Motherhood is no picnic in ‘Nightbitch’

  Judging by its title, you’d half expect Nightbitch to revolve around a woman gangster who terrorizes her male counterparts with cunning and fury. 

  Director Marielle Heller takes a different tack, directing Amy Adams in what seems intended as an archly comic  look at a woman who realizes that four years of unrelieved motherhood is pinching the life out of her.  

   Her career as an artist? Lost? Sleep? Gone. Sanity? Almost drained. Help from her husband? There's not much of that either. 

  Scoot McNairy plays the clueless husband who travels a lot for business. He's not an ogre, just an average guy who has no idea about the amount of work it takes to be a mom. Additionally, he deludes himself about how much he shares the load.

   As part of her numbing routine, Adam's character also meets with other suburban moms (Zoe Chao, Archana Rajan, and Mary Holland). They gather for story hours for toddlers at the local library. Adams’s character initially disdains what she views as their mindless child-centered lives, but she eventually learns that her compatriots share similar frustrations.

   Is there a way out of this trap? Known only as "Mother,'' Adams' character asks the local librarian (Jessica Harper) to recommend books about magical transformations. Mother's request is prompted by her belief that she's transforming into a dog, a four-legged creature that runs free at night in the company of other dogs.

    And, yes, the movie takes this metaphor literally. Mother's physical transformation begins roughly midway through. Mother notices whiskers and fur growing on her body. Her full dip into doghood requires an effects boost.

    As Mother discovers her inner animal, she also remembers her relationship with her mother, a preview of coming attractions when viewed in retrospect. 

    Based on a novel by Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch isn't subtle -- no need for that when dealing with simmering rage, but the set-up is amusing, and Adams, who put on weight and shed make-up for the role, givers her performance some bite.

    Too bad the movie concludes with a copout that comes close to undermining the story that precedes it. Before her movie's done, Heller files away the movie's sharpest edges, sending us out of the theater disappointed rather than stimulated by the story's satirical sting.

Tom Hanks makes a perfect Mister Rogers

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood makes a strong case for kindness.

Part of me that would like nothing better than to tell you that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a movie about the relationship between TV's Mister Rogers, the nicest man who ever lived, and a journalist named Lloyd Vogel is a sappy wallow in comforting red sweaters and innocuous bromides about how we ought to treat one another -- kindly and with recognition that each of us is special.

You'll find a bit of that in director Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, but the movie goes beyond cliche to address topics that seem charmingly out-of-touch with the current national mood: Sincerity and concern for others.

To keep the movie from becoming as soothing as the treacly piano that opened Mister Rogers Neighborhood, the show that made Fred Rogers famous, the movie supplies a skeptic.

Vogel (Matthew Rhys) reluctantly accepts an assignment to write a short piece on Fred Rogers for Esquire. His editor (Christine Lahti) thinks a soft feature will do the hard-hitting investigative reporter some good.

I haven't mentioned that Mister Rogers is played by Tom Hanks because that information almost seems superfluous. If you think about it, who else could play the soft-spoken TV star who tried to encourage kids to talk about the things that troubled them, as well as the things that made them happy?

Hanks portrays a character who works hard to make sure that he's more interested in others than he is in himself. Insult Mister Rogers and he's likely to respond by thanking you for your perspective.

The movie turns Mister Rogers into Vogel's personal life coach. At his sister's wedding, Vogel gets into a physical altercation with his estranged father (Chris Cooper). At times, Vogel's problems so dominate the movie that Mister Rogers threatens to become a supporting character, the guy who drops in on the story to make sure that everyone's OK.

Susan Kelechi Watson portrays Vogel's wife, a woman who thinks that her angry husband ought to make peace with his father. She's Vogel's live-in Mister Rogers.

Based on a 1998 article by Tom Junod, the film chronicles the growing friendship between a subject and a journalist who doesn't know how to handle Rogers' interest in him. It takes a while for Vogel to be disarmed by Fred Rogers.

