Oscar Reviews: Lady Bird (2017)

Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson goes to a Catholic school in Sacramento and hates just about everything about her life. She longs to go to school on the east coast, but her poor family can't afford to send her there. The film follows her as she figures out who she is and gets through her last year of high school as she finds and loses love, inspiration, and friends.

I found Lady Bird to be an incredibly annoying teenager. She didn't care about anyone but herself and continually hurt people along the way to "finding herself." I was completely with her when she joined drama and found passion acting. I felt for her when her boyfriend turned out to be gay and he broked down thinking of how to come out to his family. I also loved the moments with her best friend Julie while they vandalized a nuns car, ate communion wafers while talking about masturbation, and their fun time at the prom. Those moments were amazing along with the performances all around.

For every one of those moments, there's a moment of her being awful. Her awesome friends are pushed to the side when she lies to be in the popular, rich crowd. The most annoying thing about her is the college issue. She wants to go to the east coast only to get away from Sacramento. Her parents are barely financially hanging on and she convinces her dad to pay for this frivolous endeavor. I understand having flawed characters and coming of age films, but manipulating everyone around for your own selfish reasons doesn't make you a sympathetic character.

The writing didn't reach me for much of the film, especially regarding Lady Bird's mom. Her character came off as unrealistically mean. She literally couldn't say one nice thing to her daughter without some rude or backhanded comment right afterwards. The big blowouts are expected and they happen with cruel comments that you wish you could take back. However, she seems completely unable to be nice. I can think of two moments, one where she described being in awe of Sacramento while driving and at the end of the film when she ran into the airport to see Lady Bird off to college too late and cried, that are tiny glimpses of the real person underneath.

Lady Bird is an incredibly well acted film, but frankly not very well written. I didn't find Lady Bird to be sympathetic through most of the film and her mother especially was not a nuanced character at all. Ronan is a wonderful actress, but simply too old for the role. The film takes place around the time I went to high school and I didn't feel the time period at all. The ending shows that Lady Bird didn't really learn anything and continues her antics on the east coast on her parents' dime. This coming of age story didn't resonate with me overall and it's hard to ignore the criticism that Gerwig stole scenes from Real Women Have Curves and whitewashed it for her film.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins

The Boys in the Trees

The Boys in the Trees is a surprising film with a dark fairy tale atmosphere. It's Halloween in Australia, 1997. Corey and Jonah used to be friends as children and their lives couldn't be more different on the cusp of adulthood. Corey hangs out with a group of bullies who have no aspirations except to be bullies that rule their small town as adults. They intimidate children and adults alike, smoking, drinking, and taking whatever they like. Jonah is more of a loner and is consistantly tormented by Corey and his friends. Halloween night gives the two teens a surreal journey through their memories.

From the beginning, Corey seems to have already chosen to follow in his groups' footsteps, terrorizing the locals and living it up for his adult life when he truly wants to go off to college for photography. Things change when he causes Jonah to fall and hit his head skateboarding. Everything is so different when it's just the two of them so they can be simply themselves instead of filling their roles. It starts out with Jonah telling Corey ghost stories and later seeing them come to life in chilling ways. A girl's sister was lured away by wolves, leaving the smaller girl to fend for herself and got lost. Now, she only realizes she's dead in the light where she stays, leaving the living with her shrieks echoing in their ears.

Then, Jonah goes through some memories, framing the bullies as werewolves hunting for the weak and the bullied as still human, hiding from the monsters. This contrasts with what Corey's friend said, that you have to kill a few sheep to hang with the wolves, giving Corey a view of what life has been like for Jonah and others like him. While there are fantastical elements, harsh realities are seen right alongside them. The truth about what happened to Jonah (as a teen and a child) and why their friendship ended is heartwrenching. This is all framed with Jonah and Corey in a tree with their childhood belongings, switching between teen and child versions of themselves playing and reciting children's rhymes.

The 90's setting is nostalgic and realistic. The nostalgia comes in the clothes and the music. The soundtrack is amazing with songs from Pearl Jam, Rammstein, and Marilyn Manson perfectly completing scenes. The realistic parts come with the jarring homophobic comments from Corey's friends and the violence in the film. It's a touch that some would avoid, but it's a part of 80's and 90's film that is painful to watch now. Overall, The Boys in the Trees is a wonderful movie that proves to be fantastic and whimsical while still exposing harsh truths. The ending seemed to be getting to idyllic and then soundly grounds itself in reality.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins