Happiness 

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All great writers are capable of one thing: making an audience relate to a horrifyingly unsympathetic character. If you can believe that Todd Solondz has made the misfiring synapses of a secret pedophile into something you may understand, then you'll also believe that Solondz may be the finest independent filmmaker currently at his craft. His "Happiness" is funny, wrenching, heartbreaking and belligerently good.

Now before everyone gets scared away by the pedophile angle, remember that it is only one story in a movie full of different arcs; three sisters (Jane Adams, Cynthia Stevenson and Lara Flynn Boyle) are all sisters who are living in various stages of denial, each trying to become "happy" through whatever means at their limited disposal. Boyle is a successful writer who longs for something visceral in a life full of artifice. Adams, pegged early on as the "loser sister," jumps from one job to the next in a quest for meaning. And Stevenson, reprising her role as the grin-and-bear-it mother from "Home For the Holidays," is about to learn her husband's darkest of dark secrets. The scene where Dylan Baker, husband and father, confesses his sins to his son, is alone worth the trip to the Rialto.

Sound depressing? Probably. But Solondz's genius lies in threading all these stories together in a way that is so accurate, so dead-on, that you'll find yourself smiling—and even laughing—during some incredibly inappropriate moments. Turning in another great performance is Philip Seymour Hoffman (the chunky redhead guy from "Boogie Nights"), who manages to be the most hilariously boring and pathetically masturbatory character in recent film. How on earth Solodndz manages to weave all of their tales into a fascinating fabric is a miracle of macrame—this one will stick with you long after the credits flicker away.

—Ian Williams

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