OVP: Supporting Actor (2016)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2016)

The Nominees Were...

Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea
Dev Patel, Lion
Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals

My Thoughts: We have reached the acting races of our 2016 review, with just six contests to go.  I hope you've been enjoying the brisk two-a-week pace of these, as I'm now sitting on two more years that I'll be able to review once this is over, and with me trying my best to #FlattenTheCurve over the coronavirus (good lord I hope I don't get that reference a year from now when I randomly re-link this article), I suspect that I'l be getting through a few more years in the not-so-distant-future since I'm house-bound.  But first we have to get through the nominations, this year filled with a mix of old-and-new (both winners past, and already, future) listed.  We'll start with, for no particular reason, Dev Patel.

Patel's work here is fascinating for a couple of reasons.  For starters, it's kind of hard to tell if this is a lead or supporting performance (in a way to combat category fraud, I generally will dock one star from a performance if they're in the wrong category), as the film is entirely about his character, but it does an almost entirely even job of balancing his performance with that of Sunny Pawar, his younger half.  Patel is the best part of Lion, in my opinion, giving his strongest work-to-date, though it's odd looking back on the hoopla surrounding this performance because it more closely resembles the sort of hullabaloo we'd expect for a female supporting performance.  That is, almost every article seems to comment about Patel's appearance in the film rather than just his acting ability (including, you can click the link and I'm not going to change it to save face, my own).  Patel's work here is good though-he doesn't quite have chemistry with Rooney Mara (not someone you'd associate with a role like this), but he finds some of the inner-demons that this character has to face, frequently in a way that the script doesn't.

Michael Shannon has become the rare person to have been cited for two performances without a single nomination at the Globes or BAFTA Awards for those same films (weirdly he missed at the Oscars for 99 Homes, which by-far got his most precursor love...Shannon's filmography is odd in this way).  His work in Nocturnal Animals is a lot of the reasons I'm lukewarm on him as a performer.  This is an odd movie, and one that occasionally is fascinating, and at other times richly problematic, but Shannon doesn't expound enough on his detective, perhaps because he's playing a character in a novel that's supposed to be a "hit" but in reality isn't all that well-made.  The film is sloppy but watchable, but Shannon's overacting doesn't do anything to ground the picture in the way it's supposed to do.

Lucas Hedges kind of exploded as a result of his work in Manchester by the Sea (becoming a must-watch performer with later work in Lady Bird and Boy Erased).  Here, he's daunting in the hardest role in the film to carry off without cliche.  A child from a home that is broken, struggling with his new life & his guardian is awards catnip, but it's also rife for cliche.  He doesn't do that-his Patrick is selfish in the way actual teenagers are, even when they're in the position of losing someone close to them, and he finds a sense of "not understanding" that feels authentic to the character.  The big scenes, the fights with Lee, he goes head-to-head with the older Affleck with the confidence of someone who knows he's "right," but doesn't have the maturity to realize that he is, in fact right.  It's this kind of subtle nuance that adds rich layers to Manchester, and kind of makes the movie.  Definitely a star-is-born moment that the Oscars were smart to catch.

The same could be said for Mahershala Ali in Moonlight.  This is a short performance, and a tricky one.  He has to find a way to immediately connect with not just Chiron, but also with the audience in a way that we'll understand the hold he'll have on this young man in the later chapters of his life, particularly the final third where we see Chiron try to emulate what he remembers about this man who changed his life.  Ali does that, through thoughtful introversion & making sure every piece of dialogue counts.  This is a staggering work-play it wrong, and he'll either feel like a loser trying to create his own mini-me or a sainted figure that will pull you out of this tale.  Ali finds that balance, and has moments of humor & heart in his interactions with Chiron (and Janelle Monae's Teresa) that add layers and hang on the film in the exact way the script wants them to.  Bravura work from an actor who truly supports.

