Greta Gerwig's LADY BIRD: Yes, it's as good as you've heard, but not groundbreaking....

...which, when you think about it, is pretty much what you'd expect from Greta Gerwig as a filmmaker, considering what she's given us, over and over again, as an actress: performances that are genuine, specific, quirky (but never overly so) and absolutely reality-based. That rather covers LADY BIRD, her first solo outing as both writer and director (back in 2008, she co-wrote and co-directed Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg). Lady Bird makes the best of her mumblecore roots while allowing the result to rise to a much higher professional level -- without becoming in any way slick. As I say: just about what we would expect from this talented and original young woman, pictured below.

Gerwig sets her movie back in the 1980s, which turns out to be a fine period for it: one not overly concerned with nostalgia for its own sake yet gloriously free from near-constant use of cell phones and the internet.

The filmmaker juggles a good deal of themes here -- from coming-of-age and family problems to the meaning of friendship, fitting in, and even coming out -- and she is so dexterous that one theme surfaces, calls out for our attention and then dips into the next so naturally that we're barely aware of the movement.

Gerwig, as both performer, writer and filmmaker seems to possess an intuitive sense of the psychology of character. Every one of her people in Lady Bird seems as real and as full as his or her connection and importance to the movie requires. There are simply no red flags here.

This begins with the filmmaker's star, that Bronx-born, Ireland-raised wonder, Saoirse Ronan (above and on poster, top), who would seem a perfect choice for the title role and the filmmaker's needs. Ms Ronan ought to have won Best Actress for her fine work in Brooklyn, two years back (she was first nominated for her work in Atonement almost a decade ago); Lady Bird may see her garner a third nomination, as well. The actress brings all the mixed signals and actions of late-adolescence/early-adulthood to her performance, and the result is funny, awful, mesmerizing and more.

As her put-upon mom, Laurie Metcalf (above, left) is just about Ronan's equal, bringing such concern, love and anger to her performance that you will alternately identify and wince, while the amazing Tracy Letts gives another memorable yet self-effacing performance as Lady Bird's kindly but sad dad.

Every single supporting performance here is brought to full, rich life, with special mention going to Beanie Feldstein (above, left) as Lady Bird's overweight and utterly winning friend, Julie; Lois Smith as the nun in her school with more on the ball than we initially imagine; Lucas Hedges (below, left, of Manchester by the Sea), who plays the boy who has too much respect for our heroine to actually touch her boobs; and Odeya Rush as the school's uber-pretty and rich girl who turns out to be -- hey! -- a full-bodied and intelligent character, too.

Gerwig doesn't do heroes and villains. She already understands the mixed bag that we all are, and she's able to communicate this without underlining it -- which makes her movie a double pleasure. I don't want to make great claims for the film because it remains (and clearly wants it so) a small film in every way. Its achievements, however, are many and wonderful. (Simply for the manner in which Gerwig incorporate Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along into her film, I'd watch it all over again.)

Lady Bird -- from A24 and running 93 minutes -- after hitting New York, L.A. and elsewhere, opens here in South Florida this Friday, November 17, in the Miami area at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, AMC's Aventura 24 , O Cinema Miami Beach, Regal's South Beach 18; at the Gateway 4 in Fort Lauderdale; Cobb's Downtown 16 in Palm Beach Gardens; at the Movies of Delray; the Cinepolis Jupiter 14;  and the Cinemark Palace 20 and Regal Shadowood 16 in Boca Raton. Wherever you live, to find the theater nearest you, click here.

MAGGIE'S PLAN: Greta Gerwig scores again in Rebecca Miller's droll rom-com about control

How good, how special is Greta Gerwig? Good enough, it would seem, to be able to do no wrong on screen. Even in underwhelming movies, she shines, and though she usually looks pretty much the same, that face and body hide quite a versatile-in-her-own-way actress.

In Rebecca Miller's newest film about the female (Miller also made the excellent Robin Wright movie The Private Lives of Pippa Lee), Gerwig gets another loaded role that she brings to life with compelling intelligence and ease.

Gerwig's secret, TrustMovies suspects, is that the actress always makes it appear that she has just sort of stumbled into a movie about her very own life. (Yes, she's that real.) In MAGGIE'S PLAN, she plays a young-but-getting-worrisomely-older woman who, given her record of bad romances up till now, decides to inseminate herself with the right male's semen, have her baby, and raise it on her own. Yes: Good luck with that.

Filmmaker Miller, shown at right, has made a very interesting movie that is mainly about control. Obviously, Maggie, via her plan, is intent on controlling her own life, But to do this, she must control to a large extent the lives of the folk around her. Of course, as is usual in life, those adjacent people want to control their own lives, and in fact, they have major control problems, too. Especially adjacent to our Maggie are three other characters: a former schoolmate named Guy (Travis Fimmel), whose sperm she decides on using; a fellow named John (Ethan Hawke), whom she subsequently falls in love with; and Georgette (Julianne Moore, below, sporting a delicious pseudo-Danish accent), John's soon-to-be ex.

All of these characters have their own desires and plans, but our Maggie, in her sweet but determined manner, rides around, above, below and through them. And yet -- especially regarding John (Mr. Hawke is shown below, left) and Georgette -- the way the other characters use their control (or seeming lack of same) proves even more interesting, curling the plot into new twists that tend to resist even the best-laid plans.

