Courtesy of New Yorker Films
Mathieu Amalric as Simon Kessler in "Heartbeat Detector."
I'm back from SXSW and checking in a bit late on the weekend's new films. Those of you eager to debate Michael Haneke's American remake of his diabolical 1997 mindfuck "Funny Games" -- a horror film equally devoted to attacking its own genre and alienating the audience -- should note that I reviewed it from Sundance, in a post that got buried under an avalanche of festival coverage. Seriously, if you've seen it, and have some thoughts, or a viable theory on the value of meticulously copying a 10-year-old movie whose shock value has necessarily dissipated, I'd love to hear feedback.
Speaking of movies that mess with your perceptions, can we slam the brakes on a calendar full of new releases, festival news, the historic triumph of the Blu-ray format and the imminent and total collapse of the American economy and talk about French director Nicolas Klotz's amazing "Heartbeat Detector"? (A limited release from New Yorker Films, it just opened at two New York theaters and may reach other cities before DVD release.) If you're a fan of Hitchcock, of Kubrick, of the kind of thriller that has the implacable mystery of great sculpture or great architecture, of movies that create their own visual, aural and symbolic universe and suck you bodily into them -- well, you've simply got to see this.