Funny Games

"Haneke's assault on our fantasy lives is shallow, unimaginative, and glacially unengaged -- a sucker punch without the redeeming passion of punk."

"As the film progresses, it becomes painfully clear there's no real point to the story; what we're witnessing is a cool, intellectual exercise, as devoid of character and motivation as the two psychos themselves."

"A sour project that defines anti-imaginative."

"It's not a reassuring vision but that's not the name of Haneke's particular game."

"I would absolutely defend Haneke's right to relaunch his broadside on our voyeuristic vices, but he's not keeping up with the times; he's behind them."

"Funny Games, Michael Haneke's first English-language film - and a compulsively faithful replica of his notorious 1997 German-language feature of the same title - subjects its viewers to a long spectacle of wanton and gratuitous brutality."

"It's not exactly entertainment, but it casts a poisonous spell."