ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ.

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

If you want people to remember the title of your movie, and thereby know what to purchase tickets to at the multiplex, maybe don't use a title as fundamentally cumbersome and unmemorable as Roman J. Israel, Esq. Also if you want people to stay interested in your movie, maybe don't start and end it with transparent contrivances, including the lengthy narration of a legal brief detailing a man evidently suing himself.

On the other hand, if you want a great actor to play the title role in such a movie, who can single-handedly keep the story compelling in spite of its shortfalls, by all means hire Denzel Washington. Israel is so socially awkward that I squirmed in my seat repeatedly, while also finding it easy to believe this man had a deep knowledge of criminal law. Who knows how realistic it is? I'm not a lawyer, and neither is Denzel Washington.

We never actually meet Israel's partner, who does all the courtroom lawyering. We see his body in a hospital bed, in a coma after a heart attack -- the event that sets this story in motion. Israel has spent three and a half decades immersing himself in legal texts to serve as his partner's most knowledgeable legal advisor. Now he's suddenly out of his depth, attempting to cover for him in court.

Meanwhile, it turns out the firm has been "operating at a deficit" for years, and Israel is faced with losing his job. In comes another lawyer from a huge firm (Colin Farrell, adequate in performance and stunning in appearance -- I may have a bit of bias here) to help close things down, and ultimately offer Israel a new job.

The plot gets much more complex from there, but suffice it to say that Roman J. Israel, Esq details the descent of an idealistic defense attorney with activist roots into greedy nihilism. With that in mind, this is a surprisingly cynical movie, and it's difficult to gauge what to think or how to respond to it. What are we, as audiences, supposed to do with this?

There's a lot of places writer-director Dan Gilroy could have gone with this movie, and ultimately he never goes anywhere as interesting as it could be, or as Denzel Washington makes you want it to be. This would not be half the movie it is without Washington's performance, which nearly makes it worth seeing all on its own.

It's engaging enough: while watching this movie, the script, even as the film's weakest element, never allows the mind to wander. There's a grounded sensibility here that winds up being a bit of a double-edged sword: it feels more real than most legal dramas, but it also lacks much in the way of excitement. It's a compelling ride while it's being taken, and pretty forgettable in the end. That doesn't make the movie bad per se. It just makes it no better than good enough for now.

I did find some fascination in the details, particularly in the cinematography and production design. Gilroy offers a very evocative Los Angeles as his story's setting, and although I suspect this was not intentional, a couple of shots felt a lot like a presentation of the real present-day L.A. largely in the style of Blade Runner. It's not often you see present-day L.A. presented as a dense urban environment, but that's how it often looks here. One shot in particular seemed almost obvious, with its camera looking through a cityscape from the middle of a city alley between aging residential complexes, drenched in rain.

Plenty of the story takes place in bright daylight as well, from inside high-rise office and even one pseudo-chase scene on a remote highway in the desert, presumably on the outskirts of town. "Outskirts" in Los Angeles are always a long way away, so I was left to wonder how Roman J. Israel got that far out so quickly. But I like to nitpick, I guess.

And this is an easy movie to nitpick. It's also an easy movie to experience  pleasantly, without being too critical. A story like this, with a mostly black cast and frequent references to civil rights, should really have a greater amount of thematic depth. Gilroy makes little effort to challenge his audience here -- but he succeeds in superficially entertaining them.

Observe, an interesting guy who is unpleasant to be around.

Overall: B

COCO

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Animation: A

Oh, Pixar -- how great it is when you are great! And you are great more often than most, if less often than you used to be: Pixar films were reliably worth the time and money, without exception, with every film released between 1995 and 2004. I'll never really understand the enduring appeal of Cars (2006), their first movie that was really good rather than great, yet is the second of their franchises to spawn not just one, but two sub-par sequels (in 2011 and 2017; Cars 3 was the first-ever Pixar film I never even bothered to see, from sheer disinterest). For the past decade or so, they've been churning out about two adequate movies for every great one.

