Welcome to Suburbia

The White Flight suburban dream of the two-car garage and immaculately maintained yard was never wholly without its discontents and detractors, but in the 1990s, when the Gen X children of America’s Levittowns were of an age to make films, the exposés of the sordid underbelly of suburbia came hot and heavy, with New Jersey native Todd Solondz leading the charge. To accompany the 20-year anniversary (and new restoration) of Solondz’s Palindromes, Welcome to Suburbia offers a selection of films set against a backdrop of strip malls, high school football fields, backyard barbecues, and smothering malaise, including poison pen letters to the ’burbs from Sofia Coppola, Terry Zwigoff, Gregg Araki, Gus Van Sant, and other observers of the utopian and dystopian particularities of the bedroom community.