Rating: 
Summary: more like 4.5
Review: Quite a clever thriller, and one which adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Filmed in my hometown of Seattle!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't do it!
Review: Really -- don't buy or even rent this film. It's slow, boring, and so poorly acted, it appeared that the actors were reading their lines. I'm not kidding! I'm not a picky viewer, and can usually find something redeeming in any movie I watch, but this is really, really, unforgettably bad! Please, don't believe the other reviews -- believe ME -- don't waste your money!
Rating:
Summary: .
Review: Solid Mamet flick, MUCH better than the more recent 'Spanish Prisoner.' The performances are very good, the dialogue, while Mamet-esque, keeps itself reasonably in check, and some of the surprises are actually surprising.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing is as it seems
Review: The beauty of David Mamet's superb "House of Games" is that it keeps you guessing, right up until the end. The film is about con men, but it is Mamet's screenplay that pulls the real con, getting viewer thinking it is headed in one direction and then veering off somewhere else. This is what "The Sting" might have been like had it not been a comedy. The real strength of the film is in the performances, particularly the leads Lindsay Crouse and Joe Mantegna. The supporting cast are all from Mamet's theatrical company and they don't so much perform their roles as they inhabit them. Overall, this film proves that David Mamet is as good a film director as he is a playwrite.
Rating:
Summary: Lindsay Crouse and cast bring down the HOUSE!
Review: THE HOUSE OF GAMES is the kind of film that lingers with you long after you've turned your tv off and gone to bed. It's a deceptively small film that you might pass on (during a bout of insomnia and a round with the remote) unless you're familiar with the work of talented actress Lindsay Crouse. If you happen to be up the next time Showtime airs this little gem, don't give up the chance to see this. Its bleak, nightime moodiness is what makes the film stand out. To go into the story too much would spoil the set-ups and plot twists that transform the slow-moving beginning into one of the best con artist movies you'll ever see. In a sense, HOUSE OF GAMES is also a love story; after all, for many people, love is the greatest con of them all! Lindsay Crouse plays Dr. Margaret Ford, a psychiatrist actually interested in helping her patients. One of them is a woman who is dealing with the aftermath of murdering someone and the other patient is a man who's a compulsive gambler. Dr. Ford looks into helping her gambling patient pay off his debts and that is how she walks into a little place called House of Games and meets Mike (played by Joe Mantegna). Mike agrees to help her if she will "play" his girlfriend and take part in a poker game. He warns her about "tells" (clues poker players unknowingly provide that reveal their own hand in the game) and asks her to keep an eye on a fellow player in the card game in which he and his co-horts take part. To tell you anymore would ruin the surprises. If you bear out the slow beginning, you're in for a subtle treat. Lindsay Crouse's performance (what seems a very dry, unemotional persona is in fact a vulnerable, heart-breaking one) as a psychiatrist who needs help herself is chilling and unforgettable...
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the Price of the Rental
Review: The reviewers here seem to either love this movie or hate it. I found it dated, strained and somewhat predicitible (although reading reviews about the movie made it more predictible than it otherwise would have been.) It has a wonderful premise, and left me wanting to see a remake with all the excellent ideas incorporated more fully, and all of the stiltedness of the film left out. FYI this movie was catogorized in the "Horror" section of my local video store. It would have been more appropriate to classify it as "Suspense" There was nothing that would bother the squeamish.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the Price of the Rental
Review: The reviewers here seem to either love this movie or hate it. I found it dated, strained and somewhat predicitible (although reading reviews about the movie made it more predictible than it otherwise would have been.) It has a wonderful premise, and left me wanting to see a remake with all the excellent ideas incorporated more fully, and all of the stiltedness of the film left out. FYI this movie was catogorized in the "Horror" section of my local video store. It would have been more appropriate to classify it as "Suspense" There was nothing that would bother the squeamish.
