Lady Bird

A high school senior at a Sacramento Catholic girls’ school (Saoirse Ronan) bridles at what she sees as the limitations of her hometown and the clueless smothering of her harried, take-charge mother (Laurie Metcalf). Written and directed by Sacramento native Greta Gerwig, and at least semi-autobiographical, this episodic coming-of-age movie seems ever on the verge of sliding into sketch comedy, but Gerwig’s emotional generosity toward all her characters keeps pulling it back; she salts her script with funny lines that sound more like people living funny lives than actors saying funny things. Ronan, well on her way to being one of the greatest film actresses of the 21st century, is the movie’s second-biggest asset after Gerwig herself, followed closely by Metcalf in perhaps the role of her career. J.L.