Let us anticipate Greta Gerwig's directorial debut "Lady Bird"

football coach was hilarious if a cartoon. but a good cartoon of how a precocious high schooler sees a coach. like something from daria. i hope high schoolers are seeing this movie! i hope it replaces those john hughes movies or whatever else are considered standards of the genre.

but the first director was incredible. i never did theater so maybe those are all stock scenes that every high school theater kid would know but i thought they were really beautifully done. loved how all the teachers in this, even coach, felt like they really liked kids and wanted to see them happy/successful, even if they have their flaws and limits. they weren't as fleshed out as the other adults, sure, and a high schooler watching will probably see them overwhelmingly in terms of what they mean to the leads (e.g. math teacher crush guy is sth we can all relate to via julia: oh nooooo he has a wife and she's pregnant even!). but the actor plays it like he's playing a real person so if the same kid watches it a few years later maybe there's something else they can appreciate there.

Was there any explanation as to what the first director was going through--why he was seeing Laurie Metcalf? I assumed it was general depression, but maybe I missed something.

Son died, maybe suicide?

That scene was so amazing in rounding out Laurie Metcalf's character, too -- seeing her on the job as a true caretaker.

yeah, i loved that. it seemed like all the other people in town had a very different perception of lady bird's mom--they got to see a warm, caring, and even funny side of her that she wouldn't allow lady bird to see, just shown in short scenes with the father and with her co-workers

the theatre nerd in me loved that they did Merrily, We Roll Along...and committed to showing it!

Between Sondheim and "Crash" and "You Oughta Know" and "Cry Me A River," the music rights must've been a big line item.

And "Tha Crossroads!" A great, great, pick - years out of date but weirdly plausible to me as a slow-dance song at a religious school in 2002.

lol yeah, it's got a nice religious message and it would pass the nuns' rigid censorship

https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2017/11/21/greta/21-greta-gerwig-letter-music-2.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.jpg

That's sweet. I wrote a letter just like that to the Angry Samoans when I was making student films.

seein it tonight

My review.

V sweetly written up Alfred :)

yes. this is great and v on-point with how i remember the later stretches of high school: "both outcasts who use wit not so much as a rapier against the popular kids at their Catholic high school but as an end in itself because rapiers are cool."

i remember the uncle conversation differently though - doesn't lady bird just say "he's not your uncle," and julie responds, "it's something I'm trying out"? as in, she's trying out calling him that?

thanks!

@ Doc Casino: I saw at least one trans writer on Twitter pick up on the same thing you mentioned w/r/t the ending

beautiful review, Alfred

i found this perfectly cozy and lovely world to inhabit for a couple hours. can't wait for her next flick, but also, i hope she keeps acting or casts herself

Just saw it a second time; being prepared for the jokes made me be present enough to notice how sad I felt about many of the laugh lines

I hope she and Noah Baumbach stay together because I’m romantic but I would think/hope she’s got no further need for him as far as making movies

thanks, y'all

"being prepared for the jokes made me be present enough to notice how sad I felt about many of the laugh lines"

maybe I said this up above but when i heard the "why don't you like me" scene on the radio before I saw th emovie it made me cry. It didn't seem as sad in a theater full of people who were laughing at other parts; but I think removed from an audience I'd feel the same way again

This is another one of those films that I suspect earns very different reactions and elicits different emotions depending on whether you are viewing it as a parent vs. viewing it as a child. Perhaps gender makes a big difference, too. For example, my wife watched it as a perfect encapsulation of what it was like a be a young woman at more or less that exact age/time, and of course I can't ever fully appreciate that perspective. But I could understand what it was like to have a fraught relationship with a parent (as everyone can) and yet also now, as a parent of a freshly minted teen, what it is like to have a complex relationship with your kid. Though as a father, not as a mother, which is, again, a distinction and dynamic worth noting in this particular story.

