At times brilliant and insightful, at times repellent and false, Happiness is director Todd Solondz's multi-story tale of sex, perversion and loneliness. Plumbing depths of Crumb-like angst and rejection, Solondz won the Cannes International Critics Prize in 1998 and the film was a staple of nearly every critic's Top 10 list. Admirable, shocking, and hilarious for its sarcastic yet strangely empathetic look at consenting adults' confusion between lust and love, the film stares unflinchingly until the audience blinks. But it doesn't stop there. A word of strong caution to parents: One of the main characters, a suburban super dad (played by Dylan Baker), is really a predatory paedophile and there is more than an attempt to paint him as a sympathetic character. Children are used in this film as running gags or, worse, the means to an end. Whether that end is a humorous scene for Solondz or sexual gratification for the rapist becomes largely irrelevant. Happiness is an intelligent, sad film, revelatory and exact at moments. It's also abuse in the guise of art. That's nothing to celebrate. --Keith Simanton
One is from a Northern industrial family one from a Southern plantation family. They're West Point graduates whose tried-and-true loyalty helps them survive the Mexican-American War. But their bond faces sterner tests. The issues dividing North and South can also set friend against friend. John Jakes' bestseller about the pre-Civil War decades thunders to the screen in a lavish six-part miniseries presented by award-winning executive producer David L. Wolper. In all 140 actors num
Season Two of the epic saga of the South Carolina Main family and the Pennsylvanian Hazards. In the fateful year 1861 began a war which was to tear America apart and which threatened to destroy the lives of the Hazard and Main clans. Friend fights friend brother stands against brother as the two families once bound by friendship and love are now on opposite sides of the bloody conflict.
Narrow Edge
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