Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (Rob Reiner, 2023). This documentary on the life and career of Albert Brooks includes enough clips of his remarkable work in comedy and filmmaking to ensure a suitable level of entertainment. In nearly every other respect, the film is a resounding disappointment, providing one of the most inspired creative minds of the latter half of the twentieth century little more than a genial but purely surface-level celebration. The warm rapport that lifelong friend Rob Reiner brings to the centerpiece interview with Brooks is no match for a probing assessment of the innovative, often brilliant work on display, and the talking head interviews with famous admirers are similarly lacking, too often built around reminiscences on the level of The Chris Farley Show and little more. Reiner also selects his interview subjects haphazardly. Sure, there’s value to having Sarah Silverman weigh in the merits of Brooks’s comedy, but what possible justification could there be for repeatedly circling back to the insight-free yammering of Brian Williams. Albert Brooks: Defending My Life is ultimately a less effective testament to the man’s talents than a properly curated string of old Tonight Show clips on YouTube.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig, 2023). More than fifty years after its initial publication, Judy Blume’s most famous novel finally receives a screen adaptation. Blume’s longstanding resistance to selling the movie rights was reportedly overcome by the promise that Kelly Fremon Craig would write and direct the feature, an entirely understandable turn of events given the high quality of the filmmaker’s previous outing, Edge of Seventeen. Fremon Craig shrewdly keeps the film story set at the time of the book’s publication, when kids still had a dearth of resources to help them sort through the daunting process of growing up. The film follows earnest tween Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) through a particularly challenging year when her family moves to the suburbs and she has to navigate a daunting social landscape of girls who are eager to grow up and try on adulthood guises. Even as the film could arguably benefit from some of the fizziness Fremon Craig brought to her preceding feature, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. largely succeeds as a careful, almost reverential adaptation that manages to warm, wise, and just witty enough. Rachel McAdams gives a winning performance as Margaret’s mom, who’s dealing with her own identity uncertainty in their new neighborhood.

Blue Jean (Georgia Oakley, 2023). The feature debut of writer-director Georgia Oakley centers on Jean (Rosy McEwan), a young British woman living as a closeted lesbian in the late nineteen-eighties. The conservative government is pushing hateful, bigoted laws, and Jean feels especially obligated to hide her true self because she works as a physical education teacher in secondary school. Blue Jean is an affecting, understated drama. Oakley brings a measured approach to the storytelling, pressing in on small, telling details that resound with emotion. McEwan is terrific in the main role, especially when she’s called up to signal the anxiety stirred in Jean and the inner conflicts of guilt and gradually strengthening resolve that go right along with it. Even when the plot hits some familiar beats, the authenticity of McEwan’s performance and the clear conviction of Oakley to do right by everyone on screen carry the film through.