`Storytelling'.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Only in a Todd Solondz movie would a character ever say "You've become kind" and mean it as an insult. Solondz is the controversial writer-director/misanthrope whose breathtakingly bleak films also happen to be comedies. He managed to find great, discomfiting humor in the story of a 12-year-old girl ("Welcome to the Dollhouse") who was the target of everyone's merciless bullying (including her own family) or in his look at suburban angst ("Happiness") personified, in part, by a pedophile who preyed on his son's friends.

There are more than a few similarly ugly laughs to be had in "Storytelling," Solondz's latest attempt to simultaneously mock and champion the …