The final nominee is our only past winner in the bunch, as Jeff Bridges adds a seventh Oscar nomination to his resumé.  Here he's back into supporting roles like how he kicked off his career, and it's an odd one to consider thinking about the renaissance the actor has been on in recent years, not only with his Oscar win for Crazy Heart but the general love-in around his "dude-ness" as a great actor of his generation.  Bridges could play a role like Hamilton in his sleep; it's the sort of folksy, bumbling detective role that he was born to do, in the same way Judi Dench can always play a certain kind of kind old lady without batting an eye.  However, this isn't Mrs. Henderson Presents-as the film goes by and we see Hamilton lose more than he initially bargained from this showdown, suddenly Bridges goes into high-gear, making the final standoff between he and Pine so riveting.  This is good acting, from an actor who is always good, so you only notice if you step back and compare him to the rest of a field of actors.  Just because Jeff Bridges is generally better than everybody doesn't mean we shouldn't still respect.

Other Precursor Contenders: You may have forgotten, but the Globes went truly out of their way this year to be unusual.  They nominated Patel, Bridges, & Ali, but instead of Hedges they went with Simon Helberg's closeted pianist in Florence Foster Jenkins and Shannon's costar Aaron Taylor-Johnson...who won.  This is the first time since Richard Benjamin in The Sunshine Boys that an actor has won the Globe for Supporting Actor and not been nominated for an Oscar.  SAG skipped Shannon only, giving their trophy to Ali, and instead picking Helberg's costar Hugh Grant (proper category fraud there) for the fifth slot.  BAFTA bumped both Hedges & Shannon, here again going with Grant and Taylor-Johnson, though their victor was Patel.  All-in-all, at the time I was so stunned that Taylor-Johnson's performance was in contention (it's such an odd piece of work to site from that film), that I was sure he was sixth, but I'll buy an argument that it was Grant considering he also dominated the precursors.  Suffice it to say, at the time both Hedges & Shannon were nomination shocks.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: I would surely have found time for at least a couple of the guys from Everybody Wants Some!, particularly Glen Powell's wise-cracking Finn and Tyler Hoechlin's sex-on-a-stick McReynolds.  And one has to wonder what it's going to take for Ralph Fiennes to finally get his well-overdue third Oscar nomination.  I mean, he puts in yet another triumph with his bizarre, twisted music promoter in A Bigger Splash just two years after his divine turn in Grand Budapest Hotel, and somehow Oscar continues to ignore.  Travesty.

Oscar’s Choice: Ali felt at the time like an easy way to give Moonlight a trophy while it missed for Best Picture...little did we know that it was going to have a better night than pundits assumed.  Patel, I'm guessing, was a distant second?

My Choice: This is Ali's trophy-this is one of my favorite performances from this decade and an easy call for the win.  In a different year I might have fallen for Hedges, but not with Ali's great presence in Moonlight.  Coming in behind them is Bridges, Patel, and Shannon, respectively.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone kind of on board that this was Mahershala Ali's trophy to lose, or does someone else want to make a case here?  Is Hedges going to be like John Travolta and not get another nomination for decades after he strangely broke the curse of young men with Oscar?  And who was sixth place-Taylor-Johnson or Grant?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2016: Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2016

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015

Honey Boy (2019)

Film: Honey Boy (2019)
Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Lucas Hedges, Noah Jupe, FKA Twigs, Laura San Giacomo
Director: Alma Har'el
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I didn't "grow up" with Shia LaBeouf as Louis Stevens in the same way that other people did.  When we got the Disney Channel as part of our cable package I was 16 or 17, slightly too old to watch Even Stevens (even though I did, as everyone else in my high school had also been without the channel since they were on the same cable system), and so he wasn't a goofy fun boy that I emulated, just someone on TV.  As a result, his bizarre public trajectory is more something that I can watch with an objective eye, not as someone who watched a beloved childhood character disappear into an array of plagiarism, drug use, and bar fights.  So I was caught by surprise watching Honey Boy, a movie that LaBeouf has stated was autobiographical about his relationship with his father while he was emerging as a young child star, at how moved I was by the film, and how it made me rethink the way we look at celebrity through the tabloid press.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is brief, and only has time for a few characters.  The film alternates back-and-forth between Otis's (Jupe as a boy, Hedges as a young man) recollections of his father.  Otis as an adult is an action movie star who is in rehab, not for the first time, and is working through his childhood with his therapist Dr. Moreno (San Giacomo).  We keep seeing his childhood in flashback, when he lives in a motel with his father James (LaBeouf), and is starring in a silly TV show (surely meant to emulate Even Stevens).  James is abusive to his son, emotionally as well as occasionally physically, driven by a sense of narcissism & inadequacy.  He makes a point of being four years sober (and this being a movie, you know that's not going to last), and hates the world, frequently risking everything to try and capture some of the fame & opportunity that his son has.  The film unfolds with interactions between the two, as well as an adult Otis coming to terms with the abuse that he endured from his dad, whom he still loves in a fashion despite the hell he went through as a kid.  The movie ends with Otis leaving rehab, and going to have an (imagined) conversation with his father, telling him he wants to make a movie about their lives.