Case in point: after 2015's truly spectacular Inside Out was followed by the undeniably entertaining mixed bag that was The Good Dinosaur later that same year; the delightful yet by-definition unoriginal Finding Dory  last year; and then Cars 3 earlier this year -- two sequels in a row, in fact. And if there's any company that benefits most from not recycling material, it's Pixar -- who steps up to the plate yet again with Coco, a movie lacking in the thrills of the Toy Story series or The Incredibles or WALL-E or the sophisticated wit aimed at the adults in the audience found in most of Pixar's output, but containing all the visual dazzle now long expected of the Pixar brand, and a refreshingly straightforward amount of depth and heart.

I didn't laugh as much at Coco as I have tended to at most Pixar films in the past. I may have cried more than I have at any other Pixar film -- and that includes the opening sequence of Up (2009). This is a genuinely moving film, with pretty universal messages of the importance of familial love, and a very specific context in which to give it: during the Mexican tradition of honoring ancestors on The Day of the Dead.

Should I mention the ways in which Coco is unwittingly politicized? Talk about uncanny timing: animated features of Pixar's type are many years in the making, and when work on this began, no one had any idea it would be released to an America with Donald Trump as president, a man who has whipped up hatred toward immigrants and Mexicans in particular. And here comes along a film about a Mexican family, starring a clearly deliberate all-Latino voice cast -- you won't find any white people speaking with fake Mexican accents here.

And the script, by Adrian Molina and Matthew Aldrich (with additional original story credit by Jason Katz and co-director Lee Unkrich), is pretty close to perfect. There is a semi-provocative sequence regarding skeletal ancestor characters passing through check points to visit family on the Day of the Dead that's pretty evocative of immigration, but it stops short of being any direct commentary on immigration issues. This would have been an interesting choice for Mexican characters regardless of the era of the film's release, though.

As it happens, the film's original title was Dia de los Muertos, but when Disney made the clearly misguided attempt at trademarking the phrase and it understandably caused a backlash among Mexican-Americans (who all was in the room when everyone present thought that was a good idea?), the title was changed to Coco. This is the name of a minor but key character, the oldest living relative -- great-grandmother -- of a little boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez). He is the central character, and he loves music, but is forbidden to play it because his great grandmother forbade it after her musician husband abandoned the family in favor of his musical passions. The family went on to become shoemakers who for generations refuse to have music in their homes. Sounds pretty depressing, no?

There's something a little flimsy about that premise -- only in an uber-manufactured world like a cartoon would such a scenario fly -- but, oh well. When Miguel attempts to steal the mounted guitar at the grave of his musical idol, the strum of the guitar on the night of the Day of the Dead passes him through to the world of the Dead.

It is here that he meets all the deceased ancestral characters, each with the same basic design as the skeletons typically decorating the scene at Dia de Muertos celebrations -- stark skeletal features on which are imposed stenciled patterns. Miguel finds himself in a spectacularly rendered "Land of the Dead," where the animation is on the level of all the best Pixar films that came before it -- painstakingly colored, awe inspiring in its detail, dazzling in its scope. This can even be said of scenes in cemeteries where people have brought offerings and candles to honor their dearly departed.

It's tempting to ask if Coco is like Corpse Bride, just because both feature skeleton characters. The key difference is that Coco places them in a very specific cultural context, and expands the imagination and the world they inhabit. Coco also has far greater depth in its themes, storytelling, and even its visual palate. Miguel meets his ancestors who began this moratorium on playing music in the family, and they must find a way to help him return to the land of the living. The aforementioned singer (voiced by Benjamin Bratt), and Hector (Gael García Bernal), a man denied entry to the land of the living to visit for the Day of the Dead because he no longer has living family to remember him, also feature prominently.

