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Saoirse Ronan & Laurie Metcalf in Lady Bird<\/p><\/div>\n
Lady Bird<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Written and directed by Greta Gerwig (trailer<\/a>), Lady Bird<\/em> is beautifully portrayed by Saoirse Ronan (Golden Globe winner) as teenage Lady Bird and painfully so by Laurie Metcalf (Golden Globe nominee) as her mother. The mother, apparently a psychiatric nurse, has a remarkably limited array of skills in dealing with her adolescent daughter. She certainly knows how to criticize and brow-beat, though, even as she hates the words coming out of her mouth.<\/p>\n Tracy Letts is a huggable, mostly ineffectual father, Lucas Hedges and Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet are Lady Bird\u2019s early, disastrous loves, and Beanie Feldstein and Odeya Rush are sometime high school besties at opposite ends of the cool-kids spectrum.<\/p>\n Attending a Catholic girls school and desperate to escape Sacramento, Lady Bird\u2019s determination to fly to more receptive, less suffocating surroundings will resonate with many (especially female) viewers. For economic and so many other reasons, her mother is determined she stay. The importance of this quest must have touched a chord with critics and with audiences, as it won the Golden Globe for best comedy, and Gerwig was nominated for the screenplay.<\/p>\n Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: a whopping 99%; audiences: 82%.<\/p>\n I, Tonya<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding<\/p><\/div>\n Director Craig Gillespie\u2019s Golden Globe-nominated biopic about national figure-skating champion Tonya Harding\u2014who never fit the little princess image of the figure skater, nor wanted to\u2014takes the mommy problem to another level (trailer<\/a>).<\/p>\n Tonya (Margot Robbie, Golden Globe nomination) is raised by a chain-smoking mother (Allison Janney, Golden Globe winner) who never gave an inch and wasn\u2019t above hitting Tonya when her words didn\u2019t cut deep enough. Tonya\u2019s eventual \u201cescape\u201d was into a violent marriage with Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan).<\/p>\n This movie is also billed as a comedy, oddly, though Gillooly\u2019s inept friend Shawn (Paul Walter Hauser), who\u2019s convinced himself he\u2019s an international terrorism expert, and the media personality played by Bobby Cannavale are hilarious. The plans to mess with Tonya\u2019s competitor Nancy Kerrigan go wildly awry\u2014but would be funny only to people who don\u2019t understand the many sacrifices and tremendous effort necessary to skate at her level.<\/p>\n The script written by Steven Rogers is compassionate toward Tonya and based on lengthy current-day interviews with the principals\u2014do you wonder, has she changed?<\/a>\u2014who promise to reveal what \u201creally\u201d happened in Tonya\u2019s life. Their conflicting stories are, of course, riddled with self-justification, leaving you to decide whom to believe. It\u2019s not much of a spoiler to say you won\u2019t believe the mother.<\/p>\n If you remember the 1994 attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the national figure-skating championships in Detroit (I was there!), orchestrated by Gillooly, the movie may make you think differently about that incident. Tonya was never loveable; now we know why.<\/p>\n Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 89%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Both these movies have garnered impressive award nominations, but if you have \u201cmommy issues,\u201d you may want to make a different pick. Lady Bird Written and directed by Greta Gerwig (trailer), Lady Bird is beautifully portrayed by Saoirse Ronan (Golden … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/I-Tonya-2.jpg?resize=247%2C168\")