Excellent, a Must See

Am I Missing Something?

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

As a big fan of foremost Happiness and Storytelling, I'm very disillusioned about the fact that Todd Solondz may never make great films like those again. This was a disappointment, but not exactly a shock after the gloom of Palindromes.I'm not sure if this is really supposed to be a sequel to Happiness in the normal sense, but yes, a lot of the characters from that one are back. Sadly Solondz has turned Joy from a half dysfunctional "loser" to a freak, and every scene with her is pretty unbearable. The dad from the first film has also changed a lot, but that makes sense seeing how he's been in prison for years when the film starts.Palindromes sort of drowned in gloom and repulsion. LDW isn't quite the same but it's still bleak, and often creepy. At times it borders to psychological thriller.I have to respect Solondz for making a philosophical effort, but if there was a specific point with the story, I didn't quite get it. There's the subject of fear and hysteria in the U.S all over, but other than that, I didn't get that much out of it. All in all it was like a (expectedly) weirdish film with a lot of darkness and absurdity. Happiness and Storytelling were dark but also very funny and balanced with a sort of pleasantness that I just can't see here. It's like a long nightmare.Before Palindromes Solondz was to me possibly the greatest living director. I REALLY hope he either gets back to his old form or tries out something new that works better.

You keep seeing words like "disappointing", "pretentious", "not very entertaining". No, that isn't the right word, this is a truly awful movie, with many scenes of incredibly poor acting, bad camera angles, a dreadful plot that is purely vulgar for the sake of being vulgar. Remind you of a lot of movies lately? I've seen plenty of bad movies, ones where I felt like I wanted my $1-14 back, or where I wanted the back the time I had wasted watching it. This movie I want my money back, my time back, and to erase it from my memory. The most uncomfortable thing about this movie is realizing how far the movie industry has fallen, and my country with it that this is the kind of thing that passes for art.

I would really like to see Todd Solondz produce something on the level of WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE or HAPPINESS again but I'm afraid that I'll just have to settle for watching those earlier works. To be fair, I don't know what he could have done with the characters from HAPPINESS that would have worked better. I revisited HAPPINESS before seeing LIFE DURING WARTIME to refresh my memory. That film crackles throughout with uneasiness. When we laugh, it's to release tension. It's not the cast's fault that this film lacks the same punch. While unrated in the US, my guess is that this would have received a PG-13 or an R for a few exposed breasts. HAPPINESS would have been NC-17 for sure. HAPPINESS was about getting whatever happiness one can no matter the cost to others. This is a film about forgiving and forgetting and moving on. I can certainly forgive Todd Solondz for what he tried to achieve here even as the film fades from memory.

Movies directed like this should be injected with a small dosage of depth and purpose, so as to let viewers find the meaning of the movie themselves as supposed to being hit in the face with the same "meaningful" messages time after time.Pretending, becoming a man, forgiving and forgetting, these are all points of interest thrown about the film with all the subtly and grace of a blunt axe. These concepts are deep and could have been put of as so if done differently but alas, they were not and so you are now looking at a weak, watered down, and pretentious version of the Coen brothers movie "A Serious Man" which, while odd and somewhat awkward, understands subtly.The acting was not "bad", I actually think the whole cast did quite well considering what they had to do. How can a little boy swearing at random and speaking about forgiveness in such a tone as he did be considered believable? How can a mother talk about "getting wet" to her son seem like a real mother? Granted, mothers have moments of being inappropriate, but come now, let's not push it.Perhaps I am missing something and this is a good film, but I left this movie thinking nothing but, "Shocking and forward, but not artistic and certainly not deep."