I suppose it should be noted that not only does Coco deal pretty directly with the concept of death and dealing with the loss of family members, actual murder does fit into the plot. I'm not sure how appropriate it would be for the smallest of children, who could be frightened by some of it. That said, children of at least Miguel's age (about ten, I suppose?) are certainly perfect audiences for Coco's themes of family and honoring elders lost.

Rarely is an animated film as textured in its storytelling as it is in its visual scope, and Coco delivers in spades on all fronts. The final fifteen minutes or so are particularly moving, and tie it all together in ways not easily predicted from the beginning of the story. This is a movie that is beautiful both on sight and in feeling, an accomplishment that belies its surface simplicity. It's family entertainment done right.

Visiting the Land of the Dead is more fun than you might expect.

Overall: A-

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: A-

There's a lot to love in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Sometimes, however, a movie is really good, yet not quite as great as great as the critical consensus might have you believe. My response to this film was indeed generally very positive, but still a bit more tempered than some who heap praise upon it. I'm not sure how many people quite see its subtle, perhaps even minor, element of tone deafness.

It's easy to go back and forth on this, and the cynic in me is tempted to say writer-director Martin McDonagh -- who gave us two superior films in both In Bruges (2008) and Seven Psychopaths (2012) -- is being deliberate about that. Observed with a minimum of thoughtfulness, this is a movie that could entertain both the so-called liberal "snowflakes" and those who would call them that. The thing is, those previous films were characterized by comic violence and drawing attention to the nature of storytelling itself. Three Billboards attempts to take a point of view rooted in a realism of the American south, and I'm not sure the British McDonagh knows quite enough about that to pull off the many layers attempted here. How does this play to audiences of people who actually live in Missouri, I wonder? That's a compelling question regardless of political leanings.

I'm just not sure the timing is quite right for yet another movie featuring cultural racists and casual misogynists who turn out deep down to have hearts of gold (spoiler alert!), even if it takes a traumatic experience to ignite a change of heart. In a weird, somewhat backward way, some of the characters in this story are the result of too much effort to make them nuanced and multi-dimensional. There are moments when it feels inauthentic, especially when a black woman who is the subject of a key subplot gets strangely little actual screen time, in favor of all the white principal characters.

So, okay: those are the complaints. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is imperfect in precisely disappointing ways. But imperfect is hardly the same as unworthy, and this movie is still absolutely worth the time, for both its riveting storytelling -- in spite of the aforementioned flaws -- and in particular its excellent performances. Frances McDormand's badass turn as Mildred, the mother of the slain young woman whose murder remains frustratingly unsolved many months later, is easily worthy of an Oscar nod. And the fact that this year has offered a great many great female lead performances, which actually somewhat diminishes McDormand's chances, is a good problem to have.

Woody Harrelson is Chief Willoughby, the man called out -- perhaps unfairly -- by the billboards Mildren has paid for just outside of town. Sam Rockwell is saddled with the most problematic character, Dixon, a local cop with a history of, to put it euphemistically, bias against people of color. Rockwell, long well deserving of the respect he's gained as a character actor, pulls off an impressive feat by making a character so vile ultimately sympathetic. The question remains as to whether he deserves to be, but Rockwell gives Dixon a unique set of layers.

The cast is rounded out by the likes of John Hawkes as Mildred's ex-husband; Lucas Hedges as her son; Abbie Cornish as Willoughby's wife; and Peter Dinklage as a local guy with a crush on Mildred. There is certainly no shortage of talent in this cast -- although, to be honest, it would be nice for there to be more substantive parts for women than just that of the lead character, a dynamic still far too common.

And, to be sure, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri is not for anyone easily triggered by the use of epithets, be they in reference to women, black people, gay people, or little people. This film features such language to a somewhat surprising degree for a mainstream film these days, the intent seeming to be a realistic representation of the ignorance among typical small-town Southern Americans -- particularly straight, white ones. To his credit, McDonagh at least never uses any of these words as punch lines, and only as a reflection of ignorant biases.

