Product Description

Movie DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6830 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2008-06-10
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 107 minutes

Features

• In 1997, writer-director Michael Haneke (CACHE) made the controversial Austrian thriller, FUNNY GAMES, about two young men who terrorize a family on vacation. A decade later, Haneke was convinced by producer Chris Coen to bring the story to America, filming a nearly word-for-word, shot-for-shot English-language version, even re-creating the locations and sets as obsessively as possible. Shortly af

Amazon.com
Michael Haneke is a modern master, which his spellbinding films Cache and The Piano Teacher proved to an international audience. When it came time for a Hollywood remake of his ultra-disturbing 1997 picture Funny Games, who better than Haneke himself to helm the new version? And indeed, the second Funny Games bears the impeccable sense of control and technique that the Austrian version had: it is a horrifyingly precise account of a family terrorized by two psychopathic young thugs at a vacation home. For anyone who's already seen the '97 film, this new one--a nearly shot-by-shot transcription of the original--will seem superfluous, no matter how impressive the performances of Naomi Watts and Tim Roth are. (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet are suitably creepy as their menacers, too.) For newbies, the movie might be as infuriating and thought-provoking as Haneke intends it to be. That's because Funny Games is an intellectual game itself, a direct rebuke to the audience that gobbles up gratuitous violence and cynical manipulation. Haneke sets up our expectations, and then refuses to provide the conventional catharsis… or the conventional anything. All of this was pretty bracing in the first go-round, but feels like gamesmanship in the remake. Even if you dig what Haneke's up to, this is a brutal movie-watching experience. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

'Funny' as in 'Strange', NOT as in 'Ha-Ha'
FUNNY GAMES is Michael Haneke's English language remake of his own German success from 1997 by the same name. While is takes some interesting twist and turns as far as technique of filmmaking goes, the story lies somewhere between repulsive and prolonged boring, and is not a film this viewer would watch again.

We first meet Ann (Naomi Watts), husband George (Tim Roth), and son Georgie (Devon Gearhart) as they drive to their vacation spot playing games of guessing arias and opera singer identities from CDs in their car. But immediately on arriving to their lakeside home they are visited by a strange young lad Peter (Brady Corbet) who asks to borrow eggs for their next-door neighbor. Soon Peter's mishaps are magnified when his friend Paul (Michael Pitt) joins him in a rather preposterous game of arguing over trite situations that result in Peter and Paul (malignantly sterile in appearance in white shorts and shirts and gloves) moving into the 'funny games ' that are aimed at total destruction of Ann, George and Georgie. It is not funny, it is not credible, and yes, it does become annoying in the manner in which the writing for Ann and George makes them into fools for going along with the 'games' as long as they do.

Watts and Roth are wasted in this film but Pitt and Corbet manage performances that kick us in the gut - as these oily creatures are meant to do. Not a film to be recommended for general viewing, but one that will please those who love the torture genre. Grady Harp, June 08

As Disturbing as it is Illuminating
Not since "Requiem for a Dream" have I left a theater as speechlessly disturbed as I did when the final credits rolled for this one, the blood-red letters splattered over the deranged face of Michael Pitt's character driving home the relentless cruelty I'd just sat through. And never before had I personally felt so responsible for it. If Michael Haneke's point is that we as an audience become active participants in the violence the second we purchase our ticket for a film like this, his point is made rather forcefully. In the hands of the abundantly talented Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, who evoke pain and humiliation with grimaces and tears so compelling that they turn to daggers aimed at the audience itself, the film strips violence of any glamor it may have possessed as entirely as possible in a culture that shovels out billions every year in its name. Toying with the audience's conflicted emotions--the desire to witness cruelty mixing with a desperate hope that its victims will make it out alive--the movie feels like a murder mystery in which YOU, the reader, are guilty of the crime. "You," by paying to sit with your popcorn and 50-gallon soda to watch a film you knew contained unmitigated torture and death, are responsible for the victims' plight. The lasting irony of this profoundly disturbing film is that, through its own indulgence of extreme violence, it makes the most impassioned plea to the better side of our nature to hit the silver screen since Harvey Keitel's "Three Seasons." I recommend the film with great reservation, but I recommend it no less strongly--this is a film every human being must find the courage to confront.

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Vile Film
"Funny Games" is the most reprehensible movie I have ever watched. This story of a family being terrorized by 2 young thugs never reaches the lowest level of entertainment.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against violent films where the supposed heroes end up losing a battle against villains. The "Saw" films, "The Ruins", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "The Hills Have Eyes" and others were entertaining while vicious and mean.
"Funny Games" is simply vile. In any film, you want some sort of conflict to make the story interesting. This movie is dominated solely by the two young punks and never gives a chance to the family led by Naomi Watts and Tim Roth. I don't always expect happy endings but this movie is so bleak and depressing that after it's over, you feel darn dirty for watching it.
A cute visual trick near the climax of the movie simply irritates the viewer.
Those who think this movie is an indictment of violent society or any sort of cultural statement are stretching the credibility of this trash.