Stuart Bliss

Although its irony is often about as subtle as its title, Neil Grieve's black comedy Stuart Bliss captures some of the claustrophobia and panic of a slide into paranoia. Named employee of the month at his marketing agency, the stolid protagonist of the title (Michael Zelniker) sees his luck turn for the worse when his bored wife leaves and his company takes on a stockpile of Army-surplus geiger counters. Throw in a treacherous co-worker, visits from Jehovah's Witness types, and ideas of reference prompted by a televangelist and news reports of catastrophes, and Bliss soon is knocking down walls in search of the source of a ticking noise and stowing his mother in a homemade basement bomb shelter. At its best evoking the suffocating tone of Francis Coppola's The Conversation, Bliss unfortunately unravels with its hero, and its final apocalypse is less than revelatory. Screens at the Copley Place Monday, September 14 at 7:15 and 9:30 p.m. and Tuesday, September 15 at 2 and 5 p.m.

-- Peter Keough

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Film Festival Feature Films

| With Friends like These | Digging to China | Monument Ave. | Rounders | Lolita | God Said, 'Ha!' | My Son the Fanatic | The Mighty | Shattered Image | Gods and Monsters | Xui Xui: The Sent-Down Girl | Without Limits | Clubland | The Inheritors | The Celebration | Urban Ghost Story | The Boys | Living Out Loud | Stuart Bliss | The General | The Kindness of Strangers | Dancing at Lughnasa | Central Station | The Human Race | Double You Street | Oberwasser -- By U-boat to America | The Witman Boys | The Cruise | Confession of a Sexist Pig | Melting Pot |

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