Lady Bird is a coming of age story set in early 2000s Sacramento, California. The titular character is self-named Lady Bird McPherson (Best Performance regular Saoirse Ronan), who struggles to find herself in a town she hates and escape an overbearing mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf).

Though the movie spends a great deal of time on Lady Bird's development, the unique relationship, along with the accompanying difficulties, is the central one in this film. This early favorite also ended up with a lot of young adult overlap with other nominees in this category. Timothée Chalamet from Call Me by Your Name is present, as is Lucas Hedges (seemingly random "other child" from Three Billboards.

I would be downright lying if I stated this was my favorite film of the year, but it did have bright spots. Its intensely personal look at this Northern California family was both heartening and heart-breaking at times, as were the aspects of adolescence that were portrayed brilliantly (as always) by Ronan.

Interesting themes for discussion are the discovery of self and transformation of the teenage Lady Bird, the development of relationships as we move into adulthood, what respecting our parents can look like (as well as what it shouldn't), and understand sexuality, including what consent really is and how it should be informed. Some of these have correlations in Scripture and some don't, but they are still worthy of some great conversations.