If you haven’t experienced a Todd Solondz film yet, then brace yourself. You are in for some heady cynicism.

In many ways, The American Side has it all—crackling wit, crazy science, and dames as wicked as they are beautiful.

Susan Sarandon plays a recently widowed New York City woman who has relocated to sunny Los Angeles to live near her daughter and imposes her unasked-for advice on every single person she encounters.

The spirit of the Coen Brothers’ (arguably) best movie hovers over narrative entries in this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, with the director of one film even citing it as a direct influence.

Who really is Alton (who can shoot beams of light from his eyes) and why are so many people looking for him?

Some sort of alien invasion may be transpiring as a result of a meteor strike, but the characters are already peculiar enough to be fairly alien themselves. When weird things happen to weird people, it feels almost expected, rather than unsettling.

Hope Ann Greggory (Melissa Rauch), a bitter gymnast who once won an Olympic bronze medal for the U.S. team, is now wasting her life away in the sticks.

There are funny and heavily satirical moments of Hollywood excess and ennui. Think Stardust Memories with Bret Easton Ellis’s acid view of Hollywood. If some passages fly over viewers’ heads, there is still the breathtaking cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki.

A stylish, unique piece of speculative dystopian filmmaking, set in Brooklyn at some indeterminate time in the near future.