Comments on: No Concessions: “Funny Games”

By: No Concessions: The Essential, Annoying New York Film Festival | Popdose

No Concessions: The Essential, Annoying New York Film Festival | Popdose — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:31:29 +0000

[...] film that sputters over 145 minutes. No, I donâ€™t much like Haneke, not either version of Funny Games or even the highly regarded Cache, but I have a grudging respect for his insinuations. Told as a [...]

By: Clark

Clark — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:02:32 +0000

I have not seen this yet, but I'm very familiar with the original, and as this is apparently pretty close if not identical to it, I still don't get the existence of the re-make.

This is not my favorite movie of Haneke's, but I do really like him and think he does chilling miserable-ness really well and more disturbingly so better than anyone around. The Piano Teacher, Cache especially, and the one where the family completely deconstructs itself (forgot the name) are favorites.

By: Clark

Clark — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:02:32 +0000

I have not seen this yet, but I'm very familiar with the original, and as this is apparently pretty close if not identical to it, I still don't get the existence of the re-make.

By: DwDunphy

DwDunphy — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:13:49 +0000

Haneke is trying to work that fine David Lynch line between art and squirm and is failing miserably at it. If I wanted pure evil dressed up as a document of taste and sensibility, I'd have watched “Triumph Of The Will”.

By: DwDunphy

DwDunphy — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:11:17 +0000

The laugh is aimed at Haneke because, if he's attempting some meta-commentary on the gruesome appetite of the audience while simultaneously supplying and criticizing it, it won't work. The movie will be seen only by the torture-porn fans who will probably feel burned because they didn't get their squish on.

By: Bob Cashill

Bob Cashill — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:14:51 +0000

It's a dirty job but someone had to review it. In retrospect, it may have been easier to take than Isabelle Huppert's trying to rape/seduce her own elderly mother in Haneke's The Piano Teacher…but not by much. I suffer for my art(house). I knew what to expect, but it's still one of the uglier films I've sat through since the rancid French picture Irreversible (2003). At least violent U.S.-made films don't thrust pretentiousness in our face as well.

By: DavidMedsker

DavidMedsker — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:15:05 +0000

I nearly threw my soda at the screen during the movie's big what-the-fuck cheat in Act III. Nihilistic and pointless, the whole thing. God love Naomi Watts, though, for giving it everything she's got.

Competently made, but I hated every bit of it. Fuck you, Michael Haneke.

By: JonCummings

JonCummings — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:51:51 +0000

What I can't figure out is who the folks at WIP thought the audience would be for this film. Arthouse torture porn? It seems from Bob's narrative like Haneke got this completely backward–grown-up arthouse-film-loving Americans, if they're going to see such a horrifying movie at all, need the exotic distance created by subtitles and foreignness, which Haneke here has consciously eliminated.

Great review, Bob. You seem angry at this film. I hope that trashing it in such an intelligent way was cathartic.

By: GrayFlannelSuit

GrayFlannelSuit — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:36:56 +0000

Maybe it's just that as I get older I react less favorably to movie violence, but I just don't see why films like this need to exist.