I can understand why so many of the so few who saw Funny Games hated it. That means it made its point.

A shot-for-shot remake of his Austrian film a decade prior, writer/director Michael Haneke (Caché) serves up a brilliant deconstruction of the family-in-peril scenario we’ve seen time and time again. The difference here is that Haneke approaches it from a (mostly) realistic angle rather than a cinematic one: You’re going to get what you expected to see — violence — but not necessarily delivered the way you want it.

But you’ll get it nonetheless, and Haneke will rub your nose in the mess and, adding insult to injury, blast some ungodly John Zorn noise on the soundtrack.

Naomi Watts (Mulholland Dr.) and Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs) make up the well-to-do married couple whose coastal vacation home is invaded by the well-scrubbed psychopaths Paul (Michael Pitt, TV’s Boardwalk Empire) and Peter (Brady Corbet, Melancholia) posing as rich kids in tennis sweaters. The two break his kneecap, tie her up half-naked, and bet that they and their son (Devon Gearhart, Shorts) will be dead by morning. Let the Games begin!

Paul and Peter draw out their twisted little plan to where the family is agonized by the mere dread of the inevitable — and viewers by their lack of patience. When very bad things do happen, Haneke generally doesn’t let his camera catch them, so audiences decrying Funny Games for crossing a line leads me to believe that we have become a nation of pussies. It’s a challenging watch, sure, but one that is crafted with a clinical detachment, is acted splendidly (especially by Watts) and sticks with you. If you hate Paul and Peter so much — and you will — that you want to punch the screen, don’t blame the movie for doing its job. —Rod Lott

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Terror on the 40th Floor is really a scorned-lovers drama disguised as a disaster movie. TV’s Dynasty magnate John Forsythe stars in the terrible, made-for-the-tube The Towering Inferno knock-off as one of seven people trapped in an office high-rise after their Christmas party when some janitorial dolt below causes a raging fire, which he immediately tries to put out with one foot!

The occupants don’t even realize their dire situation until about halfway through, and then they each have individual flashbacks about Interpersonal Relationship Crap. Meanwhile, Joseph Campanella (Meteor) bites it while trying to escape down the elevator shaft and some woman goes bonkers and runs through a plate-glass window. And since NFLer Don Meredith is on board, you’ll want to as well. —Rod Lott

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Before he was the Bad Lieutenant, Harvey Keitel played another bad lieutenant in the Italian-made Corrupt (aka Bad Cop II, Copkiller, Order of Death and an easy paycheck) as Lt. Fred O’Connor.

He works in the narcotics division, where members of his team have been offed by a cop killer. When Leo Smith (John Lydon, aka Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten) shows up at his apartment and claims to be the culprit, O’Connor gets all Keitel on his ass, tying him up and holding him hostage in his bathroom.

Corrupt is one of those psychological cat-and-mouse games where the tables are continually (but not surprisingly) being turned. Unfortunately, when the fortunes shift from Keitel’s character to Lydon’s, the movie grows tiresome (not to mention confusing, as their interaction borders on a homosexual relationship, as does the one between Keitel and his secret live-in cop roomie).

As evil as his O’Connor becomes, it’s hard not to root for Keitel throughout the whole thing — namely because he’s not Lydon, who comes off as a snot-nosed, insufferable prick whose acting is annoying as his music (yeah, I said it). Speaking of music, Ennio Morricone’s score? Not among his best. —Rod Lott

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Oh, those Eyes of Laura Mars and the things they see! As played by Faye Dunaway, her Network Oscar still fairly fresh, Ms. Mars is a photographer by trade whose violent, sexual, trashy shots court an equal share of hype and hysteria, and best can be described as something you’d expect to see in the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog, should the lingerie purveyor ever publish a catalog post-doomsday.

With a ridiculous amount of media attention showered on her book-release party — complete with live, televised footage from the red carpet — Laura’s big night is deflated by news of the mysterious murder of her book’s editor. It’s merely the first in a series of stabbings to come.

That Laura “sees” the homicides happening in her mind is problematic enough. (That Dunaway plays it like the proverbial deer in the headlights is another.) That the crimes are staged to match some of her photos is worse. Investigating is a police detective (Tommy Lee Jones in the unibrow-and-hair-helmet phase of his career) for whom she starts to fall, despite being a suspect.

As directed by Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back), the film is as expected: a workmanlike thriller sporting as much gloss as the pages of fashion mags that pay Laura’s utility bills. But as dreamt up and co-written by Halloween maestro John Carpenter, it’s a real disappointment. His made-for-TV movie of the same year, Someone’s Watching Me!, generates considerably more suspense at half the star wattage. —Rod Lott

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Larry Cohen does his best Brian De Palma imitation with Special Effects, which is to say a poor one. Perhaps the only special thing about this minor effort is that, more than any other of the filmmaker’s works, the movie demonstrates he’s better at conceiving ideas than birthing them. This one’s certainly no Q; it’s a Zzzzz.

In her first role post-Ms. 45, Zoe Tamerlis plays Mary Jean, a naive, Oklahoma-to-Manhattan actress who cheats on her hick husband, Keefe (Brad Rijn, Smithereens) with a down-and-out film director she’s just met. He’s Neville (Talk Radio’s Eric Bogosian, speaking out of his mouth’s left side), who feeds her the line, “I think we should do a slow dissolve to the bedroom.” It works, and while writhing in the pink satin sheets, Neville strangles her to death.

Rather than become the prime suspect, Neville cannily deflects suspicion by making a movie about the murder, with the intent to pin the crime on the yokel spouse who agrees to play himself. Essaying the role of Mary Jean is her dead ringer, Elaine (also Tamerlis), a clothes sorter at the Salvation Army.

Sounds absurd, right? It should, for Special Effects is a messy bundle of story threads Cohen doesn’t bother to unravel before attempting to connect. If he had, I suspect the film would remain too ludicrous to swallow; Rijn and Tamerlis’ near-amateurish performances wouldn’t be remedied by even the sharpest script. With touches like Neville choking someone with 35mm film and asking, “Who made your head? Carlo Rambaldi?,” the movie must be intended as some industry-insider statement, but what the statement says is as mysterious as the entire premise is muddled.

Aside from a quick visual joke referencing Tootsie, Special Effects bears precious little of Cohen’s clever sensibilities. —Rod Lott

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