The story moves along in this context, and is so well paced, you barely have a chance to think about such nuances. I fear I'm making it sound like Three Billboards is not quite as good as I actually experienced it to be -- I just feel it's important to acknowledge these points. This is a small town affected by a broader culture that informs how Mildred deals with her specific situation -- which is the unsolved crime of a daughter raped and murdered less than a year before.

There is also a great deal of very effectively disseminated humor in this story, impressive in its integration into such a heavy scenario. Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell both give uniquely tragicomic deliveries, and I laughed a lot, even if a lot of it was in uncomfortable circumstances. This is a very specific kind of comic relief, where you feel like these characters are making very bad decisions, and then the humor lets out some of the tension -- even when bad decisions, guaranteed to have somber consequences, are being carried out.

There is nothing simple about this movie. Some of its complications are unnecessary and avoidable; arguably more of them are what make it on the whole better than its shortcomings might otherwise  suggest. This is a film that's not quite as good as it could be, but remains far better than most.

One of the great unsolved mysteries: why Mildred always wears this pair of coveralls.

Overall: B+

LAST FLAG FLYING

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Here is a movie I would not normally respond to, and to be honest, I have mixed feelings about how well I did respond to it. It works quite well as a movie for someone with zero background and nearly zero knowledge of military culture and protocol; I can't help but wonder how actual veterans I know would respond to it. How authentic is it, really, I wonder? I literally have no idea. It seems important to admit that up front. This is the kind of detail that can make or break a movie for people who have gone through the same kinds of things these guys went through.

That said, Last Flag Flying -- with its annoyingly tongue-twisty title -- may be a pretty male-centric movie, of which there is still no shortage, but when it comes to male relationships, and particularly friendship and loyalty among straight men, it really stands out. I'm a gay man who exists worlds apart from any character in this movie, and still I responded to it. This movie made me laugh, I cried just a little bit, it moved me.

The key there is Richard Linklater, the brilliant director and writer behind such films as Boyhood and Before Midnight. His name alone is what, like me, might attract viewers to a story like this when it could have been easily overlooked as a film by most other directors. Linklater has a knack for getting to the heart of characters; he specializes in dialogue, and doesn't distract with pointless action or snappy editing.

And the three main characters in Last Flag Flying are multi-dimensional, fully formed -- I may not know how authentic all the military content is, but these three certainly come across as authentic people. Steve Carell continues his work as an underrated actor of subtle precision as Larry "Doc" Shepherd, the Vietnam veteran whose son has just died in Iraq just two days before the story begins.

Doc finds two Vietnam War-era buddies not seen in decades, guys who could not be more different from him or from each other, but who were all bonded by the experience of serving in the war. Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston, only slightly over-the-top in obnoxiousness) is an alcoholic owner of a run-down bar; Reverend Richard Mueller (Lawrence Fishburne, suitably dignified most of the time) is now sober and working as the pastor of a church. Doc, recently widowed only months before the death of his son, is quiet and somber in his grief. His way to deal with it is to look up Sal and Richard and go to them to ask that they come with him to pick up his son's body.

Linklater infuses a surprising amount of humor into this otherwise downer of a story, which happens organically and is a welcome element. All three of these men come across as flawed people simply doing the best with what they have to work with.

The setting is 2003, giving Linklater a chance to draw plenty of comparisons between the pointlessness and wastefulness of both the Vietnam and the Iraq Wars. This plays pretty well and never feels too forced; however, he does rely a little too heavily on the supposed newfangled-ness of things like The Internet and mobile phones. 2003 may have been fourteen years ago, but these things had been pretty common for several years even then. It could be argued, perhaps, that the perceptions of much older men at the time changes things -- but one would think even someone their age in 2003 would not have been that surprised that they could be tracked down using the Internet.

