Given name

Lady Bird

Crit

Where to begin? Here, I guess: I hope writer-director Greta Gerwig decides that all the kudos she's getting for this means she should quit acting. As for the kudos itself, well, I don't think this will probably be #1 on my top ten list at the end of the year--in other words, pace A. O. Scott, it's not a perfect film; I found that it runs out of gas before the finish line. If it ended with her on the phone with her father, after reading what she has read on crumpled pages from a yellow legal pad--well, that would have been a nearly perfect film. Moreover, what follows could be the beginning of a sequel that everyone who saw this would buy tickets for right now.

But I quibble. It made me laugh, it made me cry. That's all I ask.

Trailers

• Father Figures--Twins (Owen Wilson and Ed Helms; yeah, I know) discover that their father might be Terry Bradshaw, among various other candidates--probably awful, but could be a hoot if not.
• I, Tonya--Yes, Winter Olympics, 1994, that Tonya. Trailer suggests an appealing narrative playfulness but gives little hint to what we really want to know: can Margot Robbie act? 

Major medical

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Crit

OK, Suburbicon director George Clooney take note: this is how to make a study of people so despicable that to watch them makes us literally queasy. I am a huge admirer of writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos, and I'll go so far as to say I admire this film about banal crime and creepy, supernatural punishment, but I won't go so far as to say I'd ever be tempted to subject myself to it again.

Trailers

• Phantom Thread--Daniel Day-Lewis in what may or may not be his screen farewell, in Paul Thomas Anderson's worst-titled film without a doubt.

Passage to power

LBJ

Crit

What an odd movie. From a production standpoint, it's basically a big Halloween party: lots of people with clothes and makeup and prosthetics and accents trying to impersonate famous politicians and members of their families and circles. Thus it's cheesier than all the cows and ewes in Texas could account for, if Texas went in for sissy shit like cheesemaking.

But if Robert Caro's biography (astonishingly not given even a thank-you in the credits that I noticed) is to be believed, this is historically accurate far beyond the Hollywood biopic standard and could serve as an excellent primer to anyone hoping to understand how a son of the Confederacy could be the best civil-rights president we've had since Lincoln, and how he managed to bend his fellow southerners in the Senate to his will.

It also helps that Woody Harrelson, though the Dumbo ears and all the crap they put on his face make him look ridiculous (and sometimes disconcertingly less like Johnson than like his successor in office), brings his usual level of conviction to the role, and that goes a long way. And Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Lady Bird, is the one element of the film that never seems false in any way.

Trailers

• 12 Strong--Bruckheimer patriotism.
• Just Getting Started--Looks like a waste of Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones.
• The Leisure Seeker--This, on the other hand, looks as if it could be a good fit for Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren.

Night at the museum

Wonderstruck

Crit

What a wonderful cinematic era, when one can, as I have, on consecutive postwork Fridays see My Future Wife Julianne Moore fill four roles in two films.

This is much the better film, though Julie has relatively little to do with its excellence. Millicent Simmonds, playing one of two runaway-to-New York deaf children a half-century apart (and deaf herself), owns this wondrous film, her wonder so evident in her eyes that you see familiar sights through her eyes and feel that wonder too.

Mind you, Oakes Fegley is fine as Ben, the 1977 Odysseus, but when the quick cuts between their stories cede the story to the later time, it's a letdown, and only a spectacular and completely illogical climax (but oh, what a thrilling climax, almost enough so to make you ignore its silliness) can level the playing field. We want to see lots more of Simmonds. And we might want to read screenwriter Brain Selznick's YA novel whence the film comes.

Trailers

• Isle of the Dogs--Full disclosure: I impatiently watched the trailer a few weeks ago online. Wes Anderson, animated, yes, please.
• I Can Only Imagine--Personally, I cannot. Imagine, i.e., that this "inspirational" true story can be remotely palatable.