Rating:
Summary: Inveiglers and the women who love them
Review: The script of "House of Games" probably has some of the most brazen plot twists and wicked undercurrents that I've seen in all of film. You'd almost think the director, David Mamet - who won a Pulitzer for a 1984 play - holds the audience in contempt, since the main character in the movie, a psychiatrist with a best-selling motivational book, experiences every deception and con with as little perspicacity as the viewer (unless you know what to expect). The movie is basically a study on ruses and truth. It's funny to see Dr. Ford being strung along by Byzantine plots throughout the film; but kind of disturbing to see how the experience has affected her in the end. The ploys perpetrated by the confidence men in the film should inspire some slack-jawed admiration and awe, even if there success in real life would be questionable. I think in certain works it is OK to accept these kinds of slightly dubious happenings if they further the thematic purpose of the film. I mean, how many people out there would really fall for Chance's unwitting façade in "Being There." I hold the opinion that "House of Games" would have been an even greater achievement as a book. It might be one of those films where reading its screenplay is superior to actually watching the final product. The direction is good from a layman's perspective, but there's a strange forced, muted quality to the actor's interactions. They talk to each other like, well, con men and ultra-professionals. The actors are told to perform in a way that doesn't appeal to me much, but maybe I'm missing the point. The doctor is a strong character - tough, competent, yet still with that hidden, unexplored crevice that cries out for genuine human affection and attachment. The warmer side of her personality is vital to the film's success because the audience couldn't identify with her if she was made of iron and never got hurt. It's also doubtful that she would have fallen into the long, convoluted trap that she did otherwise. The ending of the film is compelling and rather twisted, and probably created some good material for psychology term papers.
Rating: 
Summary: Great idea poorly executed
Review: The thing about House Of Games is that you're sure its lame until the last 30 minutes or so and after you've finished watching it, you still can't decide if you like it or not. Regardless, it doesn't hold up to repeated viewings. The horrible acting (especially from Mamet's then-wife Linsay Crouse) and stiff dialogue, along with the ill-advised lighting homage to film noir almost play into the "con" Mamet is playing on the viewer. Still, that doesn't make it *enjoyable* to watch. The theme of pairing pyschology with the con artist is loaded with potential. However, it is not explored enough. The scenes between the doctor and her patient are Ed Wood bad. Bad dialogue, bad acting, bad photography and, most of all, empty. Similarly, the scenes with Maria, the older shrink professor, are too obvious. The "Freudian slips" are just amateurish. There is no excuse for this, as these scenes can't be explained away by being ensconsed in the world of confidence games, where neither party has their guard down and may be trying to lead the other on. For more on this, read Mike Stone's review below. Overall, while the plot becomes clever in an unconventional way, there was way too much raw potential that went unrealized. The cons are somewhat obvious and lame. We know the "big con" before Maggie does and what she does from there isn't clever, but instead relies on the character development, which was pretty much nil up to this point. Mamet crowbars the subtle aspects of her character in there. Subtle as a flying mallet. And yet, he doesn't want to spend too much time on them (wisely) so he relies on singular scenes with the mental patient or her mentor Maggie and all I can say is these scenes are woefully lacking in all aspects. Good scene writing escaped Mamet in this movie. Not to mention any dialogue that rises above *painfully* bad. The script, in this sense, is its own worst enemy. The basic structure is fine, but the scene-to-scene execution is pitiful. Couple that with bad acting and (at times) cheesy cinematography and it's just too bad that a solid idea was so underdeveloped. I wish Mamet had done two things: (1) Revised the script a number of times and made it far better and (2) Let someone else direct it. He adapted the scrpit for The Verdict which was, in my opinion, a fine job of screenwriting. However, Sidney Lumet's direction and Newman's acting sent it over the top. I truly wish Lumet had directed this.