So: Last Flag Flying lacks the seamlessness of some of Richard Linklater's other more recent output, but it's far from fatally flawed. This is a movie really worth a look, and I'm saying this as someone who typically has zero interest in a movie like this. The actors truly sell their characters, and make for a couple of hours with them very well spent.

This movie is way more fun than this photo makes it look, I swear!

Overall: B+

MY FRIEND DAHMER

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

My Friend Dahmer is a peculiar film indeed, the kind of thing that can make you wonder what it’s target audience is. People with truly morbid curiosity, I guess? Presumably that includes me; I was interested in seeing it, after all. That said, the Regal Meridian Cinema downtown in Seattle is the single theatre in the area it’s playing in, and even there it’s not exactly selling out. This is not a story with wide appeal. Perhaps the world has had its fill of cannibal mass murderers.

Then again, maybe not. Still, I’m not even sure what there is about this movie to recommend to others, unless increasingly unsettling awkwardness counts. Certainly the performances are excellent: 21-year-old Ross Lynch plays an 18-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer, and the resemblance is uncanny. His stiff social awkwardness among peers is maybe slightly overdone, but is always thoroughly effective. And Anne Heche is inspired casting as Joyce, Jeffrey’s erratically crazy mother. How’s that for “on brand”? Jeffrey's father (Dallas Roberts) finds it increasingly difficult to control her, and also frets about Jeffrey's own apparent lack of friends.

The story is based on a 2012 graphic novel of the same name by Derf Backderf, who tells of befriending Dahmer during their senior year of high school. In the film, he’s played by Alex Wolff, although director Marc Meyers does not maintain his single point of view. Dahmer starts “spazzing out,” seemingly as a joke, and Derf and a few of his friends think it’s funny. They go so far as to create the “Dahmer Fan Club,” encouraging him to disrupt classes and the school overall in this way. It’s increasingly unclear to what extent Dahmer is in on the joke. 

Meanwhile, Dahmer himself slowly reveals himself to be a little unnerving, potentially dangerous. We never see him commit any of his heinous crimes here, only living the year of his life that leads up to it. He has an excessive fascination with roadkill -- one of the first things seen onscreen in the film -- and dissolving animal carcasses in acid. At one point we see him taking a dog into the woods, and that sight alone is effectively frightening. 

It’s widely known that Dahmer was gay, and it’s strange how that is only barely suggested in this movie. But maybe it was something Derf, as the original teller of this story, never quite realized. Or maybe Meyers doesn’t want to come across as over-focusing on it. The shifting nature of identity politics is one thing; the straightforward truth of a matter is another.

Either way, My Friend Dahmer is a uniquely creepy movie, increasingly so as it goes along with its subject slowly awakening to his own monstrous impulses. It is thus particularly memorable and effective, if you’re into that sort of thing.

One of these things is not like the other.

Overall: B+

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+
Special Effects: C

After seeing Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express, I'm rather eager to see Sidney Lumet's 1974 original. I've spent years insisting that movies should be judged on their own merits, but that's just the thing here: Branagh's apparent "update" only barely stands on its own merits. The original, at least, still has a sort of fame -- more than forty years on, it still has name recognition, anyway. And trust me on this one: no one's going to be talking about Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express in 2060.

For now, the current version has its moments, and that's about all it's got. Branagh stars as the famous Inspector Hercule (pronounced "Er-Cule," he notes several times) Poirot, complete with a mustache stretched so far across his face it could only called majestic. And I hate mustaches! Poirot's gets its own bit of humor, though, complete with a plastic covering vaguely in the same shape of it which he sleeps in. Anyway, Branagh puts himself center stage, hamming it up onscreen seemingly more than the rest of the A-list ensemble cast combined. As with the story itself, it gets a mite tedious after a while.