The film is hard-to-watch in a lot of places.  LaBeouf's script is not sparing, even though his father (who continued to have a cavalcade of legal problems that ended with him fleeing to Costa Rica, after the scenes we'd witness in this picture) is still alive.  We see a man who clearly envies and loathes his son even if he also loves him on some level.  You get the understanding of what it's like to have the same dreams as your child, only to realize that your son has the talent to achieve those dreams in a way that you never will.  James is an empty figure in this world, someone who is easily dimissed, and his son is about to become a household name that everyone knows-the jealousy & rage is not contained, and you understand him even as you hate him.

You also leave understanding LaBeouf more in the way that he handles his father.  This is easily the best work from an actor whose promise has oftentimes been overshadowed by his public behavior, not only because it helps to inform some of the erratic actions of his celebrity past, but also because it's a fully-fleshed creation.  There are times when you almost feel like you're watching therapy, with LaBeouf recreating cruel moments from his childhood (the most shocking scene being one where Noah Jupe's Otis is on the phone with his mother, and since neither parent will speak to each other, he has to parrot their vitriolic, profane replies to one another, and being a child actor who is always taught to be "on," he parrots their voices).  The movie's present-day scenes aren't as powerful, given short shift to the chemistry and heartache between LaBeouf's James and Jupe's (also marvelous) Otis, with LaBeouf clearly having less interest in the movie star period of his life (which seems to have ended-he no longer signs on for projects as commercially-assured as Transformers and Indiana Jones) than in the struggles of his childhood.  You leave this film with an understanding not just of his relationship, but of the relationships all of us carry with us from childhood, still trying to find reassurance from our parents.

Boy Erased (2018)

Film: Boy Erased (2018)
Stars: Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Joel Edgerton, Joe Alwyn
Director: Joel Edgerton
Oscar History: Hedges scored with the Globes (as did Troye Sivan's song "Revelation," but neither could sneak in with AMPAS)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Yesterday we took a look at Disobedience, a film about faith & sexuality, but one that took place in the Orthodox Jewish communities of North London.  Today we examine a different film that is a world away from Disobedience, here in the Baptist churches of Memphis, Tennessee, but also takes an examination at faith & sexuality in a careful, measured way.  Based on the memoirs by Gerrard Conley, the movie focuses on a young man's journey to discover his sexuality in the most trying of environments-at a gay conversion camp he was sent to by his parents in hopes of turning him straight.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place initially in a series of flashbacks, as we see Jared Eamons (Hedges-all of the characters from real life were renamed for the film), at a gay conversion camp trying his best to heed his parents' wishes of becoming straight, examining what led him to be at this camp in the first place.  Through flashbacks, we understand he is the "all-American boy" who has a girlfriend that he had recently broken up with, and at college he befriended a young man named Henry (Alwyn), who, also confused by his sexuality, rapes Jared and then outs him to his parents Marshall (Crowe) and Nancy (Kidman) in hopes of keeping Jared's silence about his own sexuality.  Jared then comes out to his parents, who send him to a conversion camp, with Nancy more reluctant to do so than Marshall.  The camp is run by a therapist named Victor Sykes (Edgerton), who employs violence, shame, and psychological warfare (at one point a boy is forced to attend a fake funeral for himself to insinuate that he'll be essentially dead if he doesn't become straight).  The men attending the camp alternate between some who simply are trying to pretend to be straight long enough to get back to their real lives and those who are truly devoted to becoming straight, enamored with Sykes claims that they are evil but can be forgiven for their sins.  Jared starts as a true believer, but becomes disillusioned as the film goes by, and eventually is saved from the camp by his mother.  The film's ending has him writing an article about the time he spent in camp, and after initially rebuffing him, finding a way to reconcile with his father.

