Happiness Is the Pick of the Week

New Jerseyan Todd Solondz is the anti-Woody Allen, meaning that although his characters on the outside are people with intellect, capability, and feeling, they are incredibly fucked up on the inside. He started this audacious storytelling with his squirmy 1995 Sundance-winning debut Welcome to the Dollhouse, but I think he reached his uneasy streak with his 1998 nightmarishly funny and deeply disturbing masterpiece Happiness.

Always included on my favorite films (ever since first viewing), the film centers on a middle-class family, three vastly different sisters (Jane Adams, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Cynthia Stevenson), their separated parents (Ben Gazzara and Louise Lasser), and the people in their orbit, including an angry prank caller (the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman), an all-American everyman dad who is actually a pedophile (Dylan Baker), a lonely young neighbor with a chilling secret (Cameron Manheim), and a Russian student who is a liar and thief (Jared Harris). They all have different flaws and try to cope with them in the only way they can. But in the end, they all share the same common desire, to be loved.

The title of the film is ironic because no one (even the child characters) is even remotely happy; they just think they are. Solondz leaves no stone unturned and doesn’t let anyone off the hook. I think this one and his other works have managed to remain in the cinematic conversation for so long is because they suggest that we all behave badly in the need for love and the things we want. They make us uncomfortably laugh and recoil in equal measure. The one major thing they really do is that they reveal the dark reality of humanity, whether we want to admit it or not.

Making its long-awaited debut on both Criterion 4K UHD and Blu-ray, the supplements seem very sparse, but they still sound informative nonetheless. They include a new conversation between Solondz and filmmaker Charlotte Wells, a new interview with Baker, and trailer. There’s also a new essay by by screenwriter and novelist Bruce Wagner.

If you love black comedies (especially ones about flawed people) and Solondz in general, then this is the release for you.

Other releases:

Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy (Criterion 4K UHD & Blu-ray): daring and unique queer filmmaker Araki’s highly charged trilogy of sex, drugs, and absolute transgression. Includes Totally F***ked Up, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere.

Longlegs 4K UHD & Blu-ray (NEON): A chilling, serial-killer movie starring horror queen Maika Monroe as an FBI Agent who is assigned to an unsolved case that reveals evidence of the occult. Also starring Nicolas Cage.

The Ladykillers 4K UHD + Blu-ray (Kino): Classic British comedy about a gang of thieves who rent a room from an old woman, who thinks they’re a musical band. The woman inadvertently gets mixed up in their scheme without realizing it, so the gang decides on whether or not to kill her, which grows difficult considering they all become fond of her.

A Prairie Home Companion (Warner Archive): Legendary director Robert Altman’s final film about the backstage drama during the last broadcast of America’s most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys, a country music siren, and a host of others hold court.