Reviews

FESTEN centres around a family and invited guests gathering to celebrate their fathers 60th birthday. During the celebrations the eldest son delivers a speech that goes down like a turd in a swimming pool. The speech rips open an incestuous can of worms, which soon has Daddy choking on his birthday cake. Much alcohol is consumed which adds to the tense dinner atmosphere.

None more black comedy from those supposed no sense of humour socially stable Scandinavians proving that cultural stereotypes are just that, stereotypes ...and that even the grimmest subject matter can be treated with humour.... anyone fancy a comedy about sectarianism....?

Filmed according to the Dogme doctrine, FESTEN is a raw experience that shows that with a good story you don't need any pre production or much post for that matter. The Dogma vow of chastity requires that there should be no music unless it occurs where the scene is being shot, that the camera must be hand held and moving, and that there should be no special lighting. Despite this - or maybe because of it - FESTEN is an emotional family crisis film dealing with love, cruelty and racism and its a must see.

You might think that the Dogme restrictions would render FESTEN a bit bleak and amateurish, after all why would filmmakers want to return to these baked beans methods of production. SIMPLE! It works rather than polishing a turd of a story as so many films do. FESTEN is narrative driven and character led. 140 minutes of gripping drama-charming grotesque overbearing that sticks to you like s___ to a blanket.

Go and rent it now.

Happiness - which centres around the lives of three sisters - Joy who's permanently unlucky in love, Helen a successful poet whose next door neighbour is obsessed with her and phones to explain this in graphic detail and finally there's Trish who has it all, a big house, a couple of kids and a successful psychiatrist husband who himself harbours uncontrollable urges.

The sisters are all somewhat fractured of mind - for example Lara Flyn Boyle's character plays an author suffering writers block bemoaning the fact that she wasn't abused as a child that could lend her work some authenticity - so she's delighted when she gets an obscene phone from a one of the many fat ugly sex obsessed dysfunctioning American neurotics that seem to be this seasons slim sexy movie star successes. Happiness manages to be truly provocative and also madly comical at one and the same time... for instance I never thought I could feel sympathy for a paedophile or a bloke making obscene phone calls but with tact and courage Happiness confronts these modern folk devils.

Happiness is anything but; as the characters lives intertwine in the search for happiness they find only loneliness, obsession and some serious psychological problems. In particular the psychiatrists story is remarkable with performances second to none as he tries to explain to his son about his paedophile tendencies.

Happiness explodes some of the fear related misconceptions showing that repression is the oppression of our generation... as if an open mind is just that. Open and willing for some perverted notion to crawl right in...

Directed by Todd Solondz Happiness is a slice of American life that isn't normally dealt with this honesty, making it a compelling watch, which will both amuse and seriously disturb for its two hours and fifteen minutes running time. Happiness is a must see.

The usually outstanding Robert Rodriguez has chosen himself a bit of a turkey to helm this time with THE FACULTY, or as it should be called Invasion of the Breakfast Club Snatchers. The film deals with an overly stereotyped group of students from Herrington high, which does contain a jock, a prom queen and a drug peddling waster who are starting to realise that something strange is going on with their teachers.

You can see why Americans found 'Buffalo 66' challenging when you watch this junk as THE FACULTY is supposed to be all knowing asides to other horror films, blatantly stealing whole scenes from Cronenberg's classic remake of THE THING with an ensemble cast of Scooby Doo idiots like the dork, the jock, the Goth chick, the prom queen and a slacker drug dealer selling something called scat...SCAT?

The group find themselves as sole representatives for saving mankind from the threat of parasitic squid like creatures, battling them from the very halls of their school. Director Rodriguez has chosen to concentrate on the stupid teen idols instead of bringing his usual amount of enjoyable flair as previously seen in El Mariachi and Desperado.

I expected more than another series of self reverential segues and pop culture parodies from Rodriguez but the Hollywood desire to appeal to a broad audience demographic means that every character and plotline must be developed to the point of impotent sterility by a committee so you feel like you've watched this a thousand times before! Sadly a director like Rodriguez's who was once seen as being outside the Hollywood system are quickly absorbed into the moneyed mulch of the industry...'Anyone fancy a tale about five kids... ones a brain box, ones brawny, a gawky girl and a glamour queen and another one a shape shifting hundred foot hermaphrodite made of pig iron and candle wax.'