The movie is heavy, and should be.  This is based on real-life, and even if they haven't always ended in conversion camps, the belief systems of real-life Marshall Eamons and Victor Sykes have had a profound effect on young LGBT men and women for decades, making them learn that something is "wrong with them" before having to eventually realize that that's simply not the case, and the bigotry of people older than them and in positions of authority have created systems that allows young LGBT people to be demonized from a very young age.  Jared Eamons is not just a real person, but he also represents thousands of other real people who never had the chance to eventually have their voices heard.  It's a testament to Edgerton's seriousness about this subject that he casts not only Hedges, who came out as sexually fluid after the film, but in supporting roles openly queer actors like Troye Sivan, Cherry Jones, and Xavier Dolan in key parts in the film.

Edgerton's acting occasionally succumbs to bombast as written (I've stated here a few times I'm not a big fan of his work as I find it too indulgent and surface-level), but I quite like his work as a director here, considerably more than I did a few years back with The Gift.  There's a confidence that we only need to see a small portion of Jared's life to know that his father will eventually come around, and that his mother was basically already there when she brought him to the conversion therapy camp.  The film is aided by strong work from the three leads.  Hedges, who has made a niche for himself by playing sensitive young men who are trying to find their identity in the world, gives great care to Jared, forging a teenager raised in a conservative household who inwardly tried to fight who he was while outwardly showing a veneer of calm so that his parents would be proud of him.  Kidman is also great in some confessional scenes about things she clearly had known for years about her son, but was afraid to say out loud out of fear/respect for her husband.  And Crowe, who hasn't been in a movie of this nature in a long while, finds his inner star with a (smaller-than-you'd-think) role as Jared's father, someone who cannot compromise his own belief system, even though it's slowly eating away at him because he loves his son too much.  That none of these actors ended up with Oscar nominations is a shame, and quite frankly a bit of a surprise considering the pedigree of the picture & the Academy's love for them in the past.  The movie performed poorly at the box office, but like Disobedience is worth an investigation even without the awards love, as it's moving and an acting showcase.

OVP: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Film: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Stars: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges
Director: Martin McDonagh
Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actress-Frances McDormand*, Supporting Actor-Woody Harrelson, Supporting Actor-Sam Rockwell*, Film Editing, Score, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Modern culture is strange in terms of how we assess film.  In a deeply, politically-charged world where literally everything anyone does can be met with the height of people screaming from the rooftops (I'm not even a little bit immune here, though I've been trying to check myself lately), it's interesting to watch how other people's reactions to a film can affect our own, and how something as immersive as sitting, alone, in a quiet theater can occasionally result in you not noticing the politics of what you're viewing until you're out of the theater.  This was my initial thought on Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a movie whose rough edges don't hang well when you let them sit for a while, but undeniably has some interesting moments & framing devices.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film's plot is relatively straight-forward.  Mildred Hayes (McDormand), after her daughter is raped-and-murdered but the suspect is not brought to justice, puts up three billboards outside of her town calling out Police Chief Willoughby (Harrelson) for not making enough progress in the case.  As these things do in modern culture, the media picks up on the story and the police department are at a standoff of sorts with Hayes and the legality of her calling out the police chief, with one particular office Jason Dixon (Rockwell) taking a lot of chagrin to Hayes's actions.  The film unfolds with Willoughby committing suicide as he's suffering from terminal cancer, and both Jason & Mildred coming to terms with their shortcomings, eventually setting off to kill a man they suspect of raping a woman, though not Mildred's daughter (the film doesn't ever reveal who killed her daughter, and we're largely left to believe no one will ever know).

The film has a lot of complicated questions hanging over it, and this is almost certainly where the controversies surrounding the film started.  After all, we live in a world where we answer questions in a 140 (err, 280)-character soundbyte, and that doesn't really allow for nuance.  Some of these controversies I think are interesting.  I like the way that they handle McDormand's reaction to her daughter, and the fact that, she's right-the longer you keep a case in the public eye, the longer our ADD-addled media will focus on it (making it more likely that there's an arrest).  Some of the film's comments on the media are dead-on, and I think creative protesting is always interesting (and easily duplicated, apparently).

