Much media has been made about suburban malaise, that specific experience resulting from achieving the American dream. For most of us out here struggling, it may seem like the quaint complaint of those lucky enough to have time for existentialism. But Todd Solondz surgically removes the navel-gazing and replaces it with a horrific but sort of moving black comedy in this portrait of three sisters. Trish, ostensibly the success story, is a housewife married to a pedophilic psychiatrist. Said doctor’s depressive patient Philip Seymour Hoffman makes blue phone calls to second sister Helen, a glamorous poet, and third sister Joy is an aimless aspiring singer-songwriter (the heart of the bunch) bumbling through jobs and men. Solondz renders the normal as profoundly off in this uncomfortably hilarious comedy. – Lina Fisher
