Registers more strongly than the original as a film about privileged white people...

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 12, 2008

It's a tawdry kind of horror movie plot, given new meaning by Haneke's considerable intellect.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 5, 2008

I'm not at all sure that, in manipulating the audience to make his points, Haneke isn't as guilty of exploitation as the filmmakers and the films he's attacking here.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 5, 2008

What's terrible and irritating about the film is that Haneke isn't doing it to tell a story. He just wants to punish us for wanting to see this movie in the first place.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 1, 2008

It's not a reassuring vision but that's not the name of Haneke's particular game.

| Original Score: 5/6 | Apr 6, 2008

A stylish, darkly satirical horror-thriller, raising serious questions about Hollywood's sanitisation of violence.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2008

That this relentless barrage of psychological and physical torture is extremely well made and powerfully performed -- Watts hurls herself into her physically demanding role with heroic conviction -- somehow makes it worse.

| Mar 20, 2008

The fact that it features fine performances, talented direction and some moments of genuine suspense only makes the end product that much more grotesque and appalling.

Full Review | Mar 17, 2008

Haneke's assault on our fantasy lives is shallow, unimaginative, and glacially unengaged -- a sucker punch without the redeeming passion of punk.

| Mar 17, 2008

In addition to being borderline unendurable, Funny Games is inexplicable, and I don't mean in any philosophical sense. Who thought the world needed a shot-for-shot English-language version of Mr. Haneke's 1997 German-language film?

| Mar 14, 2008

Throughout the picture, Haneke demonstrates an imperial hauteur that completely undercuts his already dubious point.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 14, 2008

While Haneke is attacking our culture for being drawn to violent fare, he is also relishing in presenting it to us, in prolonged and detailed fashion.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 14, 2008

The performances are outstanding across the board. The direction and writing are masterful.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 14, 2008

not what it appears to be on the surface.

Full Review | Mar 14, 2008

A sour project that defines anti-imaginative.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/6 | Mar 14, 2008

Are you complicit for watching the stuff? Would you be less of a jerk if you walked out? Is [Haneke] wallowing in the thing he's critiquing and consequently a bigger jerk?

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 14, 2008

There's no denying Austrian director Michael Haneke's skill as a filmmaker, but Funny Games is just a vile cinematic exercise.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 14, 2008

Basically torture porn every bit as manipulative and reprehensible as Hostel, even if it's tricked out with intellectual pretension.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 14, 2008

If you're interested in intellectual abstraction, you might find Haneke's games intriguing. Just be warned: When the movie ends, you'll definitely feel like you've been played.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 14, 2008

Both versions of Funny Games force the audience to eat it, really eat it, and while they're eating it, to think about the mechanics and the narrative tropes of a typical revenge drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 14, 2008