Watch Funny Games For Free

the audience applauded

People are voting emotionally.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Haneke's directing is exceptional, as always. The set decoration suits perfectly the movie -a cozy all-white house which soon becomes a cold crime scene- and Haneke makes sure we get to see it all throught the film. Naomi Watts is amazing, I'd say it's one of her best performances. She makes the audience feel her grief in the most natural way, and not wanting to stand out from the rest of the cast, even though she does. She is the soul of 'Funny Games US'.

7 1/2Haneke makes a movie in which the genre clichèes don't apply ( they get twisted in reality) and that's high praise. It's also a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, and admits more than once that it's fiction we're looking at. Although the intentions are admirable and clearly conveyed, even if it's beautifully shot, the movie is not the easiest to follow as it is very slow paced, in contrast with the type of story portrayed.

The original Funny Games - German, made in 1997, written and directed by Michael Haneke - was great. Haneke decided to remake the movie for US audiences, and promptly screwed it up. Instead of thought- provoking, this is pretentious. Instead of innovative, this is second hand. Instead of suspenseful, this is boring. Maybe it was because I had seen the original so knew where it was going, but the plot was slow. Direction was ponderous and listless.Worst of all was the casting. Michael Pitt spells disaster for any movie he is in. Wooden, pretentious, irritating. Brady Corbet follows his lead. Naomi Watts does her usual over-acting. Tim Roth is a superb actor but had nothing to work with and deserves a lot better than this.

Many others have written thoughtful critiques here, most of which cite the director's amazing scene-by-scene duplication of his original German film......okay.What got me about this film, almost more than any film I have watched, is the extraordinary graphic capture of psychopathy.That the two young white-gloved (nice touch: innocence, cleanliness, oblique reference to mimes, fingerprintless) captors embody complete lack of caring for others better than any other film characters I have seen---complete lack of empathy, or sympathy for that matter-- makes this the consummate movie to watch if you want to try to understand psychopaths.Ellison's character, Bates, in "American Psycho" comes close, but that film heavily redacted the violence portrayed in the book (which had they shown it would have gotten it blacklisted, probably)....still, this movie, even though violence is inferred and usually off-camera, manages to give the viewer a look at callousness in its purest form. In war movies, in movies about concentration camp abuses such as "Schindler's List" the callousness occurs in an ambiance of prison barbarity. Everything in that matrix conveys heartlessness------------but here, the setting is upscale Americana. Regular well-to-do folks, in their well-to-do-not-far-removed- lookswise-from-regular-homes vacation home setting. Thus the jarring juxtaposition of meaningless violence in upper suburbia has the effect of increasing the horror factor as it also ups the unease one experiences the entirety of the film.Watching a spider toy with its prey by moving in and biting the unlucky netted victim repeatedly and then beginning to wrap it before death has overtaken it -----gives some idea of how one feels when watching this movie. But the spider is gathering food. That's not the case here: everything that happens is gratuitous, without reason, without rational sense. That Micheal Pitts looks remarkably at times like young Donald Trump....? Just more icing on this truly sick, but amazingly powerful film about people using other people without any regard for them.I would give it a 10, and considering I am still shaking after watching it last evening it probably could be a 10.Not for the sensitive, or easily disturbed viewer at all.