Funny Games U. S. (2007)

Shall we begin?


Michael Haneke remade his 1997 film Funny Games for an American audience, starring Tim Roth and Naomi Watts. It follows an upper class family as they holiday in their lakeside home and then you meet Peter and Paul. This film is designed to disturb and upset you and is violent without being gratuitous but it is uncomfortable to watch. This is the aim of Michael Haneke and to be honest he achieves this to the point that while watching it as it approached the end, being in a position to look I looked up the ending as I needed to know and could not handle the tense feeling and I very rarely ever do this while watching a film.


This is not normally the sort of film that I choose to watch but I have also come to the conclusion that I cannot judge a film by what others say and really have to watch these things so that I can judge all of the films that are there. It does fall in to the Horror/Terror category so this is one of the reasons when I saw it on the TV I decided to give it a watch. The feelings it evoke are hard to bare and then Haneke in his wisdom rams it down your throat that he only made this to show you what you want to see. The fact that this is a shot for shot remake means that I do not have to watch the German original and while I actually appreciate what he achieved with the tension I do not need to see this film again. 


However this is probably the hardest film I have ever had to recommend or rate, I would say 4 stars in film making, should you watch this film? This is something you will have to decide for yourself, I will say if you love film and want to see what can be achieved then go for it. If however you watch films for enjoyment then this is not the film for you, if you have seen either version or have any thoughts on them please let me know.

Planet of the Apes (2001)

Film of 2012 #60


After watching the original Planet of the Apes and the recent release of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes which I reviewed here, I revisited the remake from Tim Burton. Starring Mark Whalberg as the lost astronaut and Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Paul Giamatti and Michael Clarke Duncan taking the roles of Apes. While this film is a remake in basic terms it is a very different film, there are some homage's to the original and the idea behind it with a human discovering the Planet ruled by Apes is the same concept but what it explores is a different idea. 

The film explores some of the ideas of the original with Humans being the weaker race but the ending is vastly different and the overall idea behind the film misses something of the original. If this film had been an original idea or at least had taken a different name I could almost accept this as a film, however it simply plays on the name of the original. As a remake it does not stick to the original idea which in itself makes a different movie but it gets lost in the comparison to the original so is not judged fairly. 

I have to say that I like what the film does with the ending with the statue at the end but overall the film annoys me specifically with the decisions that the Mark Whalberg character makes. This film is an interesting idea behind what a remake could be taking an original idea and taking it in a totally different direction rather than as a shot for shot remake, overall I cannot get behind Mark Whalberg and the decisions or the direction the story goes. This is a 2 star avoid, worth seeing if you are interested in Tim Burton's take on the Planet of the Apes but no more than that.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Film of 2012 #49

The 1994 film from Quentin Tarantino that launched his career, that launched Uma Thurman and re-launched the career of John Travolta. This film is a genre setting film that showed what Tarantino wanted to show on film and made everybody think about what they could and should see in film. The film is non-linear which must have been quite jarring to see when it came out and it said "people you do not have to do what is expected in film."

The film is a series of vignets that inter link and cross over, you have The Coffee Shop scene, Jules Winnfield played by Samuel L Jackson, Vincent Vega played by John Travolta as gangsters who are going to collect something for Marsellus Wallace played by Ving Rhames. And you have the boxer storyline with Bruce Willis as Butch Coolidge. These storys cross over and you have some excellent smaller parts playe by Amanda Plummer, Tim Roth, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette and Harvey Keitel as the Wolf the ultimate cool Mofo. There are a lot of the scenes in this film that are iconic for their time from Uma Thurman and John Travolta dancing to the gimp in the shop.

I enjoy this film, I think it is a peice of cinema history and can almost be a landmark for 1994, it is however a very styilized film that will not appeal to everybody I would say that if you want to watch modern classics then this is definetley one that you should watch, I give this a solid 3 star film, worth seeing.