That said, the film's problems lie more in the controversies surrounding Sam Rockwell's Jason Dixon, and the film's inability to handle a heightened reality.  It's hard to judge Rockwell's performance (he's the strong favorite for this Sunday's Academy Awards), as his character is so poorly written, and I'm kind of flummoxed how this is the performance that both won the longtime character actor his first round of accolades as well as that he's besting both his (significantly better) costar Harrelson & the miles-ahead-of-him Willem Dafoe.  Dixon is outwardly, and near constantly racist, driven in part by an odious mother who has a nasty relationship with her son.  He's had multiple instances where he abused his power to hurt the African-American community in his town, and yet is still on the force.  That's not uncommon in this day-and-age (Black Lives Matter is a movement for a reason), but the film handles his racism callously.  In a lot of ways it reminded me of Matt Dillon's work in Crash, where we're expected to dismiss all of the hate that was in his heart earlier in the film because he has a sick father (in Rockwell's case, a domineering mother), but I'm not buying it.  No character gets away with being the proper hero here (only Lucas Hedges' Robbie can clearly be called innocent on all accounts in the film), but the ending where he is now tied to the "root for her" character of Mildred rang super false to me, and made me wonder what was the point of McDonagh's script.  Sharp banter and wordplay are injected in this film with relish, but that doesn't make up for some serious gaps in its plotting.

And while the dismissive attitude toward racism may be the film's most egregious sin, it's not the picture's only one.  For starters, it's never clear how grounded we are in reality here.  One could argue that in a highly-conservative rural town, that John Hawkes' character might get away with burning down the billboards or that Sam Rockwell might get away with mistreating the black community (this is wrong, but not without a toe in reality), but Mildred Hayes would have ended up in jail long before she and Jason became Thelma-and-Louise.  After all, she clearly burned down the police station, and assaulted three teenagers in broad daylight.  The film wants to be both a grounded drama AND be in the vein of some of McDonagh's past works like In Bruges, where it creates its own heightened reality.  You can't have it both ways, and the ending of the film doesn't jive with these moments.  Combined with a lot of very convenient plot points (Jason just happens to be in a that bar when he has a complete dead-end...I mean, come on!), this is lazy writing from McDonagh, a filmmaker who is way better than that as In Bruges proved a decade ago.

That said, this is not a film without merit, and I get why people like it.  A disappointing ending doesn't stop the fact that the story at its center is compelling.  McDormand carries the picture well, even if I didn't care for Rockwell (who is not a supporting part, and I'm not hearing enough people point that out), and I love some of the places she took the performance.  There's a great scene about halfway through when we get an insight into her relationship with her daughter Angela (Kathryn Newton), and realize some of her anger is aimed at herself, and that Angela wasn't the cherubic girl we assume earlier in the film when we assume she's similar to Robbie, but instead the "bad girl" who is so often blamed by the plot for her actions.  It seems odd that McDonagh takes a more progressive stance when it comes to his treatment of women than of race, but it's out there.  I also loved McDormand's unspoken history with John Hawkes, showing the strange pull of both loving-and-hating a man (both actors nail their parts), and while I wouldn't have nominated him, Harrelson continues to be one of the under-sung character actors of our era, giving a great first-half arc to his part.

It has to be said that while I'm giving this a low score, it didn't start that way.  Some movies age well in the memory, others you are forced to pick apart when someone points out obvious flaws in their structure and when you suddenly realize that you were swept up in the fine acting and quick banter.  Three Billboards is one of those pictures, so while I get why it might win the Oscar on Sunday (it's not a movie that's as obviously bad as say Crash was a decade ago), it's still not an appropriate Best Picture winner.

