I've never seen the original and that has no bearings on my review. I find the movie excruciatingly slow. The menace lacks tension. I have nothing against the violence although I don't see it delivering much of message. Honestly, an anti-violence violent movie is a bit late. I guess a violent movie without much tension could be the point. The white washout visual style is interesting. The actors do their work dutifully. I just find the movie a bit annoying and a bit boring.
In , Michael Haneke became worldwide known with his masterpiece of sadism, alienation and cruelty "Funny Games" and I recall how disturbed I was after watching that impressive movie.
The answer: absolutely nothing but the language, spoken in English, and the cast. The performances of Naomi Watts, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Devon Gearhart and Tim Roth are outstanding, but they have added no value to the original movie since it is a remake frame by frame of the original film, giving me the sensation that I pressed the replay button of the original "Funny Game". Does it worth to remake a movie just to satisfy viewers that can not read subtitles and to fill the pockets of the author?
My vote is one. It surprised me more than a little when, after watching "Funny Games U. When an affluent family arrives home after a vacation, two men come to the neighborhood. These guys look as if they just walked out of the typical exclusive sports club, and talk like straight-laced politicians.
But when these two kindly take the family hostage and get them to follow every order, that's when the movie really takes off. Specifically, the movie plays with the audience. Showing brutality but carefully tempting us to want to see more, this is not the sort of thing that you usually see As I've never seen the original version, I can't compare the two although I do wonder what's up with remakes of foreign movies, even if it is from the same director. But I do recommend the film.
It disturbingly forces us to think carefully about our society's obsession with violence, while never preaching or moralizing; hell, it actually takes a rather humorous approach. Starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth. An upper class couple Naomi Watts and the wonderful Tim Roth and their young son are enjoying time at their lake house, ready for some sun and golfing. But, what is this?
The neighbors have some new friends I guess it's not time for golfing since we'll be spending the next twelve hours being tortured, in this shot-for-shot remake of "Funny Games".
Trying to discern what "Funny Games" is may not be easy. It's a horror film, but lies more heavily on suspense than outright horror Hitchcockesque? It's certainly an art piece, but violent enough to turn off most mainstream, non-horror audiences Also, "Funny Games" is a bit on the slow side, causing viewers to have a fair amount of patience with fairly little payoff. For this film to work, the irony of a horror film critiquing horror films has to work.
And I'm not sure that it does. The villain remarks that "you shouldn't forget the importance of entertainment", but the film isn't particularly entertaining The one entertaining part, involving the shotgun death of one of the captors, is presented as being a mistake.
So, we are shown the importance of entertainment by being denied it? Or is this just telling us, subtle or not, that we enjoy the violence of films? Reviewer Warren Curry says this is a film that sends a "message about the ills of a culture in which the media casually feeds hungry consumers violence", which is true enough and points out that the film "consciously doesn't offer the viewer a single voyeuristic thrill".
Where I think Curry is dead on the mark, though, is his contention that "media depiction of violence is a topic that has been exhaustively analyzed at this point" and that the film, therefore, "seems unnecessary". Indeed -- if the lesson was that violence sells, I don't think we learned anything new here. Curry is critical of the remake because it offers nothing new from the original, delivers an old message in a weaker voice and features actors playing the other actors rather than re-inventing the roles.
As I haven't seen the original, I can't agree or disagree, but I would say that if the original was effective, why bother doing it again? Any serious film student has no objection to foreign, subtitled films and I think the general populace is beginning to accept foreign films on a growing scale. So why bother, Haneke? Although, I do believe the remake received considerably more American press. In conclusion, the film is a work of art.
It looks great, and Haneke is amazing with the way he frames his shots. But it's not very entertaining and will annoy most horror fans. If the point of the film is to deny the viewer entertainment, you made your point Personally, I was mixed, and see little or no reason to spend more time on the American version of this frustrating contradiction of a tale.
Basically a wealthy family, parents Ann Naomi Watts, also producing and George Tim Roth , their son Georgie Devon Gearhart and their dog are having a holiday in their lake house. While George and Georgie go sailing on the lake, and Ann is in the kitchen preparing dinner, young man Peter Brady Corbet has come round to apparently borrow some eggs for the neighbour.
It appears that he innocently drops the eggs and needs some more, and then he is seen dropping the cellphone in the sink to dampen it, this frustrates her even more, and another young man Paul Michael Pitt arrives as well and increases the tension.
George and Georgie come back at the point that Ann is demanding that they leave, they are refusing, and it is obvious that they are deliberately agitating them, and they trap them almost immediately after one is slapped.
Peter and Paul hold the family captive in the lake house, and they perform violent acts of sadistic torture and humiliating games for their own amusement, with no real intention or reason. The first proof of their vicious intent was seen when the dog was found dead, and George's leg is broken by a golf club, and they decide to have a little bet, that by the next morning the family may all be dead. Paul insults Peter during their violence, they do say that they have intruded other vacationing rich families before, apparently to get more money for their drug habit, but all in all their actions seem motiveless.
Georgie attempts to escape by trudging through the near lake and running to the near houses, but he is soon caught by one of the young men, and the parents are distraught when they kill him, and seemingly leave the house. George tells Ann to get dressed, after she was undressed for humiliations, to run and find some help, while he tries to dry the damp cellphone and phone the police, but Peter and Paul come back to carry on their sick games.
After a few more moments of the nasty activities, and killing George, the final scenes sees Paul and Peter take the tied up and gagged Ann in a boat on the lake, it is past , and they simply throw her in the water to drown, and they move on to another house to use the same method to get in and the whole thing will happen again.
