In every example where resolution or a character epiphany occurs, you can point to how Gerwig undercuts those moments in ways that less honest, conventional movies would.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 20, 2024

Lady Bird combines wisdom and tenderness, humor and grace. It's light-footed without being lightweight. And it captures, with great feeling, the turbulence of a girl growing up. I can't recommend it enough.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 5, 2018

Greta Gerwig's directorial debut, Lady Bird, is the millisecond of possibility, the speck of unflinching nerve, which might only occur once in our lives.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 5, 2018

It is a female coming-of-age story that is both nostalgic and unflinching, and it will ensnare you deeply in its grasp.

| May 11, 2018

The densely packed detail which makes this such a luminous work shows Gerwig to be an uncommonly alert filmmaker.

| Feb 22, 2018

One of the finest teen comedies ever. Movie perfection

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 21, 2018

One element of the film's genius is its ability to root us firmly in Lady Bird's perspective. It does more.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 20, 2018

Its joyful, forward-rushing narrative rhythm captures the feeling of adolescence ending before it has barely begun.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 19, 2018

As teen movies go, it's supremely sophisticated, capturing and crystallising that moment in adolescence when it seems that life is at last about to start and the only place you want to be is elsewhere.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2018

While there is an acute authorial intelligence informing the transitions between scenes, the steady trot of clipped vignettes comes to seem monotonous and somewhat evasive, a way to move along before anything too hard and hurtful happens.

| Original Score: 7 | Feb 16, 2018

Like many wonderful actresses with a gift for words (think Julie Delpy, Sarah Polley and Lake Bell) Gerwig has slipped behind the camera to create something quietly political.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 16, 2018

Gerwig's deft handling of script, camera and actors is all the more impressive given that this is her first film as solo director.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2018

This is a coming-of-age story that's affecting without ever being sentimental, and feels absolutely true -- like remembering the teenager you once were, even if you were never a Lady Bird (or Debee) exactly. A rare bird indeed.

| Feb 15, 2018

A gloriously funny and wistfully autobiographical coming-of-age comedy.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 15, 2018

If Gerwig is capable of all this in her first solo feature, who knows what feats of woodwork she'll craft for us next.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 15, 2018

Writer-director Gerwig manages brilliantly the delicate feat of portraying the vulnerabilities and eccentricities of the townsfolk without patronising them.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 14, 2018

Lady Bird is an absolute charmer of a movie. We genuinely care about this lovely, rebellious girl and we want her to be happy.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 14, 2018

It's almost too hard to write about Lady Bird precisely because it's so brilliant that no words could possibly capture its spirit and convey why this film absolutely has to be seen, and loved.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 14, 2018

A coming-of-age story like no other, Lady Bird is smart, emotional, funny and completely original. Rarely has a directorial debut been so assured, so singular and so heartwarmingly affecting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 14, 2018

Almost everything here bespeaks Gerwig, including the cast's tendency to act one line or dramatic moment with breezy brio, as if already on the run to the next. Very GG.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 14, 2018