a private boat) versus two white-gloves-sporting, acedia-afflicted young psychopaths (whose backgrounds are completely in the shadows). It is very interesting to watch how genteel etiquette disintegrates into hostility on a moment's notice, and how it becomes a fortune to hostage if one is that prone to irritability yet not cautious enough to the consequences, although what is blatantly shocking is the want of clear motive behind these two amoral young men, who wallow in inflicting sadism and cruelty to innocent people, and are dangerously masked by a normal and friendly appearance. But after watching the same story twice (not recommended though), a viewer may sense something perniciously self-serving in the scene nearly the beginning, the couple can be cautioned by their friend (aka. the previous hostage), a warning out of desperation might not be a game-changer to overcome the perpetrators (who are in possession of a rifle), but at least, they can try to fight back and very likely break the vicious circleAlso one can second-guess that in lieu of complete resignation, the wife could have shown some bravura by jumping onto their neighbor's departing boat in the eleventh hour only if she knew it would be her last chance. To mitigate the ill-feeling stemmed from audience's emotional investment of the beleaguered family, Haneke opts for a novel schtick by allowing one of the young wrongdoer Paul (Frisch/Pitt) to occasionally break the 4th wall and even play God with a remote control when an unpremeditated accident croaking his companion, archly takes audience away from their heinous act and nattering hogwash, renders a refreshing sensation of levity, which is a crying reprieve at that point of the narrative (after sending both a dog and a child to meet their makers out of Haneke's convention-defying obduracy). The film is violent no doubt, but mercifully we are spared from witnessing direct simulation of killing save its grisly aftermath, and it is fire and brimstone for the two leads, in the earlier version, the late Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe (who became a couple in real life after making this film) stupendously put themselves through the wringer of distress, terror and despair, command onerous brawn against physical hindrance (including in a challenging long take lasting more than ten minutes), and Lothar notably drains all her energy into a traumatized state that's too disturbing to look twice. The same impression is ineluctably blunted in the remake, due to the vanishing thrill of reiteration, nevertheless Naomi Watts, undergoes the same ordeal with equally gutsy virtuosity but less apparel.On the villain parts, a wide-eyed Michael Pitt totally and literally pales in comparison with Arno Frisch, whose bumptious self-assurance is simultaneously gnawing and sinister, whereas Frank Giering and Brady Corbet both make a good accomplice who is unpleasantly effete and morbidly creepy. Teasing with the line between reality and fiction, the sick underside of human frailties often overlooked by the prim and the proper, Haneke's succès-de-scandale is not for faint-hearted but an anglophone remake made in facsimile betrays his eagerness to unleash the bane on those subtitle-eschewing English-speaking Americans, a bespoke commodity speaks volumes of his faintly veiled intention.

If seeing bad things happening to good people in a movie makes you squeamish, you should stay away from this one. It's a bit like the torture porn Saw films except the abuse is mostly psychological and you actually care for the characters.A pair of psychotic youngsters hold a family hostage in their vacation home and force them to play sadistic games. It's a harrowing 108 minutes, and at some point I'm sure many viewers will ask "what's the point of all this?", but for some reason I found this movie strangely compelling. The suspense is palatable, and the banter between the two deranged captors is somehow perversely fascinating. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion - I couldn't take my eyes off it.As the anguish endured by this poor family worsens, and we become more and more invested in their survival, it begins to feel like the director himself is playing his own twisted game with us; as if he's fully aware of the torture he's putting this family (and us) through, and he's stringing us along and testing our limits.