The senior citizen crowd I saw it with really dug the Didion quote at the beginning.

lol same with my crowd!

i loved the dad in this. his gruff laugh when the mother asks 'you think miguel and diana have sex on the pull-out couch?' 'oh yeah'

Tracy Letts was really good as the dad in this (mind you, the character's so likeable contrasted with Laurie Metcalf, maybe not the most difficult role). Thought I knew him well from somewhere else, but the only possibilities are Weiner-Dog and The Big Short, and I don't think it's either of those. So it must be..."Counterguy" in the Seinfeld where Kramer goes back to work at the bagel place.

no he is in Wiener-Dog. also was in a really shitty movie this year called The Lovers

I know he's in it--I was going by IMDB--I'm just saying I have no strong association between him and the film. All I really remember is Danny DeVito and Ellen Burstyn, and had to double-check about Burstyn.

yea hes the asshole dad in the beginning. hes also the asshole dad in The Lovers. I was actually really surprised by his character in Lady Bird, he even looked different- much warmer & understanding guy

I watched this movie in Sacramento!! :)

how did the crowd like it

It was showing at the mall so the crowd was pretty normcore. They seemed to like it but were somewhat muted. There were the predictable oohs and ahhs when various local landmarks showed up. My aunt hated the editing.

I did too. Felt like the whole thing was in fast forward. No room to breathe. I’m probably just getting slower in my old age.

Anyway despite my general aversion to coming-of-age movies this was alright. The cast was very good and the dialog was funny without being overtly cutesy or precious. Some of it felt very true-to-life in a way most high school movies never manage.

I think my main issue with it aside from the editing/pacing is that I have absolutely no nostalgia or wistfulness about my adolescence and a movie like this inevitably conjures up a lot of stuff I’d rather forget about. That’s not the movie’s fault, it’s my own baggage, but it keeps me from fully enjoying it.

This move did an effective job of killing adolescence.

I enjoyed this movie but:

Loved this so, so much. The matinee I saw was completely sold out. I loathed Frances Ha and Mistress America, just awful, so I went in somewhat skeptical, but was relieved that none of the whimsy or boring sensibility of Baumbach/Anderson/Allen rubbed off on Gerwig.

lol what.

if you told me baumbach directed this I would have believed you. just about everything about this felt like a baumbach movie.

surface level margaret

just about everything about this felt like a baumbach movie.

maybe superficially, but despite the familiar coming of age movie trappings and predictable arc, it just had a different feel than Baumbach & most other coming of age movies. besides the lack of characters with unrealistically hip taste, the relationship with the mother and Lady Bird's normalcy was refreshing and felt more nuanced. she wasn't that cool or edgy or histrionic. the way the material was handled was noticeably different imo, much more subtle.

saw this today & liked it fine, but I never really connected with it? it felt like a lot of put-together bits and pieces. i didnt hate it, i just was kinda nonplussed. a lot of good funny & good emotional moments tho. and sacramento looked lovely :)

the dysfunction between the mom & daughter took me put of it, i think.
Like, i could tell from the get-go that the mom & daughter were close & they got along, so all the sturm and drang felt like white noise. like, the tension between them was kinda low stakes. i couldn’t really invest in it because I knew they’d be fine. of course theyd be fine.

*took me out of it

i loved this movie

just about everything about this felt like a baumbach movie.

this is nonsense. these characters were eminently normal. the parents were not narcissistic intellectuals.

I didn’t get the impression that everything was “fine” between lady bird and her mom at the end of the film — both characters clearly wanted a better relationship with one another, but there was definitely a lot of work to be done. it felt very authentic to me

baumbach comparisons are limiting. Gerwig has a sense of empathy that is obvious scene to scene. Loved this movie and ladybird OTM for leaving a car because the clientele didn't agree with the song. Friendship is beautiful.

Saoirse Ronan introducing at MoMA tonight, if you can squeeze yr way in

This is fine, maybe even the best teen-protagonist comedy since, I don't know, Rushmore? The Baumbach influence is noticeable in the jokes and cuts (not to mention it has the d.p. from 3 Noah films), and I'm not sure he didn't make the better film this year -- they're at least comparable and Meyerowitz is at least as "serious."

My main quibble is it stopped surprising me in the last 10 minutes, basically the entire NYU coda.

these characters were eminently normal.

hmmm, define your terms.

"You're going to have so much unspecial sex in your life." Great line but not sure even a jaded Howard Zinn-reading heartbreaker would come out with that at 17.

I'm not sure how I would've handled Timothee Chalamet saying this to my face w/out turning into a puddle of goo