Funny Games

In this exploration of our violent society, writer and director Michael Haneke takes a disturbing look at how depictions of violence at once reflect and shape our culture. A well-to-do German family -- father Georg (Ulrich Mühe), mother Anna (Susanne Lothar), and son Georgie (Stefan Clapczynski) -- ...more

Michael Haneke's Funny Games initially takes on the rhythms of a typical thriller. The elements are familiar -- an air-brushed upper-class family, a glittering house in the country, the sudden intrusion of brutality. As it becomes clear early on, however -- about the time one of the movie's villains winks at us after murdering the family dog -- there is more on the movie's mind than your garden-variety mayhem. As difficult to sit through as it is to dismiss, Haneke's movie is a hectoring ...more