Knowing that it doesn’t take a man to raise a man, single mom Annette Bening duly deputizes surrogate “daughters” Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning, assigning them the role of dual consigliere to look after her 15-year-old son (Lucas Jade Zumann). Once the fastidiously worded dual voice-over narration commences, the characters …
Russell Brand plays the loveable drunk made profitably famous by Dudley Moore. Helen Mirren is his nanny, with a snarky crust that falls short of John Gielgud’s Hobson in the 1981 film. Brand lifts his voice to boyish, even girlish heights as the boozing playboy who seeks to avoid union …
Four struggling actors, plus an unsteady camera, repair to a remote Big Bear cabin for a weekend, to write themselves a film much like the one we’re watching: a shoestring relationship thing that develops into a thriller thing. For the four actors (Ross Partridge, Steve Zissis, Greta Gerwig, Elise Muller) …
In the enchanting realm of Barbie Land, every day is the best day. That is, until midway through a dazzling disco-dance when Barbie (Margot Robbie) asks her fellow Mattel-mates, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” What follows is a philosophical voyage that leaves behind a pink-hued Oz as Barbie …
In the enchanting realm of Barbie Land, every day is the best day. That is, until midway through a dazzling disco-dance when Barbie (Margot Robbie) asks her fellow Mattel-mates, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” What follows is a philosophical voyage that leaves behind a pink-hued Oz as Barbie …
Writer and director Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Last Days of Disco) fumbles in his renewed quest to be our WASP Woody Allen. On a generic college campus, prim coeds at a suicide-prevention center exchange snippy witticisms and contend with fraternity boors. Attitude prevails, and the almost private gags (about men, depression, …
Can we just go ahead and agree that the actress Greta Gerwig is (for better and for worse) our generation's Katherine Hepburn? Adore or despise, she is a force of nature, something to be reckoned with. Here, she makes vaguely misanthropic director Noah Baumbach put down his torturer's tools in …
Noah Baumbach, writer and director of The Squid and the Whale, features Ben Stiller as a kind of middle-aged-crazy Jesse Eisenberg (nose up, shoulders forward), a self-absorbed self-conscious ineffectual intellectual, who, upon his release from a mental hospital, wants to concentrate on “really trying to do nothing for a while,” …
There’s much to admire in indie darling Greta Gerwig’s first solo venture behind the camera, particularly for those willing to overlook colorless screen direction, dialog that thrives on pop culture references, and a pair of running time-padding skits — an anti-abortion pep rally gone wrong and a gym coach assigned …
Director Greta Gerwig reteams with her Ladybird star Saoirse Ronan for a cast-heavy but still nimble adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s story of sisters making a home and making a life in spite of of limited options and opportunties. (Neither Meryl Streep as stern Aunt March nor Emma Watson as …
"Men are always looking for something better. Women settle for what they get." That's the war cry of Lola (Greta Gerwig), after being unceremoniously kicked to the curb by her dreamy but hopelessly hollow boyfriend, Luke (human-Oreck Joel Kinnaman), three weeks prior to the ceremony. Lola is constantly finding something …
Maggie’s (Greta Gerwig) plan is to get the man (Ethan Hawke) who left his wife for her to go back to said wife (Julianne Moore). Also starring Maya Rudolph and New York City. Adapted and directed by Rebecca Miller (The Ballad of Jack and Rose).
A winning, slightly screwball investigation of the fraught relationship between writer and subject, or maybe artist and muse, or maybe both. The second collaboration between Greta Gerwig (star and co-writer) and Noah Baumbach (director and co-writer) — the first was the cheerfully modern Frances Ha — tells the story of …
A star turn in Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird made it clear that Saoirse Ronan could play contemporary as well as period, so her performance here as a blushing English bride approaching her wedding bower in a seaside hotel circa 1962 shouldn’t pose any danger of pigeonholing. Still, she’s awfully good at …
Writer-director Todd Solondz follows the titular animal through four stories with four different owners: a sweetly curious boy (Keaton Nigel Cooke), a compassionate young woman (Greta Gerwig), a frustrated middle-aged man (Danny De Vito), and a hardened old-timer (Ellen Burstyn). Through the pup’s mostly mute, mostly sweet presence, the boy …