OVP: Lady Bird (2017)

Film: Lady Bird (2017)
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet
Director: Greta Gerwig
Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Actress-Saoirse Ronan, Supporting Actress-Laurie Metcalf)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Greta Gerwig is the sort of performer, so far, that it's very easy to admire for me that I couldn't quite love.  Frances Ha and 20th Century Women were both very good performances, frequently with her finding a groove that I found fascinating, but I'll be honest here that I haven't been as in love with her as the rest of collective Gay Film Twitter.  I felt like there was something wrong with me there, but I stand behind it (some actors just don't click in the same way as others for you, and that's okay).  I will say, though, that I was terrified heading into Lady Bird for another round of me hiding my review under a bushel, trying to avoid anyone calling out my befuddlement over her being declared the most vibrant filmmaker working.  To my relief, and then to my sheer delight, Lady Bird did not fall into that camp.  In fact, I not only love the movie, but adore it, and the way that Gerwig has been able to transform her onscreen persona into something magical behind the camera.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around Christine aka Lady Bird (Ronan), a young woman (who is suspiciously the exact same age as me considering when the film takes place as I deduced while the movie was unfolding, which made several of the characters all the more compelling in a narcissistic way), who is trying desperately to escape the life her parents have provided for her.  Living in Sacramento, she pines for the fancier houses in the better side of the town, wishing that she could have the things the "beautiful" girls in her class also enjoy.  She falls for two different boys Danny (Hedges) and Kyle (Chalamet), both ending in different forms of disaster, and has a constant fight with her mother Marion (Metcalf), over money, her treatment of her father, and her general disdain for where she lives.  The movie's backdrop is Lady Bird wanting to become a something she's not, and when given the opportunity decides she can be both herself and what she always dreamed of becoming.  Told in the backdrop of Sacramento circa 2002-03, it's a coming-of-age story that likely mirrored Gerwig's, a young performer who eventually went to Barnard to pursue a degree in English, but had aspirations to become a performer (that obviously came true).

If that sounds like boilerplate high school coming-of-age, it only feels that way when you recap the movie, as Gerwig's sharp, specific writing style is so witty and observational there's nothing cliched in the confines of Lady Bird.  An obviously personal film, the movie is detailed (note the caste system of cell phones and house sizes, or the way that the music is plucked off of a Top 40 chart rather than some hipster dreamscape-Lady Bird would go for what is conventional, not what is happening in the back of a record store).  I loved the way that her story unfolds, with none of the characters becoming caricatures, or even us getting all of the explanations (you'll want to spend more time with each of these people, but you end the movie getting a sense of who they are as human beings and never feel like the movie isn't complete).

The acting in the movie is equal to the writing and assured direction, and uniformly good.  Ronan is totally believable as an American teenage girl trying to prove she's not a cliche by falling into the same path so many before her have trod, and is at her best when she's finding a truth in what she feels and what she expects herself to feel.  Ronan, so porcelain and tragic in Brooklyn, finds a heartier disposition here and honestly-this should be a third Oscar nomination for her, even if it's not entirely in AMPAS's wheelhouse.  I suspect her onscreen mother will have a better shot at it, as Laurie Metcalf finally gets a big-screen role worthy of her acting talents, subdued but pointed (and imperfect but loving) as Ronan's mother.  I loved the very slim views we get into her as a person; look at how she adores seeing other people's babies or the calming, underlying love she has for all of her family, even if her outside is bluster.  Metcalf, so good at finding that woman beneath a hard exterior, is a flawless scene partner for Ronan (I'd have never put the two together, so hats off to casting director Heidi Griffiths on that front).  Additionally, you have Hedges and Chalamet, both so believable in their roles you'd be forgiven for thinking they were in fact these men in real-life, as her two ill-fated suitors.  Chalamet has the dreamy, obtuse intellectual routine down-pat, a jerk who it's easy to fall in love with, and we get why Lady Bird falls for him so quickly.  Hedges, on the other hand, is equally magnetic as Danny, a closeted young gay man whose relationship with Lady Bird ends when she catches him kissing another boy in a bathroom stall.  The scene where she confronts him, and then he bursts into constant, hyperventilating tears is jaw-droppingly honest, real, and heartbreaking.  This is perhaps the best illustration of what Gerwig is getting at in Lady Bird-the way that real life so often gets in the way of how we feel the world should be.  Her observational power, combined with bravura performances by everyone in the cast, makes this a must-watch.