Rating:
Summary: perfectly nasty, nastily perfect
Review: There are films that are just plain nasty, like almost anything involving Quentin Tarantino. And there are films that are just plain perfect of their kind. And there are films that are just nasty enough to be genuinely disturbing, yet perfect of their kind. 'House of Games' is in this category for me, and I put it loosely in the same shoebox with 'The Usual Suspects' despite enormous differences of style and tone. House of Games is a terrific exploration of deception, detachment, and control in human interaction. What's the difference between a clinical psychologist who's a best selling self-help author, and a professional con artist? Not much, apparently. This film would be less disturbing if I were able to disagree more with this basic premise :-) The con artist and the psychologist both stand at a distance from their "patients" and analyze them; both watch for the "tell," the giveaway, the crack through which they gain an advantage and peer into the other person's secrets. Both have an agenda; the con artist is going to let you hang yourself by giving you a nice bit of silken rope, and the psychiatrist is going to "help" you, or at least pretend to help you, find peace or resolution. Both are guiding, nudging, pushing, tricking their "client" along, with deliberation, towards a goal. Both trade on the confessional urge in people, the need for connection, the hunger for sympathy. Both make their living off the unhappy, the desperate, the lonely -- and a good living it is, too. There is so much going on in this film that I felt rather tired after watching it. There's the truism that psychiatrists are seldom very healthy people themselves -- it takes a rather cold and calculating personality to survive this kind of work, and that's a personality that peeps out from behind the surface respectability and professional pseudo-warmth of our female protagonist. It's hard to forget the deadpan, affectless authority with which she instructs a disturbed patient to "put the gun down"; there is not a trace of fear in her eyes, no indication that she is not in perfect control of him and of the situation. Already the viewer must be wondering what kind of person this is. There's a truism that street smarts will always beat rich-kid smarts; and this cliche' plays out at first predictably, but then gets overturned. Who's outwitting whom here? At first, our con man is calling all the shots. But his victim is also his protege'e -- in fact, his pretence of making her his apprentice and showing her how it's done, has caught up with him. She really *has* learned, as he finds out to his cost; she started out ignorant, but she's smart and she learns fast. Mamet surprised me several times in the course of the film; by the time when, considerably later, the red convertible drives away leaving our protagonist desolate by the side of the road, I knew what was up. But up until that point I had the fun of being surprised more than once; this is not a one-trick film with a slow buildup like U.S., but a magic show with one card trick after another. This film was recommended to me highly by a feminist friend despite the obvious "problem" plot: strong, competent, successful professional woman makes idiot of self over masochistic, romantic obsession with wily, low-class grifter. The "rich independent woman is really a needy, pathetic little girl yearning to be dominated by lower class stud" theme is boring as well as offensive, and if that were all there was here, it would be a flick to miss. What rescues this film from being another 'Swept Away' (or any other D.H. Lawrence dittohead effort) is that our female anti-hero is in fact not pathetic, and not really needy. She may be temporarily dazzled by body chemistry and the promise of adventure and romance, and there's a lingering longing in her heart for the love and approval of a (hinted) brutal father. But there's a cool sociopathic core to her personality which makes her a match for the hardened criminal she's keeping company with. People have criticized L.C.'s acting, and she is a bit wooden, but I think in this case her woodenness works: it expresses the fatal flaw in her character's personality, a lack of affect, an emptiness, a coldness at the heart. This is imho a lovely, nasty sendup of the genre theme "protagonist undergoes adventure and discovers True Self." Our protagonist has a wild adventure and she does indeed discover her True Self. And what a self it is. Perhaps Mamet's suggesting that it would be just as well if some of us never discover our inner nature :-) In fact, I don't know exactly what Mamet's suggesting here; rather than a message, a moral, or a motto, this film is a character study, a candid portrait of two characters locked in a power struggle from which only one can walk away. In general I don't enjoy movies about characters who are all dislikeable. Perhaps it's a tribute to that genius which everyone ascribes to Mamet, that this film about two very amoral, quite unpleasant people is so fascinating; it isn't just the clever matryoshka plot that kept me glued to it, it's the dreadful unravelling of a character which at the beginning was apparently integrated with the world, positively engaged, even beneficial; and by the end has reverted, *happily*, to pure predator. The most powerful scene in the film, for me, was the moment when our damp, bedraggled anti-heroine sneaks into the House of Games one last time, to see the whole cast assembled and reviewing the con. On the table you can see her "file" scattered -- her book, reviews, newspaper clippings, all the research they did on her to discover who she was and how to play her. Just like her files on her patients... As she glimpses this, she hears her quondam lover quip lightly that sleeping with her was "a small price to pay" for the cash they tricked out of her; and with this casual cruelty you can see her education is complete. I could describe House of Games as a brutal variation on the Pygmalion story; in fact the play 'Pygmalion' by GBS has a somewhat similar, though less noir, ending; the girl educated (and bullied) by a condescending and patronizing master profits by her education to defy him and leave him behind. In House of Games, chilly and very noir indeed, he's left behind dead, and unmourned either by the viewer or our anti-heroine. Perhaps the greatest riddle of this film is why it's so damned fascinating. One can make a film about evil people easily enough, and most such efforts are merely unpleasant or outright revolting ('Very Bad Things' comes to mind as something I would never voluntarily sit through again). But in House of Games, Mamet has managed to fascinate the viewer with the same promise his con man uses to lure in the prey: come on in, and we'll let you see behind the scenes. We'll show you how it's done, and you'll be in the know instead of just one of the damn-fool public. And you know, it works. We really do want to know which one of these smart, amoral, predatory people is going to win in the end. Think of it as "Survivor" for intelligent audiences. And perhaps worry a little, about how captivating it really is.
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