Happiness
Directed by Todd Solondz. With Dylan Baker, Jane Adams, Lara Flynn Boyle, Jared Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cynthia Stevenson, Ben Gazzara, Elizabeth Ashley, Camryn Manheim
Devising a multi-charactered scenario as skilfully structured and executed as that of Short Cuts, writer-director Solondz strips bare the veneers of respectability, acceptability and cosiness which mask the secret lives of the drama's inter-connected characters in suburban New Jersey. Working with a remarkable ensemble cast, Solondz deals with infidelity, loneliness, obesity, marital break-up, rape and most unsettlingly, child sex abuse when the married psychiatrist, played by Dylan Baker, is revealed as an unrepentant paedophile. The ironically titled Happiness makes for riveting and challenging cinema.
Forces of Nature
Directed by Bronwen Hughes. Starring Ben Affleck, Sandra Bullock, Maura Tierney, Blythe Danner
Essentially a re-tread of the more amusing Planes, Trains & Automobiles, this contrived romantic comedy features Affleck as a buttoned-down young man about to fly home from New York to Savannah, Georgia for his wedding. Instead, he finds himself making a circuitous journey by road, reluctantly teaming up with an eccentric fellow traveller played by Bullock. The screenplay is flimsily plotted and there is zero chemistry between the two stars.
The Waterboy
Directed by Frank Coraci. Starring Adam Sandler, Kathy Bates
Coraci's low-budget, low-brow comedy, a huge success on cinema release, has the inexplicably popular Sandler recycling his speciality for playing stupid, this time as a gauche, backward 31-year-old who makes Forrest Gump seem like Bill Gates. The best thing about this puerile fare is the redoubtable Kathy Bates as his wildly possessive mother.