Corbet and Pitt look and seem exactly the same as the original actors and certainly make their characters mysterious and darkly mischievous, and Watts and Roth are suitable as the victims of the nasty foul play.
It is a straight forward shot by shot remake, only the tiniest details have been changed, but they keep the scenes that made the original what it is, like the distinctive and clever remote control sequence, so I can't say one is better than the other, they seem equal, and this is still deliberately disturbing to watch, but a most watchable psychological horror thriller.
A pair of queer young men invade the summer cottage of a middle-class couple. At first the two preppy-looking boys seem clumsy but apologetic and innocent.
Then they turn rude, and finally violent, taking the husband Tim Roth , the wife Naomi Watts , and the child Devon Gearhart captives. They break Roth's leg, force Watts to strip off her dress and then bind her with tape, and mistreat the child. The teasing and mistreatment get worse. Attempts to escape or phone outside are thwarted.
The plot has a self-conscious quality in that the two miscreants sometimes turn to the camera and make wisecracks or ask questions of the viewer.
In the German original of ten years earlier, playing with the fourth wall was one of only two tries for originality. The other was that the two goons tortured the audience as well as the filmic family. Not only does the entire family wind up dead, but the boys explain the deaths to us this way -- they had to die because in a movie like this you weren't expecting them to.
I didn't watch this to see if this remake is faithful enough to the original to senselessly kill the husband, wife, and child off. I can't imagine why the original was made, let alone why it had to be remade.
The first half hour is engaging enough, focusing as it does on minor transgressions like dropping the four eggs you have just borrowed from a helpful neighbor, then dropping their replacements too, then politely refusing to leave when the family asks you to. But the rest is undiluted suspense and finally unmotivated horror.
We don't know the two sadistic crazy boys. We identify with the bourgeois family -- and they're murdered, so we're denied the catharsis we've earned. And just because the movie makers think it's clever. It would be just as bad if the family members showed anger or defiance or any sign of stoicism, but they don't.
They play it realistically, just as in the original. The terror and the pain seem real. There are moments when Naomi Watts runs around in her underwear so that we see her flawless figure, but it's anything but erotic because the suffering is abject. Her face is red and streaked with tears. It's a slasher movie for adults, if you want to put it that way, only this time it's not just the bad kids who die -- and the virgins don't get safely away.
I've never understood the appeal of slasher movies. Who gets a kick out of seeing innocent people slaughtered? Who is this movie aimed at? Who is the audience? Michael Haneke's version of Funny Games is so similar to his movie that I could save myself time and effort by simply copying my review for the original and pasting it here. I won't, though, because unlike Haneke, I would rather try a different approach than simply repeat myself verbatim.
Instead, I am going to save myself a bit of time by keeping this review short and to the point. Since I gave the original film a rating of 6. Quinoa 14 March Michael Haneke's remake of Funny Games is something else. It's less a game than it is something of a test, an experiment for the audience.
Haneke made his original film apparently, I haven't seen it, even though with one or two minor exceptions it's the same as this new refashioning as a comment on what was an "American phenomenon" of movie violence. Or something. He's made his feature this time with stars- Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, even Michael Pitt as a sort of indie-star of the moment- so that it's not just some intellectual snobs going to see it in some dingy art-house dive in the Village.
No, this time he's made a movie for the cineplex crowd, so that his pretentious intellectual exercise can be thrust upon an unsuspecting public who has been intrigued by the theatrical trailer possibly, if one hasn't read online about the original or what the film really is about. It's about, in its essential "genre" terms as "genre" Haneke would probably put in quotes first , a bourgeois family, mother-father-son, out for a weekend in their house along a sunny lake.
There are also two preppy-looking kids, Peter and Paul or Tom and Jerry or Beavis and Butt-Head, take your pick , one of whom stops by asking if he can borrow some eggs. They break by fault of his own or not who cares. He asks for four more. They, too, break thanks to the family dog jumping on the lad. Things escalate. Father gets leg swiped by golf club.
Now the game has begun, which is basically that they will kill the family by the end, or not. Intriguing premise? But even from here there's a slight smugness to Haneke's hand as a director. Breaking the fourth wall, so daring! But I tried to stick with it, I really tried. It becomes clear after a short tick of time that Haneke is attempting to experiment, at mixing preachy lecture and sadistic killer flick ala Scream, and it doesn't connect, at all.
In his go to present a self-conscious approach, he ends up talking down to the viewer with the message while ALSO making a sincere slasher picture with supposedly realistic connotations.
It's an act of frustration, and not one that is entertaining, or successful as a piece of provocative fiction. Edit Funny Games Showing all 11 items. Tim Roth has said making this film traumatized him, and he'll never watch it.
He said he was particularly disturbed because Devon Gearhart resembled his own son. The film is a shot-by-shot remake of the Austrian Funny Games , also directed by Michael Haneke. As of , this is the only film directed by Michael Haneke to not have had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The production crew used the blueprints from the original. The set of the house in the American remake has the same proportions as that of the set.
Cameo: Susanne Haneke - The woman on the boat with Betsy, introduced as Betsy's sister in law, is played by the director Michael Hanneke's wife, Susanne. This is the second time that Michael Pitt has played a character inspired by the real life murder committed by Leopold and Loeb in , the other role was the character Justin Pendleton in 'Murder By Numbers.
When Peter and Paul are trying to guess the age of Ann Naomi Watts , they guess that she is 30 to Getting Started Contributor Zone ». Edit page. Top Gap. See more gaps ». Create a list ». YouTube Movies.
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