This most problematic element of the story is clear from the very beginning, with an extended introductory sequence not even set on the fabled train out of Istanbul. We see Poirot address a crowd of adversarial religions accusing either a priest, a rabbi or an imam of theft. Branagh is introducing us to the cleverness of this central character, here thanks to the well-timed placement of his cane into the Wailing Wall. The thing is, he takes a tad too long with it. I just found myself thinking, When the hell are we going to get on the train?

Poirot finds himself with a last-minute need to get on the train, and once he finally arrives at the station, here we are introduced to all of the first-class passengers who will later become suspects to the murder of a nasty businessman played by Johnny Depp -- who, let's face it, is phoning it in. Many of the other characters are much more fun: Judy Dench as a surly elderly princess; Josh Gad as the businessman's assistant; Willem Dafoe as a suspicious German; Penélope Cruz as a semi-comically pious woman; Michelle Pfeiffer as serial widow Caroline Hubbard continues her recent streak of being great in not-so-great movies. There's more, but in continuing the list we get right back to the aforementioned tedium. As in: some of these passengers are delightfully shady characters; others are fundamentally forgettable. Daisy Ridley is also in this movie, apparently.

I did get a good laugh a few times at this movie, which is peppered with some well-placed gags and quips. There are too many characters, however, and not enough time spent with any given one of them -- all the while far too much attention is focused on Poirot himself. This guy and his Belgian accent could have benefited from taking it down a notch.

There is an inherent appeal in the mystery of a whodunit on a train careening through Eastern Europe. It's too bad so much of the scenery is transparently done via green screen, rendering what should be majestic landscapes rather inert and static. There isn't near enough depth to the visuals in this film as there should be. And then there are the odd staging choices: sitting all the suspects along a table just inside the opening of a train tunnel, spaced out like they're staging The Last Supper. Meanwhile, Branagh as Poirot is literally sharing half the screen with the huge stream train behind him as he works out who the culprit is. Okay, we get it! There's a train!

I do wonder how many people unfamiliar with the story are able to work out who the murderer is. I suppose it's to the credit of original novelist Agatha Christie that I was genuinely surprised by the revelation at the end. Until that point, though, Poirot leads a great many conversations that overstay their welcome. That runs counter to the intrigue we're supposed to be gripped by all the while. This is one train ride that could have used a jump in pacing -- rather than literally stalling on a CGI railroad bridge in the mountains.

Kenneth Branagh's majestic mustache leads a train to nowhere.

Overall: C+

LOVING VINCENT

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B
Animation: B+

At first glance, the concept for Loving Vincent is intriguing indeed: as we are told in the first frame of the film, every frame (and thus including the one we are looking at) was hand painted, by a team of over 100 artists. The subsequent story they tell, such as it is, is entirely told in the visual style of Vincent van Gogh -- who is also the subject of the story. That makes this movie truly unlike any other, so there's that.

Van Gogh is seen a fair amount, but talked about much more. Co-directors and co-writers Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman use Citizen Cane as a vague inspiration in story structure, with the character Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth, getting the most screen time) talking to many citizens of the town where van Gogh died, a year after his somewhat mysterious death. Armand's dad, a postal carrier, was good friends with van Gogh, and has tasked Armand with delivering one of his final letters to a man in the town.

Each of these town characters are inspired by one or another famous figure from a van Gogh painting, brought to life. The way this was shot seems largely similar to the rotoscoping style of Richard Linklater's 2001 masterpiece Waking Life. Except here, instead of tracing over the actual footage, this time the actors shot their scenes, which were then projected onto canvases, over which literal oil paintings were painted.

The end result could have been spectacular in the vein of Waking Life, but the way the story was structured just didn't work for me. I'll fully concede that this is largely a matter of taste, and possibly even of education. Clearly anyone with a deep knowledge of van Gogh's work and life will find a far greater richness and reward to Loving Vincent (the phrasing of which, by the way, refers not to the act of loving him or his work, but to the way he signed his letters). I am not one of those people.

