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.

With BROOKLYN, John Crowley and Nick Hornby come close to touching pure movie joy

BROOKLYN will knock your socks off. But so quietly and gently that you'll imagine you're still wearing them. It is difficult to explain how and why this movie is so special, but allow me to try.

First off, in the midst of our horrific modern world -- ISIS murderers abroad and hate-filled, stupid Republican Presidential "front-runners" funded by corporations and the wealthy bent on turning us all into minimum-wage slaves here at home -- Brooklyn exists as a reminder of an earlier, lost time. So, yes, this is nostalgia. But it's nostalgia done right, in which actions have consequences and the themes of family, homeland, coming-of-age, and the meaning of autonomy are treated seriously.

Secondly, in their actress/star, Saoirse Ronan (shown on poster, top; above, right; and variously, below), director John Crowley (at right) and screenwriter Nick Hornby have a winner and the strongest contender I have seen so far for the Best Actress "Oscar." Ms Ronan -- never a showy actress and, while quite attractive, no great beauty, either -- possesses the ability to display the kind of cool and collected inner strength that most actors would give up a year of Botox to be able to understand and use. But there it is in full view here -- in her speech, movement, face -- displayed in ways that none but the finest actors can muster. In every role -- from I Could Never Be Your Woman and Atonement through The Way Back, Hanna and Violet & Daisy to the more recent The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ronan shines differently and brightly. Here, at last, she becomes the movie's spine.

Fortunately, this actress is surrounded by other fine performers that bring fully to life a past time and place, together with the people who inhabited it. The tale is of a young woman in Ireland smack at the moment of mid-last century, with seemingly no real opportunities ahead of her. Consequently, her sister and her local parish priest arrange for her emigration to America -- to Brooklyn, where most of the Irish seem to have ended up.

On the way there. Eilis (that is her name) endures a seasick sea voyage (above), and once she arrives, she is homesick to near distraction and feels greatly out of place. But as helped by a kindly local priest (a nice change of pace for Jim Broadbent), employed at a posh department store, and stationed in a rooming house for young women run by a delightful Julie Walters (below, center), our girl begins to blossom, if just a bit. (The scenes around the dinner table at that rooming house are so wonderfully real, alert and on-the-mark that you may feel you've stumbled into a legitimate theater piece and are suddenly watching live actors.)

Then love enters the picture -- personified by a young Italian kid who likes Irish girls. As played to perfection by Emory Cohen (below), who brings such an unusual combination of sweet masculinity and savvy decency to his role, this performance becomes an indelible portrait of first love.

How director Crowley -- who, by the way, has so far given us nothing but excellent, under-seen, independent films (Intermission, Boy A, Is Anybody There? and Closed Circuit) -- brings all this to fruition is key. He never pushes, but instead allows Hornby's excellent, full-of-specifics screenplay to keep things on track by making every moment count. It would seem that Crowley has at last connected with a subject that will resonate hugely with the masses -- and then done that subject full justice.

The odd thing about Brooklyn is that so much works out so well for our heroine that one might wonder along the way just where the "conflict" will come from. Interestingly, it arrives directly from Eilis herself as she returns to Ireland to visit mom and finds herself more than a little attracted to her former home and its people.

Holding the film together is Ms Ronan, who simply gleams with hope and promise. And strength. This actress will pull you into her world like nothing you'll have seen, then hold you in her strong, clear gaze until you imagine that, yes, anything is possible, after all. And you may feel, as though for the first time (certainly at the movies after a very long dry spell) real, radiant joy for characters you have come to love.

Brooklyn, from Fox Searchlight and running 111 minutes, opens today in South Florida and elsewhere. Click here, then scroll down and click on THEATER LISTINGS to find a theater near you in just about any state on the map. Your friends are probably already telling you that this is the movie to see. If not yet, they soon will be.

