Funny Games
This Austrian film was one of the last movies to get piled on the queue before the
start of the challenge and now I regret it. It only got there because we had recently watched another in the Netflix recommendation category "Foreign Film Featuring Crazy Kids Tormenting Rich People in Big Houses For No Apparent Reason," and I just wasn't in the mood.The strange thing is I vaguely remember seeing it before and enjoying it. It's intentionally painful to watch at times as this dim-witted family fails to rise up against two not-so-intimidating kids in short white shorts wielding only a golf club as a weapon. It's not scary, just hard to watch, as they fumble with duct tape and never run away fast enough. What makes it sort of different than other voyeur torture films, though, is that the fourth wall is broken down a few times by the lead bad guy, who'll turn to the camera Ferris Bueller-style and wink or ask the audience if they think the family will survive until morning.
The director, the respected Michael Haneke who won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film last year, actually did a shot-for-shot remake of his own film ten years later with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.
Surrogates
An interesting idea, and I'm a Bruce Willis fan, but this one was a little on the
hokey side.It's the future and nobody does any thing for real anymore, they just link their bodies up to life-like robot surrogates who go out and do all the fun stuff. People live longer, but only because their robots do all the drinking and driving, coal mining and soldiering.
Everybody is real pretty, too, and Bruce's surrogate even has hair.
Independent Lens: Between the Folds
Who thought a movie about folding paper could be entertaining? Not me. Interesting, but definitely not a laugh-a-minute thrill ride. Too much paper folding.
No comments:
Post a Comment