It's the last weekend of the holiday season and maybe you're looking to do that anti-New Year thing — you know, just kick back and relax. Well, Up To Date's indie, foreign and documentary Film Critics have some avenues of escape you can travel for a few hours.
Steve Walker
Faces Places, PG
- Agnes Varda, 89, and one of the leading figures of the French New Wave, pairs up with JR, a 33-year-old French photographer and muralist, for a road trip where both make good on their vow to energize and personalize their distinct artistic visions.
Lady Bird, R
- This sublime, tart comedy, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, features flawless performances from Laurie Metcalf as a stressed-out mom and Saoirse Ronan as a bohemian high school senior circa 2002 wishing she was anywhere but Sacramento.
Big Sonia, Not Rated
- A moving documentary about local Holocaust survivor Sonia Warshawski, who ran a tailor shop at the Metcalf South Shopping Center long after the mall had been largely abandoned.
Cynthia Haines
The Shape of Water, R
- Guillermo del Toro's dark romance-fantasy follows the relationship night-shift janitor Elisa Esposito, played by Sally Hawkins, forges with a strange creature housed in the secret government lab where she works.
Lady Bird, R
- Greta Gerwig's first solo effort as writer/director is a heartfelt dedication to her NorCal hometown, and a masterful, funny examination of the mercurial relationship between a mother and her high school-aged daughter.
Loving Vincent, PG-13
- A creative interpretation of the life and allegedly mysterious death of Vincent Van Gogh, depicted in more than 65,000 oil-painted animations that mirror the artist's own style.