At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.
Director:
Guillermo del Toro
Stars:
Sally Hawkins,
Octavia Spencer,
Michael Shannon
Competitive ice skater Tonya Harding rises amongst the ranks at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, but her future in the activity is thrown into doubt when her ex-husband intervenes.
Director:
Craig Gillespie
Stars:
Margot Robbie,
Sebastian Stan,
Allison Janney
A young African-American visits his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.
Director:
Jordan Peele
Stars:
Daniel Kaluuya,
Allison Williams,
Bradley Whitford
In May 1940, the fate of Western Europe hangs on British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Adolf Hitler, or fight on knowing that it could mean a humiliating defeat for Britain and its empire.
Director:
Joe Wright
Stars:
Gary Oldman,
Lily James,
Kristin Scott Thomas
Set in 1950's London, Reynolds Woodcock is a renowned dressmaker whose fastidious life is disrupted by a young, strong-willed woman, Alma, who becomes his muse and lover.
Director:
Paul Thomas Anderson
Stars:
Vicky Krieps,
Daniel Day-Lewis,
Lesley Manville
Set over one summer, the film follows precocious six-year-old Moonee as she courts mischief and adventure with her ragtag playmates and bonds with her rebellious but caring mother, all while living in the shadows of Walt Disney World.
Director:
Sean Baker
Stars:
Brooklynn Prince,
Bria Vinaite,
Willem Dafoe
When Greg Sestero, an aspiring film actor, meets the weird and mysterious Tommy Wiseau in an acting class, they form a unique friendship and travel to Hollywood to make their dreams come true.
A young blade runner's discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard, who's been missing for thirty years.
Christine "Lady Bird" MacPherson is a high school senior from the "wrong side of the tracks." She longs for adventure, sophistication, and opportunity, but finds none of that in her Sacramento Catholic high school. LADY BIRD follows the title character's senior year in high school, including her first romance, her participation in the school play, and most importantly, her applying for college. Written by
Dehlia
During a November 2017 interview on the NPR program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," Gross asked Greta Gerwig why she chose the nickname "Lady Bird" for her main character when most Americans (Gross included) were likely to then assume that the movie was about Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson, the wife of President Lyndon Johnson. Gerwig responded that the Johnson connection didn't occur to her while she was writing the screenplay, though she did admit that she later realized it was a source of confusion for many viewers, especially in Texas (where the Johnsons were from). Gerwig told Gross that she wasn't altogether sure where the name "Lady Bird" came from and that it was "one of the things that's so mysterious about writing," but that after she had written the script, she remembered a Mother Goose nursery rhyme, "Ladybird, ladybird / Fly away home / Your house is on fire / And your children all gone." Gerwig speculated that the poem "had lodged itself somewhere in my brain." See more »
Goofs
When Lady Bird's flight is taking off, the new Terminal B at Sacramento International Airport can be seen in the background. That terminal opened in 2011; the scene takes place in 2003. See more »
One year ago, no one on the earth could have foretold that the next female Oscar BEST DIRECTOR nominee would be Greta Gerwig (the fifth overall after Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola and Kathryn Bigeolow, the only winner), not even Ms. Gerwig herself, if I may presume, yet, miracle transpires in the form of LADY BIRD, Gerwig's solo feature directorial debut (previously she co-directed the Independent Spirt Awards nominated mumblecore NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS 2008 with Joe Swanberg), an effervescent coming-of-age story takes place in her hometown Sacramento.
Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Ronan) is a senior student in a Catholic high school, the film roughly covers her last year before starting her tertiary education, "Lady Bird", a named given to her by herself, has a headstrong streak written in her genes, like gazillions of other pubescent spirits peopled around our globe, she revolts against her quibbling mother Marion (Metcalf), and at the same time, desperately seeks for the latter's validation, she wants her mother to like her (as a person), not just love her (because she is her daughter), a sagacious point poignantly reverberates with audience in its universality and intimacy, and the truth is, there are many such sensible touches populated in Gerwig's stimulating script, which can be partially accounted for LADY BIRD's runaway success, because empathy and amenity are like ambrosia, really as scarce as hen's teeth under the designation of "chick flick".
Lady Bird embraces the "me against the whole world" scenario with brio and chutzpah, throwing back talk both at home and at school in order to snatch the evanescent one-upmanship, and makes erroneous choices in her romantic quests, both Danny (Hedges, unexpectedly versatile in projecting a tenderness that is contrarian to his braggadocious Oscar-nominated turn in MANCHESTER BY THE SEA 2016) and Kyle (Chalalmet, what a killjoy!) are anticlimactic episodes, the one with whom she attends the high school prom is actually her best friend Julie (Steffans), romance is transitory, but friends are for life, another lesson learned after her inept hobnobbing with the popular (yet vacuous) gal Jenna (Rush) in order to catch the attention of the cool boy Kyle.
