This week, our calendar was filled with press screenings for The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art New Directors/ New Films series, which gave Marcy a chance to see two of my Berlinale favorites, Wonderful Town and Megane. (ND/NF officially runs from March 26 to April 6.) We also caught an early screening of Priceless, a frothy comedy with Amelie's Audrey Tautou set on the French Riviera, which opens next week.

But back to this weekend: of today's releases, we reviewed Heartbeat Detector, a corporate thriller with Mathieu Amalric, and the hippie nightclub documentary Wetlands Preserved. Also opening today are Funny Games and Blind Mountian.

Funny Games
Michael Haneke's shot-for-shot remake of his own 1997 film Funny Games stars Naomi Watts, Michael Pitt (pictured above), and Tim Roth. The twisted thriller about two psychopaths who invade a country home wags a punishing postmodern finger at its own audience. Marcy and I both found the film effectively disturbing but also condescending. We have to agree with J. Hoberman: "Professional obligations required that I endure it, but there's no reason why you should." At Scanners, Jim Emerson compares the trailers for both versions, and a lengthy discussion of Haneke ensues.

Blind Mountain
At New York's Film Forum, Li Yang's Blind Mountain opens. The beautiful Huang Lu plays a young woman who is tricked into visiting a remote village where she is held prisoner and married off to a local. Nicole Kidman is similarly enslaved in Lars von Trier's Dogville, but the setting and textures of Blind Mountain are far richer. "A reminder that art sometimes keeps the truth alive far better than the news," Manohla Dargis writes in the New York Times. [posted by Jürgen]