Furthermore, the animated brush strokes, so painstakingly rendered to mimic those of van Gogh himself, are often a distraction. Often a single frame of this movie is truly beautiful, but the way it moves when animated is often jarringly unnatural, with seemingly odd choices of colors, particularly when it comes to human skin tones. Perhaps that's just another element of typical van Gogh art?

But then there are the flashback scenes, which come with literally every conversation Armand has with the people in this town, and are always in black and white. This counter-productively mutes, if not outright nullifies, the effect of creating actual oil paintings for every frame of this movie. Who wants to look at van Gogh-style paintings in black and white? And it felt like nearly half the film's run time is dedicated to these flashback scenes.

It's a little fun, at least, to recognize the actors being depicted. Chris O'Dowd, Helen McCrory, Aidan Turner, Saoirse Ronan and more were literally costumed for the scenes they shot, and the artists render paintings of them rather than more directly mimicking the van Gogh paintings on which they are based. More fun, perhaps, than sensible: I also found this a bit of a distraction.

Aside from the visual inventiveness onscreen, the focus in the story is pretty much exclusively on conversations, and contemplation of the circumstances of van Gogh's death -- did he really commit suicide or was he shot? Unfortunately, I never found these conversations all that interesting. Again, it may be completely different for audiences with intimate knowledge of Vincent van Gogh. I can't imagine those audiences are very great in number though.

Armand wonders how to make this movie more exciting.

Overall: B-

Advance: LADY BIRD

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Greta Gerwig has a singularly open-hearted style, always a delight to see onscreen, and with Lady Bird we get to see how it translates when she’s behind the camera. This is a tale with a unique sincerity, completely lacking in judgment – for its characters, or even for the religion they follow. Even for an atheist such as myself, with plenty of contempt for organized religion of all sorts, it’s actually refreshing to see a movie in which going to a Catholic school actually happens to be a positive part of a person’s upbringing.

Lady Bird still has a pretty progressive sensibility, mind you – one of the supporting characters turns out to be gay, and in Gerwig’s telling of the story, she acknowledges how the circumstantial context, both geographical and religious, complicates that. It’s a comparatively brief moment, but unmistakable.

That’s how this movie overall could be characterized, actually. At 93 minutes, there is never a wasted moment. The editing can be slightly jarring, at times: the scene cuts quickly away, barely before the viewer has a chance to register a subtle punch line. There is some great humor here, the kind that builds, revealing itself with greater depth the more yout think about it. I found myself more than once giggling at something, then laughing harder upon immediate reflection.

The story takes place in Sacramento, California – “The Midwest of California,” as put by the title character (played by Saoirse Ronan, truly fantastic) – which also happens to be where Gerwig is from. Many of us can relate to the sense of affection someone finds they later have for the city they grew up resenting. Christine, who is seventeen and wants everyone to call her “Lady Bird,” is growing up in a lower-middle-class home, with an overworked and overbearing mother (Laurie Metcalf, never better) and an unemployed, depressed father (Tracy Letts).

At its core, sure, Lady Bird is just another coming-of-age story, mixed in with a young woman’s fraught relationship with a very caring but deeply imperfect mother. It could be argued that these are tropes, hardly new. But given that pretty much all stories ever told are recycled in one way or another, the key is in the telling. And that’s very much the case here, with Greta Gerwig proving that it doesn’t really matter what the story is, anything can be compelling if you present it in a fresh way, with a keen eye on the particulars of given characters.

The people in Lady Bird are the kind you can easily imagine completely ignoring in real life if you passed them on the street, but in this movie, every single one of them is interesting. Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson’s semi-deluded fearlessness offers an even mix of youthful naiveté and brash confidence which, even if you were nothing like that as a teenager, is somehow easily relatable. For this we can largely credit Saoirse Ronan’s assured performance.