THE FACULTY'S version of American High school group rivalries is not half as scary as the real thing but probably more entertaining, just.

EXISTENZ where Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Allegra Geller, the ultimate game designer, who's testing her latest creation EXISTENZ on a group of willing volunteers .The game is played via a bio port in the body which gives you direct access to your central nervous system. An assassin intent on stopping Allegra and her game disrupts the demonstration. Allegra goes on the run with only a hopeless security guard played by Jude Law as protection.

Is it a game or reality? Is it science or human biology....? Cronenberg sicks up another slice of his visceral sexual organic sci fi horror this time utilising the tried and tested formula of virtual reality well actually tired and tarnished formula of virtual reality which suggest that Cronenberg himself may have lost the plot as we are taken through worlds within worlds is it real or is it fake.... fake or real... It's a filmmaker's conceit that lets him literally get away with murder...

I love Cronenberg's skewed vision of the world but somewhere after his classic remake of The THING he became somewhat self parodic and ever so slightly corporate in his filmmaking style - EXISTENZ suffers from too many international film star vignettes and too much lighting cameraman soft bury soundstage shot composition....

Directed by David Cronnenberg, EXISTENZ was like re watching his classic VIDEODROME, which was the last film he had a hand in with the writing of. So the ideas of penetrating flesh and technology run through both. Although not a patch on VIDEODROME, EXISTENZ is still a good watch as Cronnenberg makes the reality of life seems unreal and the illusion of the game seem real.

Directed by Larry Clark and written by Harmony Korine, KIDS is a disturbing look at a day in the life of Telly and Casper, a pair of sex obsessed teenagers, who spend their day stealing, doing drugs and of course having sex. Telly is a young lad who prefers even younger girls, preferable of the untouched variety. Casper on the other hand spends his day ripped on drugs and listening to Telly's tales of virginal conquests.

Everyone got the wrought iron authoritarian knickers in a twist but I found it quite endearing the way the respective girls and boys candidly and awkwardly talk about sex. Let's be honest, adolescents have always been crippled by their fascistic need to be cool, insular and diametrically opposed to adult norms and values.

Filmed in a documentary style with a very young looking cast, KIDS is an honest depiction of youth culture, with their: we're going to die anyway attitude. This film has caused controversy since its original cinema release and will no doubt continue being talked about by cultural historians for years to come-

The real issue is the old chestnut of whether critics can rationalise and intellectualise the issues here and whether others are merely affected by this film in a primal way... So is it prurient voyeuristic right wing alarmism dressed up as informed researched social commentary, an indictment of alienation or just teenage kicks 90's style in a rather well put together film or a chance to see Chloe Sevigny in the buff - you decide...

KIDS contains several relatively graphic sex scenes which all help deliver a powerful message - it's not a film for everyone and definitely not one for a romantic night in but it does highlight a problem that needs to be dealt with and talked about.

On the day of his wedding Kyle is looking tense, as the reverberations from his Stag weekend refuse to disappear. Things had started well for Kyle and his chums until one of them heads of to the bog for a drunken encounter with the stripper and accidentally impales her head on a coat hook, so should they call the police or take her corpse out into the desert and dispose of the body ?

After just 34 minutes it degenerates into utter terribleness and you hate all of them as they're stupid bickering idiots. And the scene when they're burying the victims - oh a masterclass in undynamic sweatingly bad omedy - what was John Faverue thinking after swingers ? Very Bad Things is a very black comedy but not a very good film, it does has it's moments as the five men freak out and argue over their situation but all the shouting eventually gets seriously irritating.

Christian Slater is as usual Christian Slater but Daniel Stern puts in a good show as a man wracked with guilt. You can imagine Slater and all the other sad fools congratulating themselves for being in such an twisted movie - REALLY BAD THINGS, REALLY BAD FILM MORE LIKE -