Number 100 on the list is Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse starring Heather Matarazzo and Eric Mabius from
1995.
This is the only Solondz film on this list and the only one of his films I've enjoyed enough to consider it five star. Although it has the bleakness of his other work such as Storytelling or Happiness there's something about this tale of an ugly ducking striving to be liked by anyone that will pay her attention to which people can relate. Its heartbreaking at times to see Matarazzo's Dawn going about her life and being treated as more of an inconvenience by everyone including parents and teachers. I would consider it a positive that Solondz has never strayed away from his downbeat style of narrative in his later films and Welcome to the Dollhouse would be a perfect companion piece to his 2012 offering Dark Horse in which Jordan Gelber plays something of a male middle aged version of Dawn who is also resented by his parents and outshone by a spoilt younger sibling.
The downfall of Dark Horse is its last act which strays into the fantastical which also accounted for some of the many problems with the director's 2009 Life During Wartime. Dollhouse never flinches from a realistic portayal of life as a unliked, socially awkward outsider which most people have experienced themselves. Not me of course. How dare you?
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