All in all, the most intense bond is of course, the familial one, on her pursuance of severing the umbilical cord, Lady Bird eventually comes to terms with her christened name, her modest, imperfect family, her benevolent and supportive father Larry (a heartwarming Letts) is laid off and has been combating depression for a long time; her double-shift engaged nurse mother Marion's constant nitpicking just mirrors her own apprehension that she couldn't help her daughter to become the best version of herself in spite of the fact that she has maxed herself out. TV and stage veteran Laurie Metcalf is given a rare opportunity to shine on the bigger screen to epitomizes an ordinary mother's broader spectrum of parenting angst and she kills it, not just in that tear-jerking car-roving moment.
Time and again, Saoirse Ronan vanishingly conceals her ethnic traits and flawlessly transmogrifies herself as a flawed American teenager in this Bildungsroman, a fiery but sensitive, opinionated yet good-natured girl who only finds what home and family means when she finally flutters away on her own. Greta Gerwig's LADY BIRD is a rewarding, uplifting and funny passion project equipped with heart, brain and felicity, one simply hope these fantastic characters will be kept in Gerwig's next directorial outing, as we are compelled to wonder what will happen next to the extraordinary Lady Bird and her family.
35 of 43 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
One year ago, no one on the earth could have foretold that the next female Oscar BEST DIRECTOR nominee would be Greta Gerwig (the fifth overall after Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola and Kathryn Bigeolow, the only winner), not even Ms. Gerwig herself, if I may presume, yet, miracle transpires in the form of LADY BIRD, Gerwig's solo feature directorial debut (previously she co-directed the Independent Spirt Awards nominated mumblecore NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS 2008 with Joe Swanberg), an effervescent coming-of-age story takes place in her hometown Sacramento.
Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Ronan) is a senior student in a Catholic high school, the film roughly covers her last year before starting her tertiary education, "Lady Bird", a named given to her by herself, has a headstrong streak written in her genes, like gazillions of other pubescent spirits peopled around our globe, she revolts against her quibbling mother Marion (Metcalf), and at the same time, desperately seeks for the latter's validation, she wants her mother to like her (as a person), not just love her (because she is her daughter), a sagacious point poignantly reverberates with audience in its universality and intimacy, and the truth is, there are many such sensible touches populated in Gerwig's stimulating script, which can be partially accounted for LADY BIRD's runaway success, because empathy and amenity are like ambrosia, really as scarce as hen's teeth under the designation of "chick flick".
Lady Bird embraces the "me against the whole world" scenario with brio and chutzpah, throwing back talk both at home and at school in order to snatch the evanescent one-upmanship, and makes erroneous choices in her romantic quests, both Danny (Hedges, unexpectedly versatile in projecting a tenderness that is contrarian to his braggadocious Oscar-nominated turn in MANCHESTER BY THE SEA 2016) and Kyle (Chalalmet, what a killjoy!) are anticlimactic episodes, the one with whom she attends the high school prom is actually her best friend Julie (Steffans), romance is transitory, but friends are for life, another lesson learned after her inept hobnobbing with the popular (yet vacuous) gal Jenna (Rush) in order to catch the attention of the cool boy Kyle.
All in all, the most intense bond is of course, the familial one, on her pursuance of severing the umbilical cord, Lady Bird eventually comes to terms with her christened name, her modest, imperfect family, her benevolent and supportive father Larry (a heartwarming Letts) is laid off and has been combating depression for a long time; her double-shift engaged nurse mother Marion's constant nitpicking just mirrors her own apprehension that she couldn't help her daughter to become the best version of herself in spite of the fact that she has maxed herself out. TV and stage veteran Laurie Metcalf is given a rare opportunity to shine on the bigger screen to epitomizes an ordinary mother's broader spectrum of parenting angst and she kills it, not just in that tear-jerking car-roving moment.
Time and again, Saoirse Ronan vanishingly conceals her ethnic traits and flawlessly transmogrifies herself as a flawed American teenager in this Bildungsroman, a fiery but sensitive, opinionated yet good-natured girl who only finds what home and family means when she finally flutters away on her own. Greta Gerwig's LADY BIRD is a rewarding, uplifting and funny passion project equipped with heart, brain and felicity, one simply hope these fantastic characters will be kept in Gerwig's next directorial outing, as we are compelled to wonder what will happen next to the extraordinary Lady Bird and her family.