The Joe Wright/Saoirse Ronan HANNA: a whirlwind of fairy tale fun, guns and family

TrustMovies is sorely tempted to rave about HANNA -- the new film directed by Joe Wright and starring the amazing Saoirse Ronan -- till the cows come home. It is simply so much fun, and so well acted, written and directed. For awhile. And then it lapses into almost standard, attenu-ated chase mode until  -- the movie simply stops. And that's it. And yet it is so rich and frisky, fast-moving, funny and even thought-provoking for such a good long while that, while we can't forgive it its tiresome finale, we can and will remember it for its fulsome beginning and middle.  Which are, at this point in time, a mere quarter into the new year, as good as anything else we've seen.

If director Wright (shown at left) wanted to leave behind his penchant for classy historical romances (Atonement and Pride & Predjudice; I'm leaving out his near-complete misfire The Soloist), he couldn't have picked a better project than this one.  Part mystery, part fairy tale, part family drama, part James Bond thriller (see below), part comedy, part satire, part coming-of-age (to name but a few of the genres packed into this pudding), it is finally the theme of family that gives Hanna its unusual weight and punch. Who is this strange young girl, clearly trained to be able to fight and kill? (Shades of Kick-Ass and last week's Super, yet very different from either of them.) We know who Hanna's father is (the very hunky Eric Bana), though her mother -- alive, dead? -- seems up for grabs. And what kind of a father trains his daughter to kill without a trace of either qualm or remorse?

Wright and his writers -- Seth Lochhead and David Farr -- start with a relatively shocking scene involving reindeer entrails and then keep the pace moving so swiftly and giddily that we're happy to go along for the ride. And quite a ride it is -- literally. Our heroine has been raised in the arctic. When she finds herself instead in the dessert, this is baffling enough. But then in the film's most delightful section -- also its most exciting and funny -- she comes upon a British family that more or less takes her in.

These four are played by Olivia Williams, Jason Flemying, Jessica Barden (below, left, also seen in Tamara Drewe) and Aldo Maland, and a weirder bunch you'll not have imagined. From having no family (or at least a very dark, strange one), Hanna is thrust into the clutches of one the goofier yet most endearing of British oddball families -- from whom she learns, glancingly, all sorts of of new feelings and behavior. Ms Ronan is marvelous in this section; well, when isn't she? But here, she has even more to handle and manages it all with great aplomb.

Assigned to meet her father in Germany, Hanna runs afoul of a couple of very nasty spy types: Cate Blanchett (below, center) at her most automaton/mean machine, and a very creepy, funny and blond Tom Hollander (below, right) in a role unlike any, I believe, that he has so far played.  (Perhaps he's channeling Dirk Bogarde from Modesty Blaise?) Casts do not get much better than the one rounded up here, and Ms Ronan leads it with strength & panache.

Regarding that ending, since so much else went so well, was there no one to say to the filmmaker: "Stop. This chase is tiresome and predictable. Can't we do something different, please?"  I guess not.  But as I say, so much has gone so right with Hanna, that I suppose we can forgive -- overlook?-- its last few minutes.

What cannot be overlooked, however, is the film's rating. As the violence was proceeding apace, I remember thinking to myself, "This movie certainly deserves its 'R' rating!" Well, guess what? In its infinite stupidity, our rating board has given Hanna a PG-13. That a film so steeped in violence could have ended up with this rating is a disaster. And don't tell me that Focus Features, its distributor, had the movie trimmed down to get that PG-13. Of course it did. But why? It still reeks of murder and terror, of some particularly gruesome sorts -- not to mention what happens to Hanna's erstwhile family. Just because they don't show this last bit hardly means that it did not happen.  And this is something that both children and adults alike will be able to figure out. If everyone concerned had let this film stay true to itself, rather than trying to have it both ways, Hanna might have been a classic. In any case, our rating board should be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail. Or did someone simply gift them with a little payola?

Hanna opens this Friday, April 8, at theaters (as they say) everywhere. On the film's web site I tried to find a way to locate that proverbial "theater near you," but came up blank. Maybe you'll have better luck....