WICKED

Happy families are all alike, wrote a very wise man, but unhappy families are unhappy in a thousand different ways. Make that a thousand and one. Responding to an emergency call, police cruisers converge on the cul-de-sac where dwells the Christansens, a seemingly normal upper-middle-class suburban household – meaning they're crazier than loons and dysfunctional as all get out. A murder has taken place, and director Michael Steinberg leads the cinematic inquest, not simply into how one Christiansen got laid out deader than a lawn ornament but also into the disturbing state of the modern nuclear family, constantly undergoing the fission and fusion of marital infidelity, sibling rivalry, lust, envy vengeance and other domestic pursuits. Taking its cues from classical Greek mythology, film noir, Architectural Digest and pop art, WICKED manages to inject considerable humor into its account of dirty deeds and bad manners, and we're of the opinion that Martha Stewart Living would never approve of it. Take that as a recommendatioin.