Friday 24 May
 
 

The Burning

It speaks to the strength of The Burning’s reputation among cult-film fans that what’s most memorable about the 1981 slasher is not that it was written by the Weinstein brothers, nor that it represents early appearances of the likes of Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter and Fisher Stevens. It’s that its Cropsy is just a damned good villain.
05/24/2013 | Comments 0

Dexter: The Seventh Season

There's no way to discuss the seventh and penultimate season of Showtime's hit Dexter without acknowledging how the previous year ended. Therefore, if you haven't finished the sixth season, stop reading now. You've got work to do.
05/21/2013 | Comments 0

Nightfall

As Simon Lam gets older, he gets better. The veteran actor has appeared in such in seminal HK action films of the 1990s as Once Upon a Time in China (opposite Jet Li) and Bullet in the Head (directed by John Woo); in the aughts, he graced audience and critical favorites Election and Ip Man.
05/20/2013 | Comments 0

Grand Duel

Lee Van Cleef enjoyed a secondary career in Italy cranking out spaghetti Westerns, with little regard to quality. However, 1972’s Grand Duel — aka The Big Showdown — is deserving of its Grand label. No wonder Quentin Tarantino borrowed its sweeping theme song by Luis Bacalov for Kill Bill; you'll recognize it in two notes.
05/20/2013 | Comments 0

The Last Stand

Early in The Last Stand, the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0
Home · Articles · Movies · Thriller · Funny Games
Thriller

Funny Games


Doug Bentin March 20th, 2008

 

funnygames

Reviewer's grade: D

 

You know, there's nothing quite like going to the movies, paying for your ticket, and then being assaulted for 107 minutes by a film — the message of which is American moviegoers are morons for liking the movies they do. Actually, there is something like it. They do it at Abu Ghraib.

 

Naomi Watts ("Eastern Promises") and Tim Roth ("Youth Without Youth") star as an upper-middle-class couple who are the victims of a home invasion. The invaders are two young, nicely dressed but smarmy sociopaths (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) whose idea of "funny games" is terrorizing, torturing, humiliating, and murdering families picked at random.

 

But the movie isn't a thriller —” it's writer/director Michael Haneke's treatise on the low-brow taste of Americans who like violent entertainment. We know because one of the killers addresses the camera and tells us so. A cheap stunt or sophisticated avant-garde satire. Let's compromise on cheap avant-garde stunt. —Doug Bentin


 
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
 
 

 

 
 
 
Close
Close
Close