The film has been called a modern screwball comedy, but it seem to me something more, less and certainly different from that. Miller, as usual, has her own sense of characters, timing, humor, and all the rest, and as director and adaptor (of a story by Karen Rinaldi) she has grafted her signature sensibility onto this tale. These people are every bit as unsure, if not downright unstable, as any we're likely to meet in modern day movies. They haven't figured out how and when to properly strengthen and/or hold back on that control.

Consequently, some very oddball and pretty funny scenes and moments occur, sometimes involving Maggie's married friends (played by Maya Rudolph and Bill Hader, above) but these may prove too oddball for general audiences, who prefer their rom-coms straight up and with proper closure. By the end of Maggie's Plan, we get but a hint of what might be in the cards (and has actually been there all along).

I found the film a pleasure to watch and listen to, start to finish, and then afterward, to think about a bit. And, yes, it's more for arthouse audiences than mainstream moviegoers. From Sony Pictures Classics, the movie -- running 98 minutes and already playing in theaters across the country -- opens here in South Florida this Friday, June 10, at AMC AVENTURA 24 AVENTURA,   LIVING ROOM THEATERS BOCA RATON,   PALACE 20 BOCA RATON,   SHADOWOOD SQUARE 16 BOCA RATON,   BOYNTON BEACH 14 BOYNTON BEACH,   PARADISE 24 DAVIE,   MOVIES OF DEL RAY DELRAY BEACH,   GATEWAY 4 FT LAUDERDALE,   MOVIES OF LAKE WORTH LAKE WORTH, SOUTH BEACH 18 MIAMI BEACH,  AMC SUNSET PLACE 24 SOUTH MIAMI,   LAST PICTURE SHOW TAMARAC.   Elsewhere? Sure: Just click here, and scroll down to view all the cities and theaters.

A little too much of a good thing: Greta Gerwig in Noah Baumbach's FRANCES HA

As are so many of us independent-film (including mumblecore) movie-watchers, TrustMovies has been a big Greta Gerwig fan, almost from the time he first saw her work seven years ago in LOL and Hannah Takes the Stairs. Since then, it's been nothing but up, with the high point being, in his estimation, Alison Bagnall's The Dish and the Spoon (2011), in which Ms Gerwig does just about everything: makes us laugh, cry, think, feel, the works -- in a story that succeeds on all levels, surprising us, even as it moves and entertains. Do view this one, if you haven't already. (Ms Gerwig also graced Whit Stillman's latest delight, Damsels in Distress, which you undoubtedly did see.)

In 2010 Gerwig worked with writer/director Noah Baumbach, shown at left, in his most commercial movie yet, Greenberg. The two are now a couple and Baumbach is back, directing her again in his latest film, FRANCES HA, on which Gerwig, shown below, also has co-screenplay credit.

His leading lady possesses, as ever, her own distinct personality, which she has proven able to employ in the service of various directors and roles, while maintaining that special Gerwigian spark and style. There are times, in fact, when she may remind you of a less adorable and mainstream but rather more intelligent and independent Goldie Hawn. Consistently quirky, she always manages to keep that quirk within the bounds of reality.

Initially, the new Baumbach/Gerwig endeavor looks a marriage made in heaven. The actress gets to use her fabled moves (half clunky, half charming) and her stop-start vocal pattern at the behest of some bizarre dialog that maybe only she could make work (she does).

Her character, Frances, is a young woman approaching middle age with not much to show for it. She's an almost dancer/almost choreographer, with an almost-best female friend and a bunch of male almost-relationships that go nowhere. The woman doesn't even have her own permanent place to live. And yet she perseveres with a kind of attitude that you might, on a very good day, call hopeful.

As it bubbles and bumbles along, the movie begins to seem like a fairy tale about either a completely deluded young woman with almost no social skills or an equally deluded director gone bonkers over his leading lady. For a time all this works nicely, with the occasional terrific line that makes you grin and chuckle ("You smoke inside?!") and events that continually turn darker and give Gerwig the chance to hunker down and rise up.

The movie will delight Brooklynites (it's so place-specific); it's filmed in that new mode-of-choice, black-and-white; and it gives a couple of other actresses -- Mickey Sumner (above, left) and Grace Gummer (below, right) -- the chance to shine.

When our heroine, with no money to pay for anything, uses a new credit card to take a weekend trip to Paris by herself, with no prior planning, the result is staggeringly stupid. While Baumbach cap-tures the utter loneliness of being in a foreign country all by one-self, he also hammers the biggest nail of all in Frances Ha's coffin.

Eventually, all this becomes too much of a good thing, for Gerwig's pluckiness is no match for Baumbach's punishment. When your main character appears headed irreversibly down the pathway to institutionalization, it's time to reassess. Spoiler ahead: The filmmakers (I'm including Gerwig here, as she co-wrote) do this by plastering on one of the easiest but least believable (given all that's come before) happy endings in movie history. Yes, we all want to see our heroines succeed -- but come on!

There is, however, one final, very dry and delightful visual joke regarding the movie's title that any urban apartment dweller will understand and appreciate. Frances Ha -- from IFC Films and running 86 minutes -- opens today, Friday, May 17, in Manhattan at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema and in Los Angeles at The Landmark, with, I expect, a limited nationwide rollout to follow.