305 S. Campbell, Suite 101
Springfield, MO 65806
(417) 429-0800
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Two violent young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement. (NR, 109 min.)
9:00 PM
MONDO MOXIE is a monthly showcase of fringe, underrated, and weirdo cinema. Tickets are $8/Free for Members.
Michael Haneke’s most notorious provocation, FUNNY GAMES spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. In a series of escalating “games,” the sadistic duo subject their victims to unspeakable physical and psychological torture over the course of a night. A home-invasion thriller in which the genre’s threat of bloodshed is made stomach-churningly real, the film ratchets up shocks even as its executioners interrupt the action to address the audience, drawing queasy attention to the way that cinema milks pleasure from pain and stokes our appetite for atrocity. With this controversial treatise on violence and entertainment, Haneke issued a summation of his cinematic philosophy, implicating his audience in a spectacle of unbearable cruelty. [Janus]
Starring: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch
Director: Michael Haneke
Language: German
Genre: Thriller, Crime, Drama
"Brilliant, radical, provocative."
— Geoff Andrew, Time Out
"Sadistic, insufferable, clever, and relentlessly compelling."
— David Sterritt, Film Scouts
"Haneke's audacious home invasion film is as confronting as it is effective. This is a masterclass."
— Joe Lipsett, Horror Queers Podcast
"Remarkably well-directed and played, the crisp images perfectly framed by cinematographer Jürgen Jürges for maximum effect."
— David Bartholomew, Film Journal International
"This beautifully acted and paced German variant of Cape Fear ... is tricked out with a number of Brechtian devices to catch audiences in a voyeuristic trance."
— Stephen Holden, New York Times
"Galvanizing, unsettling and deeply disturbing, the Austrian director's first stint in the Cannes competition went on to define his particular trajectory of cinematic miserabilism."
— Nicholas Bell, IONCINEMA.com
"A firestarter for post-screening arguments, alight with ghastly images and actions, and essayed by a spot-on cast and storyline that flows seamlessly from one nightmarish incident to the next."
— Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
"\The emotions of the victims are clear and complex -- their conflicts dominate our experience of the narrative as powerfully as all the devices telling us to look elsewhere for the movie's themes."
— Lisa Alspector, Chicago Reader
"A viciously effective polemic against the placid acceptance of film violence, a perverse experiment in audience manipulation that lures us into watching what should be unwatchable and then draws our attention to our unexamined desires"
— James Kendrick, Film Desk
