Wiener-Dog

To devoted fans of proudly unconventional filmmaker Todd Solondz, it will hardly come as a surprise that his latest darkly comic exploration of modern man’s failings and flailings dispenses with any cheap sentimentality. True to his unique, discomfiting vision, Solondz once again shocks and awes in this drama that strings together vignettes anchored around the misadventures of an adorable dachshund. With this, his eighth feature, Solondz’s jaundiced view extends not just to humans, but canines, too. In these unpredictable tales, jarring behavior and events tangle up a gallery of characters—from a young cancer- urvivor (Keaton Nigel Cooke) coping with overbearing, self-involved parents (Julie Delpy and Tracy Letts) to an unhinged screenwriter (Danny DeVito),who is finally going to get noticed for all the wrong reasons to a crabby grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) full of regrets for her life. Greta Gerwig appears as a grownup version of Welcome to the Dollhouse‘s Dawn Wiener, calling forth memories of Solondz’s notorious breakthrough while underlining that his twisted humor and dim view of the human condition remain intact. —Randy Myers