Lady Bird (2017)

Jack and I loved this tale of a rebellious Sacramento Catholic-high-school senior bickering with her mother and figuring out her life. Saoirse (SEER-sha) Ronan is transcendent as Christine "Lady Bird" and we don't doubt for a minute that she's 17 or 18 (it begins in September 2002), though she's now 23 and, in her Oscar-nominated performance in Brooklyn she played 23 and older as time passed. As Lady Bird's mother Marion, Laurie Metcalf (best known for 221 episodes of Roseanne as Roseanne's sister, she's done a ton of work on screens both small and big) is also getting some awards buzz and the scenes between them go from funny to wrenching. Tracy Letts (last blogged for The Lovers) is the befuddled father/husband caught in the middle. Many of the supporting actors are terrific, including high school classmates Beanie Feldstein (new to me, she is Jonah Hill's sister) as Julie, Lucas Hedges (Oscar-nominated for Manchester by the Sea) as Lucas, and Timothée Chalamet (I've seen him in four episodes of Royal Pains, eight of Homeland, movies Men, Women & Children and Interstellar, and he's got another coming out momentarily) as Kyle. The lovely Kathryn Newton doesn't have many lines but, even in those tight blond braids, I recognize her from 36 episodes of Gary Unmarried, seven of Big Little Lies, ten of Halt and Catch Fire, and the movie Bad Teacher, and I mention her because of another movie I'll write about after this.

Greta Gerwig, making her debut as the sole director of a feature (she wrote Frances Ha and co-directed another feature which I missed), has admitted that this movie is semi-autobiographical. Her mother's name is Christine but I hope they were a bit nicer to each other when Greta was in high school.

The lilting folk-inflected score is thanks to Jon Brion (composed for Wilson) and 27 minutes of it can be streamed from this link. The pop songs include Alanis Morissette's Hand in My Pocket, Dave Matthews Band’s Crash into Me, Justin Timberlake’s Cry Me a River, and The Crossroads by Bone Thugs N Harmony.

You don't need our recommendation to run and see this: Rotten Tomatoes' critics' average is a perfect 100% and its audiences a respectable 89.