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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.