Get Miserable, Everybody: New Trailer For Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime

Admittedly, Life During Wartime's U.K. trailer -- its first overall -- is coming at you a little tardy after first making its rounds late Wednesday. But the truth is that every Movieliner but me fell ill with misanthropy after more than a few minutes contemplating Todd Solondz's latest, and I'm only now getting to the updated file on misery-cinema's Patient Zero. And what have we here? Well, it involves people being cruel, clearly. And talk of China. And... it's quite possibly terminal.

Billed as a quasi-sequel to Solondz's Happiness, this new one does in fact raise the question of how a true standard-bearer of feel-bad film follows his masterpiece. Experimentally at best, I suppose (Palindromes), self-parodically at worst (Storytelling) and, right in the middle, this safe return to interwoven narrative featuring unexpected actors (Paul Reubens, Charlotte Rampling) saying horrible things and slightly more-expected actors (Ciarán Hinds, Allison Janney) saying vaguely profound things. And kids -- always kids, confronted with the abject, predatory suffering of their elders, or growth-stunted in some sibling sh*tshow.

If you know and appreciate Solondz, this 2:25 taste presupposes that you know what you're getting. Not only that, but it also hints you don't even need to know what it's about. The contrast of South Florida pastel colors and pitch-black tone should take care of everything. (Luckily you'll have your mind made up before the closing theme song makes you cringe.) For the rest of you, sorry to wind down your day on a depressed note. Here: Watch nine drunk celebrities give interviews! OK, never mind.

VERDICT: Shop around. You can always come back.

[via The Playlist]