Film Review: Funny Games (1997) by Michael Haneke (Spoilers)

How much therapy did this child actor need after starring in this movie?

An affluent couple and their little boy are held hostage in their summer home, the gates and locks installed to provide security ironically keeping them prisoner. They are terrorized and eventually murdered by a couple of clean-cut looking young men who appear -- at first -- to be quite normal except for the white gloves. Most of the violence takes place off-screen, which somehow makes it more unsettling.

Film Review: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006) Written & Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; Winner of Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006. (It beat out Pan's Labyrinth.)

I grew up during the Cold War, a time when Europe was sharply divided by the Iron Curtain and the idea of the Berlin Wall coming down was fodder for insane predictions touted by tabloids. Then the year after I graduated from college, European communism began to dissolve, and the Berlin Wall was leveled to the ground. Suddenly we found ourselves living in a drastically changed world.

Fall of the Berlin Wall, while East German Border Guard Looks On - photo from bbc.uk

The Lives of Others is a beautiful German film that explores life under East Germany's communist regime. The story opens in 1984. Secret Service Agent Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a ruthless interrogator, ambitious and single-mindedly devoted to ferreting out "enemies of socialism." For him, human nature is viewed through a very narrow lens, with no room for ambiguity.