Starring: Naomi Watts, Micahel Pitt, Tim Roth
Directed By: Michael Haneke

"Funny Games" is a pretentious car wreck. You want desperately to look away, but really need to find out how the wreck started. In your own mind, you try to make sense of it but really, you won't ever find what you're looking for.

The plot loosely revolves around two psychotic prepsters with too much time on their hands and the invasion of an unsuspecting family's beach house. The teens, ostensibly with no motive, subsequently torture this unfortunate family to no end. One of the torturers makes a bet with the family that they will not survive the night.

Not so subtly, however, does writer-director Michael Haneke turn around and put the audience in the spotlight. In the most obvious wink-wink ever, one of the torturers breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience directly, asking if they are enjoying themselves.

The film, a shot-for-shot, line-for-line remake of Haneke's 1997 film of the same name, thus becomes a commentary on the way people enjoy movies, specifically movies given the unfortunate label of "torture porn." Viewers will not only pay to see a movie like "Saw" or "Hostel," but they enjoy these films. No matter how sickening the events, movie franchises like "Saw" are kept alive through the audience's own vicariousness.

A valiant effort on Haneke's part in dissecting the American cinematic mindset, both he and the movie ultimately fails because of self-awareness. If the ultra-violence and the theme of the film sound at all familiar, then, congratulations, you have seen Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange."

However, never once in Kubrick's famed film, does Malcolm McDowell turn to the audience and explain what they should be getting out of the film. Haneke, a German, seems to insult his American audience. In fact, he re-made his film specifically for American audiences.

Moviegoers don't need a character in the film to talk to them directly and tell them they get off on watching others squirm. Just look how many people watch "The Moment of Truth." Viewers know this is true, yet he uses his otherwise great idea as a vehicle of criticism for the American movie-going public. It makes the film less enjoyable, but also less compelling, making it easier to have more respect for the movies "Funny Games" shakes its finger at.

Trying to flaunt their dominating powers over this poor family, the two boys often check their watch to see how much time remains before they have to kill the family one by one. Viewers, too, find themselves frequently checking the time to see how much more of Haneke's nonsense they have to take.

When all is said and done, "Funny Games" is nothing more than ostentatious torture porn with great camera angles and a failed commentary on the way people watch movies.

Every once in a while (a long while), it is fairly rewarding to be a geek. Lately, such happenstance has been occurring with greater frequency. Is the rest of humanity finally putting on their horn-rimmed glasses, stuffing their pens into their pocket-protectors and embracing their inner geek? Maybe. Or maybe this insertion of nerdiness into society has resulted from Hollywood realizing they make the most money from fans of science fiction and fantasy. Debatably, this started right around the time "The Lord of the Rings" saw release and even struck gold at both the box office and the Academy Awards, taking home a statue for best picture. This paradigm climaxed, again debatably, with the success of the "Dark Knight." For the first time in a long time, a genre cultural event resonated with so many people that ordinary folks-non-geeks-went running to their local bookstore to pick up a copy of Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" or Jeph Loeb's "The Long Halloween," the latter being the graphic novel upon which Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" was based. So, it would seem, it's good to be a geek.

Another example of this, perhaps to a much lesser extent, is the release of the movie that none of you probably saw or will ever see: "Fanboys." The film, directed by Kyle Newman, became something of a cultural myth in and of itself. Originally planned for an August, 2007 release, the film was pushed back to "sometime in 2008" due to insufficient funds. Reaction from test audiences caused the need for a re-shoot of some key scenes, delaying the film even more to April of 2008. Subsequently, it was announced that the film would see release in September, 2008 and then was pushed back again to November, 2008. Finally, the studio set a concrete release date of Feb. 6, 2009. Even before the release, the odds were heavily against the movie. However, as Han Solo would say, "never tell me the odds!"

The movie, which only garnered a limited release-it's only playing in New York City and Los Angeles-and had the budget of a film school project, centers around four friends in 1998 that plan to break into George Lucas' mythical Skywalker Ranch and steal a rough cut of what was perhaps the most anticipated movie in recent memory, "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace."

