Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

Director: Todd Solondz
Writer:    Todd Solondz
Cast:       Heather Matarazzo, Victoria Davis, Christina Brucato

Insightful look at an unattractive 7th grader as she struggles to cope with un-attentive parents, snobbish classmates, a smart older brother, an attractive younger sister, and her own insecurities.

It is Todd Solondz' first major film and as is usual with his films it is filled with characters for which we won't feel any sympathy. A very dark comedy on bullying and the bullied.

Rating: 4/5

Dark Horse (2011)

Director: Todd Solondz
Writer:   Todd Solondz
Cast:      Jordan Gelber, Selma Blair, Christopher Walken
Romance blooms between two thirty somethings in arrested development: an avid toy collector who is the dark horse of his family  and a depressed woman on the rebound.

The problem with the film is that there isn't the freshness for the theme that I felt when I watched Solondz's Happiness. Its kind of already been done, albeit the unlikableness of the protagonist is almost unreal in this case.

Rating: 2.5/5

Happiness (1998)

Director: Todd Solondz
Writer:    Todd Solondz
Cast:       Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker, Jane Adams
Its brutal. Its like a Takashi film without the violence. I have seen it described as dark comedy, but its more like comic tragedy. Its unlike any other films I have seen where all the characters are unremarkable and very ordinary on the surface.

Its about three middle-class New Jersey sisters all having their problems with their families and sex lives. One of them is the loser kind, another the overbearing bourgeois kind and the third one a pretentious pornographic writer.

Rating: 4/5