Bodacious Booksmart Brings Bevy of Brilliant Belly-Laughs

MILD SPOILER ALERT

It's the last day of High School for Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), long-time best buddies who have put their noses to the grindstone and spent all their time in High School studying in the hopes of getting into the best possible colleges. But on this day before graduation, Molly realizes that all the other kids in their school who spent so much time partying also managed to get into good colleges. There isn't much time left for them as high schoolers, so Molly and Amy decide to step outside of their respective comfort zones and go to a party for the first time. Sounds like a simple plan, but getting to that party is going to be far more of a trek than they could have ever imagined.

Pardon The Obvious Pun, But Lady Bird Absolutely Soars

I love it when an opening scene of a movie just perfectly encapsulates what kind of movie you're about to watch. You only get one shot at a first impression after all and when a feature film is able to come out of the gate swinging with a few minutes of footage that sums up the identity of what's to come so concisely, well, it's a real treat to experience. Lady Bird has this kind of opening sequence, one that depicts our lead character, Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) and her mom Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf) driving home from a visit to a nearby college. We get a chance to see these two united in being captivated by an audiobook recording of John Steinbeck's classic novel The Grapes of Wrath but once that's done, it isn't long before friction emerges between the two of them.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising Review

Let it not be said that the (five to be precise) writers of Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising didn't at least flex some creativity when it came time to figure out the motivations of this installments titular neighbors. Whereas the first one had a frathouse led by Teddy (Zac Efron), whose impending exit from college was leaving him with an internal crisis, this one has a sorority, led by Shelby (Chloe Grace Moretz) move in next door to Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne). For Shelby, her motivation to party like there's no tomorrow is her desire to be more socially outgoing in college compared to her more introverted High School days.