Not only is this a great premise to geek out-over, the movie has so many subtle moments that will make indoctrinated fans giddy. An example: the foursome find themselves in a hospital with a doctor played by Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia). When they are allowed to leave the hospital, one of the characters hugs Carrie Fisher and says, "I love you." In response, Carrie Fisher says "I know" reenacting that famous scene in "The Empire Strikes Back" where Leia finally declares her love for Han Solo right before he is frozen in carbonite. Classic.

The movie has various other references like that dispersed throughout. While the plot is pretty standard for a road trip movie, it is these references that lift the film above other movies like it. For instance, the gang makes a pit stop in Riverside, Iowa. Many won't get the reference right away, but if you know your Science Fiction, then you know that Riverside is the hometown of James Kirk, captain of the Enterprise on the original "Star Trek" series. There has long been a battle of words over which is superior between "Star Wars" and "Star Trek." It is both hilarious and gratifying to see this battle come alive on the big screen. When all is said and done, the movie truly celebrates being a complete and utter geek.If you are a geek, nerd or love "Star Wars" or science fiction in any way, shape or form, then go see this movie. If that isn't enough, the end of the movie features Kristen Bell in the gold bikini.

Artist: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Album: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Someone once said that there was nothing new under the sun. This hypothetical someone might or might not have been a nineties indie rock enthusiast. That someone may or may not have also been listening to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s self-titled album. The Pains of Being Pure Heart takes all the elements of some of the greatest underground rock bands from the previous decade—Belle & Sebastian, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus & Mary Chain, etc.—and craft an album so blatantly unoriginal that it just so happens to be remarkably fresh and exciting.

When My Bloody Valentine released Loveless, their magnum opus, they put one of the most original and most annoying musical genres ever on the map: shoegaze. For the uninitiated, shoegaze as a genre refers to the excessive use of a guitar’s tremolo bar guitar, heavily-sampled drum loops, and vocals that are so low in the mix that they fade somewhere into the background. Unfortunately, shoegaze has resurfaced somewhat into a new, even more horrid musical form known as ‘noise-pop’. For reference of this, go and listen to No Age and Crystal Stilts.

Needless to say, shoegaze can be used for good as it is on The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s self-titled debut. What My Bloody Valentine lacked most of the time—that pop sensibility, the ability to buoyantly transcend the obscurity of the noise—PoBPaH have flawlessly incorporated it into their sound to create a fuzzed-out jubilation that also manages to transcend its influences.

Most of the pop on the album comes from the dual male-female vocals of bassist Alex Naidus and keyboardist Peggy Wang-East. On the quirky “Young Adult Friction”, PoBPaH take a cue from Belle & Sebastian and establish less of a harmonizing relationship between vocalists and more of a dynamic point-counterpoint melody. With this style, they are able to create hooks that manage to pierce the fuzz

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is an incredibly blissful album, allowing its listeners to be transported back to the good old days of naïveté and unadulterated youth. Sings Naidus on “Teenager in Love”: “And if you made a stand/I’d stand with you until the end/But you don’t need a friend/When you’re a teenager in love with Christ and heroin.” Aptly named, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart represent exactly what their name implies: that being a kid is hard to do, but growing up is even harder. They celebrate youth in much the same fashion as MGMT did last year on their hit song “Time to Pretend”.

The album is hardly subtle in telling what its intentions or influences are. “Contender”, the album’s opener, begins with a blast of guitar feedback that leads right into a sugary, drum-less pop song that is no less immediate than the pounding drums and vibrant major chords of the subsequent track “Come Saturday”. To bookend the album, “Gentle Sons” ends with an epic two minutes of primitive drums and screeching reverb-drenched feedback.

On their debut full-length, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart channel their influences in such a derivative way that they are almost celebrating them. Instead of trying to conceal those derivations, they amplify them. It’s like they know what they’re doing is unoriginal and that revelation is precisely what makes The Pains of Being Pure at Heart so original. B+