Wall
Displaying wall posts 1 - 30 of 43 in total
Matthew Martens
28Oct11
"All seems Infected that th' Infected spy, As all looks yellow to the Jaundic'd Eye." Solondz's bitterness is both curdling and cooling, at least on the evidence of this somewhat stilted, oddly sentimental fantasia upon the characters and themes of Happiness, his second and most fully realized exercise in the comedy of alienation and maladjustment. His giddy, queasy recoil from banality and evil still rings true.
Dalila likes this
Marissa Pironti likes this
Mathias Palmberg
10Aug11
OMG!!! What a load of rubbish. I enjoyed Happiness a lot and was intrigued by this follow-up upon hearing about it. After seeing it I feel cheated and disappointed. If anything, this movie is a testament to how a film maker should sometimes should leave certain things in the trash instead in realizing them.
msmichel
2Aug11
Interesting follow up to "Happiness" that may have been better titled "Forgiveness". Stunt casting aside Solondz has crafted a fine work here examining the strenuous facets of family; can we ever really be forgiven for our transgressions or is it better to be slowly forgotten? Allison Janney and Ciaran Hinds both excellent here. Found Sheedy and Henderson both miscast in comparison to 98 film.
Mike Koo
29Jul11
Treated as a stand-alone sequel to Happiness, we reunite with all the same characters but played by different actors. This signals a change and a fresh start for each character, each filled with remorse and guilt. Although the characters are now exposed and have moved on from Happiness, how much do we really identify and sympatheize with them?
Duncan Jones
17Jul11
Having threatened to do so with Storytelling, Solondz has created in this sequel-remake, a redemptive antithesis to Happiness. Through the baking heat of its aesthetic and performances of lesser caricature, save Sheedy's (admittedly excellent) impression of her predecessor, the film is granted a degree of realism that makes his macabre high comedy more difficult to dismiss as farce. If he's 'lost it', good riddance.
Adam Eisentrout
21Mar11
Solandz goes from shock to schlock. The once tight rope act of pitch black humor and sharp emotional resonance topples over the edge. Preachy, disactic, and artificial. Is Solandz parodying himself? If he is, it's never really funny or sad, just bad.
Joseph Sylvers
23Sep10
You need to have seen Hapiness to really get all the jokes in this film, and having seen them all I can say this is one of his most subdued and subtle but also accumulates allot of skills and techniques he's developed in the past. Forgiveness and "fresh starts" are the targets of Solondz this time around but sorrowful tragicomedy is still the order of things. Some unexpected dreamy moments that were nice too.
Ademption
5Sep10
I expected a black comedy. This was simply black: weepy gravitas and stilted dialogue alleviated a handful of times by mildly witty quips. All the best lines are in the trailer, and given by Mark, the systems analyst. "Life During Wartime" reminded me of Roy Andersson's work without incisive, static tableaux. The locations were well chosen, but the acting and bleak viewpoint didn't cohere past general miserablism.
matteo
8Aug10
"I miss my laserdisc collection". "Well, China is going to take over so all of this will does not matter in the end" "Pedophiles are terrorists". Todd Solondz's bitter-bitter un-follow up to Happiness has some of the best lines of the year. Forgive and forget, people. Forgive and forget.
Sarah Smith
30Jul10
Ouch...just saw this at the IFC Theater in NYC without a Q&A and 'Happiness' Screening, which would have made the experience SO much better. Completely agree with Christopher Smith. It had it's amusing moments but overall, in my opinion, this is his weakest film.
Natasha Subramaniam
29Jul10
I am not certain if my issue is more with Solondz's films or if it is with the audiences that hysterically laugh and seem to worship them... Finding humor in human suffering makes for interesting material, but I generally find his work (including Life During Wartime) a bit foul and always short of having any kind of depth or meaning.