Pursuit of Happyness, The

Goodness reduced to helplessness in the face of evil is the characteristic feature of the moral universe of today’s popular culture

Happiness, written and directed by Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Doll’s House), is a sort of twin of Neil Labute’s Your Friends and Neighbors. Both these young, independent filmmakers are reacting against Hollywood fakery and sentimentality by presenting us with horrifyingly funny looks at the sexual manners and mores of late-century America. What Jason Patric’s…

A wife’s Mission Impossible to bring hubby back from the war. You don’t suppose it could — possibly — fail do you?

Fierce Creatures by Robert Young and Fred Schepisi brings together again the four principal actors of A Fish Called Wanda, though not in their characters from that film. This is quite a different story—about an Antipodean tycoon presumably based on Rupert Murdoch called Rod McCain (Kevin Kline) who takes over a small zoo in England…

A celebration of the rich, multicultural tapestry that is Britain today whose sunny, funny approach to questions of cultural difference is perhaps just a tad overoptimistic.

Denys Arcand’s Decline of the American Empire, a sort of French-Canadian Big Chill, has been given a sequel that far out-classes the original