Christine dreams of getting into an out-of-state college with a mixture of scholarships and financial aid barely procured with a slightly spotty academic record but surprisingly high SAT scores. She thinks she’s desperate to get out of Sacramento, but it’s increasingly clear that, years down the line, she’ll probably come back. She alienates and reconciles with a very sweet best friend (Beanie Felstein, also lovely). This is a young woman who thinks she knows what she wants, only to find her aspirations clarified by fairly typical mistakes.

What makes Lady Bird stand apart with this is its wholly realized characters, which makes your heart ache for them in hardship, and celebrate in their joys. Even the supporting characters are fun to hang out with – Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) as a would-be boyfriend; Lois Smith as a nun with a sense of humor; Stephen Henderson as a priest and drama school teacher. One of the many triumphs of this film is that all the main characters – and nearly all the supporting ones – are likable, and in individual ways. You just have a good time hanging out with all these people.

Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf share a repressed moment.

Overall: A-

Opens tomorrow at the Egyptian Theatre.

GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

When a movie comes out purporting to tell the "untold story," particularly behind something like a beloved series of children's books, it's natural to expect something equal parts touching and charming. When it's done well, that's the way it tends to go.

Goodbye Christopher Robin takes a different approach. For that reason, perhaps a warning is in order: this movie is sadder than you might expect. It tells the story of how Winne the Pooh came to be, and the real little boy on which Christopher Robin was based, but then it focuses heavily on how his being used as a prop to publicize the books put a strain on his relationship with his parents, and particularly his relationship with his father -- author Alan Milne.

The characters are very well cast. Domhall Gleeson plays Alan Milne, giving his PTSD from World War I a severely controlled intensity, which clearly has an effect on his ability to be very affectionate with his son. Margot Robbie plays Milne's wife, Daphne, and it's hard to decide whether she's worthy of sympathy or just self-involved and neglectful. Kelly Macdonald is always a welcome face, here as Olive, the nanny young Christopher Robin becomes closer to than his own parents. Will Tilston is stupendous as the young Christopher Robin.

A lot is made of real names vs made-up names. Christopher Robin is the boy's legal name, but his parents call him Billy Moon. When Alan Milne decides to write books based on their adventures in the woods, he uses "Christopher Robin" as a way to separate the real kid from the fictional one -- even though, ironically, Christopher Robin is his real name. Meanwhile, Billy calls his dad "Blue," like his friends do. This is not a family with normal terms of endearment.

Milne wants to write a treatise against war, but has a bit of writer's block, even after moving out to the country in an effort to eliminate distractions. Billy asks him to write a book for him, and ultimately, he does: the Winnie the Pooh series. Maybe half this movie focuses on that particular journey. And then the focus shifts to Billy becoming recognized as the "real Christopher Robin" by a world rapt by the books. Billy's parents make the misguided decision to bring him on press tours, and present time with him as the prize in toy store sweepstakes.

As you might imagine, Billy grows up resentful. Eventually we see Billy as an 18-year-old, and Alex Lawther makes the most of his screen time as the older Billy, which makes up maybe a quarter of the story. He gets made fun of an picked on by kids in school and grows up miserable.

We are meant to expect that Billy has died in action in World War II. This is not a spoiler; the film starts with Alan and Daphne receiving notice that their son is missing and presumed dead. This ultimately becomes part of a cheap, emotionally manipulative twist offered by the story in the end. Even with it being surprisingly sad overall -- though never oppressively so -- this shift in gears is plainly disappointing, in terms of satisfying storytelling.

Until then, however, Goodbye Christopher Robin is still plenty engaging, and often quite lovely to look at, with lush cinematography and an overall pleasant mood, until relationships are strained. This is an odd little movie in that it's neither as bright and sunny as you might expect, nor is it as much of a bummer as you fear it will be in the end. This gives sort of even things out, albeit with some tonal inconsistency. It's a compelling story, at least, its slightly gnawing flaws notwithstanding. It helps that all the actors are, in their way, effectively comforting.

Christopher Robin and his dad have different intentions for one Pooh Bear.

Overall: B