Todd Solondz is back with WIENER-DOG, his own brand of sequel to Welcome/Dollhouse

I'm not at all sure I agree with so many critics who claim that the movies of Todd Solondz are misanthropic. The guy has a dark view of humanity, all right, and of life as it's lived by so many of us on this maybe-soon-to-be-uninhabitable earth. Yet the feeling I am left with, time and again after viewing his films, is one of sadness more than anger or hatred at our "miserable selves." (That his films are leavened with a lot of humor, black as it often is, also adds to their enjoyment level.) I'd call Solondz an angry humanist.

The filmmaker's latest outing into the land of the lousy is WIENER-DOG, which doubles as a kind of sequel to his first real indie hit, Welcome to the Dollhouse, which, among other things, put actress Heather Matarazzo on the map. But Solondz being Solondz (the filmmaker is shown at right), the film is very different from almost any sequel you'll have seen because its star, and the "link" that joins each of its segments, is an adorable little dachshund, the wiener-dog of the title. Functioning as a kind of all-purpose object upon which the humans that surround it can heap whatever nonsense they like (think maybe Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar, but -- heresy, I know -- Wiener-dog is the better movie), this little dog is something else.

Yes, we do encounter a grown-up version of Dawn Wiener (the character played in the original by Ms Matarazzo), and here she is performed by none other than the new indie queen (though now somewhat mainstream), Greta Gerwig, who becomes, as Ms Gerwig always manages to do with each new role, this character to an absolute T.

But we only spend a little time with the new Dawn, as in fact we do with all the characters that act as satellites to our Wiener-dog, who moves from owner to owner -- the first of which we is Solondz's typical suburban family ripe for rot. In this case that includes mom (Julie Delpy, below), dad (Tracy Letts) and little son (a lovely job by Keaton Nigel Cooke, above). Entitled, self-serving, lying, hypocritical and seriously deluded, mom and dad manage to just about decimate their sickly son's little dog.

From its nuclear (holocaust) family through Dawn and a traveling Mariachi Band (shown at bottom), then to a pair of young marrieds with Down Syndrome, our Wiener moves from person to person, place to place. Solondz doesn't always let us see or even learn how these folk are connected, nor does he need to. By now we've seen enough movies to know the "connection" ropes. And he is a skilled enough filmmaker to have each scene grab us with immediacy, force and often fun.

The filmmaker even provides his 90-minute movie with its own short but smart intermission, during which there's not enough time to go get popcorn but at least we hear a terrific little song during the break. And then we're back to business as our Weenie rests in the hands of a NY film school professor and would-be screenwriter (played with delightful manic perseverance but noticeably declining gusto by Danny DeVito). Solondz uses this section to make sweet and nasty fun of independent film, auteurs, education, Hollywood and more -- and for the one sublimely hilarious scene alone, in which DeVito and the school's head interview a prospective student, this movie is worth seeing.

Then our dog is whisked away to the lap of Ellen Burstyn (above), doing another of her recently fine round-ups of aging matriarchs (House of Cards, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You), on whom her granddaughter (Zosia Mamet, below) pays a call with her artist boyfriend (Michael Shaw) in tow. From each new owner, Wiener gets a new name but soldiers on, as ever. How our doggie becomes immortalized is, as they say, one for the books. But not, I think, for PETA people.

The movie is dark, ugly, sad, hugely comic and full of wonderful performances -- as you'd expect from a cast this good. Crowd-pleasing it ain't, but Mr. Solondz knows exactly what he is doing. Long may he grow angry, hold up that mirror to our foibles, and keep on filming them.

From IFC Films and Amazon Studios, Wiener-dog hit theaters last weekend in New York and L.A. and will opens here and there around the country this coming Friday, July 1. In South Florida, you can see it in Miami at the Bill Cosford Cinema and Miami Beach Cinematheque. Then on Friday, July 8, it opens in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters.

Thom Andersen's THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD debuts at Anthology Film Archives

Noted documentarian Thom Andersen calls his new work, THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD, "a personal history of cinema." Boy, is it ever. It is also, as will come as no surprise to those who love Andersen's work -- his Los Angeles Plays Itself, which I just watched for the second time in preparation for covering his new film, still holds up as the best documentary I've ever seen about my own home town -- so full of ideas, connections and sheer love of cinema that it should prove irresistible to any cinephile. Another terrific film of his, Red Hollywood, along with the rest of his work, will be shown during an Andersen retrospective that opens this Friday, June 3, at Anthology Film Archives in New York City.

Andersen, shown above, is smart and fast, bouncing around from film to film, period to period, in somewhat chronological order. He credits as his major inspiration (and quotes freely from) a French philosopher named Gilles Deleuze, whose work I do not know. (After seeing and enjoying Andersen's film, in which Deleuze is heavily used, I should find out more about this fellow and his writing.)

What, for TrustMovies, makes the documentary most unusual is that so many of the film clips used are new to me. They're not at all what I'm used to seeing. And even when they are sometimes better known, the way Andersen presents and juxtaposes them makes for thought-provoking, troubling and intellectually stimulating viewing.

From the silents, with their reflective faces (above and below), through talkies and into color (and finally a whiff or two of the musical), the filmmaker whisks us along. Suddenly we're seeing the bombing of North Korea ("No repentance. Not even an acknowledgment"), along with Hiroshima and Vietnam. "Did we have it in for the yellow race?" Andersen wonders. "The past," he notes, "must be redeemed." As always with this filmmaker, the sense of justice deferred comes across mightily.

We see Hitler visiting a conquered Paris and Maurice Chevalier singing Sweeping the Clouds Away. If only. There's a comparison of Hank Ballard and Chubby Checker and their Twists, and then a good portion devoted to the various types of comedy -- from Harry Langdon to Laurel & Hardy and The Marx Brothers.

Ah -- then we view some crime, which is so often "delivered up as a gift." And horror. And an odd-but-endearing tribute to a little know (by me, anyway) actor named Timothy Carey. And Brando, of course. Do you know who was Ludwig Wittgenstein's favorite actress? (I'm not telling: You'll have to see this film to find out.) We do see those amazing clips of Jack Smith's favorite star, Maria Montez.

Andersen himself owns up to loving Debra Paget (above) best of all. So did I, actually, along with early Joan Collins. (I thought Ms Paget was so gorgeous and sexy that I've often wondered why I didn't turn out a bit straighter.)  I'd also never seen the clip he uses of Paget dancing in a costume that seems awfully racy for its time.

The Thoughts That Once We Had grows ever better, crazier and more rapturous as it goes along. That search for justice continues, too. I think we even view, toward the end, Austrian journalist/novelist Joseph Roth reading in German? (No, it's not: See the welcome comment below this post.) And Christina Rossetti gets one of the last words -- if not the last visual.  Just as with Los Angeles Plays Itself and my favorite Demy, The Young Girls of Rochefort, I'll want to see this film again in a few years. Probably every few years. What a movie documentarian Mr. Andersen is!

His newest work, along with a retrospective of his other films, opens this Friday, June 3 and runs through Sunday, June 12, in New York City at Anthology Film Archives. You can find the complete schedule by clicking here. Los Angeles Plays Itself, by the way, is also available for DVD rental at Netflix. For awhile you could even stream it, though that option is no longer currently open. Maybe it'll come back again at some point. Meanwhile, get to AFA for a very good time in an intelligent, thought-provoking movieland.