funny games blue velvet

The modern home invasion genre has its roots in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, wherein Alex and his droogs torture and rape a well-to-do-couple while crooning along to "Singing in the Rain." It's still an unsettling scene 47 years later, in part because, despite Kubrick's penchant for elegantly composed shots, this particular scene is crudely handheld, forcing the viewer to become unwilling accomplices to the psychological carnage. It's just one of the lessons German director Michael Haneke lifts for his own self-aware take on the genre, 1997's Funny Games.

Arriving at their lake house, Anna, George and their young son have their vacation rudely interrupted by a pair of well-dressed hooligans - Peter and Paul - who take them hostage and stage a series of games to amuse themselves. As the sadistic evening continues, Anna and George realize that there's no reasoning with their captors and a fight for their family's survival ensues.

A full synopsis would ruin most of the cruel surprises and shock effects the film rather haphazardly lays out. Suffice to say that Funny Games is a movie that's meant to inflict damage, much like Kubrick's earlier work. But Haneke adds an element of fourth-wall breaking tom-foolery that both amplifies and alleviates some of the brutality, intermittently having his self-aware sociopaths directly address the audience and - at one point - change the course of the film.

It's a gag that's not nearly as clever or genre bending as Haneke obviously believes it to be; his film is still an exercise in cruelty, despite claims that it's a comment on violent cinema in general. But his cast elevates the material to emotional depths that are often excruciating to watch. As Anna and Georg, actors Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Muhe are tasked with delivering 109 minutes of bitterly realistic suffering. Their performances are so good, Haneke leans on them for one extended 10-minute take that captures a particularly heartbreaking moment of loss.

Funny Games doesn't blame its violence on social disparity, video games, or supernatural entities. And it's not entirely successful as either a straight-up thriller or convenient critique of the films that came before it. But measured by Haneke's intention to simply make a film that "hurt," there's no question it rises to the occasion.

Criterion's director-approved Blu-ray edition features a new 2K digital restoration supervised by Haneke himself, along with new interviews and Q & A footage from the film's controversial premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

David Lynch is one of a handful of modern directors whose very name conjures up associated mental imagery: dancing dwarfs, mutant fetuses and oversized sandworms. He's more than a filmmaker, he's a brand. Which is shocking considering the material presented in Blue Velvet, the film that cemented his reputation as the most left-of-center auteur working in Hollywood...then or now!

Returning to his hometown of Lumberton, Jeffery Beaumont is shocked (and more than a little excited) to discover a human ear in a nearby field. The official investigation moves too slow, so Jeffery takes it upon himself to sneak into the apartment of a woman connected with the case, sultry lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), whose husband and son are being held hostage by psychotic drug trafficker, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). As he gets pulled further into this nightmare world of rough sex, blackmail and '50s karaoke, Jeffrey becomes fascinated by the twisted underbelly of a small-town it turns out he never really knew.

In the aftermath of Dune, it's no surprise Lynch returned to the style that always suited him best: a mix of distorted Norman Rockwell nostalgia populated by characters whose adventures follow a dream logic more akin to experimental films than anything found in a multiplex. But Blue Velvet meets the audience halfway, providing a comfortable narrative straight out of a classic film noir...that becomes more uncomfortable by the minute. And once Dennis Hopper takes his first huff of laughing gas and savagely dry humps Isabella Rossellini, all bets are off.

Despite all that, Blue Velvet is by far Lynch's most accessible film, using a voyeuristic approach to keep the audience watching even when they want to turn away. Jeffery's amateur investigation is similar to the thrillers of Brian De Palma, only here the mystery doesn't really matter. Lynch has pulled you down the rabbit hole (or ear canal, as the case may be) of his imagination and it's too late to crawl out now. Which really seems to be the point of most of Lynch's work: revealing a new world out of the pop culture scraps and psychological detritus of the old. Now it's dark, indeed.

Criterion's new 4K digital restoration and 5.1 surround mix were both supervised by Lynch himself. Extras include 53-minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes, two archival feature length documentaries and an all-new 2019 documentary featuring interviews with crew members and visits to the shooting locations.