Heller makes creative use of the Rogers' sets, weaving them into the real-life drama that often finds its way back to Mister Rogers' TV work and presenting the entire story as if it were one episode from Rogers' show.

The movie insists that Fred Rogers wasn't a perfect human being, just a sincere and conscientious one, although if Fred Rogers ever lost his temper or resorted to profanity, you won't see it here.

The generation of kids who grew up watching Mister Rogers probably will supply the adults who'll love this movie and who happily will return to his beautiful neighborhood. I can't say that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is one of my favorite movies, but why object to a movie that dramatizes the impact of kindness and healing and encourages us to understand that behind a lot of the angry expressions we see, there are often deep wellsprings of hurt.

She's sexually aggressive at 15

Diary of a Teenage Girl takes a serio-comic look at a provocative subject.

The filmmaking is lively and creative. The central performance is ripe with the burgeoning sexuality of a 15-year-old, and there's little question that the movie evokes a loosey/goosey, mid-1970s moment when the line between adult and adolescent behavior got a little blurry.

That social observation may be the most cogent thing about The Diary of a Teenage Girl, a movie in which a teenager has a sexual relationship with her mother's 30something boyfriend.

Bel Powley's performance as young Minnie Goetz should elevate her status as a bold and daring actress, and director Mirelle Heller makes a provocative debut with a movie that leaves us to sort through its many issues.

Put another way, Diary is an engaging act of assertion, as brash as its main character and not necessarily any more perceptive.

We know a lot about what Minnie thinks because her tape-recorded confessions give the movie its on-going perspective. She's constantly narrating her life for us.

"I had sex today. Holy shit," says Minnie at the outset.

Minnie not only has sex on that day, but on many other days: Leaving hearts and flowers at the door, Heller emphasizes the physicality of female desire.

When I say that a movie includes a sexual relationship between a 15-year-old girl and her mother's adult boyfriend, I can almost feel knees jerking with outrage. I get that.

I felt some of that, as well. I took the story on the level it's offered while also remembering that Diary isn't just a story about sexual awakening; it's about a particular sexual awakening -- one in which the characters don't seem to care much about boundaries.

Based on a semi-autobiographical graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, Diary seems to rely on environment to explain Minnie's unregulated behavior. It's not spelled out, but we know that she's seen plenty of adults whose behavior is no less regulated.

Minnie is alternately insecure and confident. She's also entirely unaware (maybe the movie is, as well) of the fact that her sexual choice might be an expression of anger toward her mother (Kristen Wiig).

Wing's Charlotte never has provided a stable environment for Minnie or her younger sister (Abby Wait).

Charlotte split with Minnie's stepfather (Christopher Meloni), smokes pot and, on occasion, snorts coke. She can't hold a job, and has taken up with the shiftless Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard), a grown man who hasn't matured much beyond Minnie's age level.

Skarsgard's Monroe is the kind of guy who makes himself at home wherever he happens to land; he doesn't spend much time agonizing about his behavior. Maybe he thinks it's cool to be sexually open with Minnie.

For all that, The Diary of a Teenage Girl isn't one long squirmfest, and it's not shy about seeing Minnie as a seductress who wants to have lots of sex, some of it even with boys her own age.

Perhaps as a way to honor the movie's roots as a graphic novel, Heller includes animation -- sometimes showing us Minnie's fantasies.

Minnie not only discovers sexual pleasure, she learns that there's power in sex. At one point, she imagines herself as a giantess rumbling through San Francisco's streets, a sexual powerhouse.

Fair to say that at 15, Minnie, who's also an aspiring cartoonist, doesn't know how to control the forces she's unleashing.

I'm guessing that Heller makes an assumption about her audience: Perhaps she thinks that we already know that a sexual relationship between a 15-year-old and a man in his 30s is neither legally nor in any other way acceptable. She doesn't lecture us about it.

Instead, she takes us inside Minnie's world. She refuses to condemn anyone.

That's OK, but it would have helped if Heller had dug a bit deeper. Minnie's perspective gives the movie its personality, but it can't help but be a bit limited.

Powley, a British actress who's really in her early 20s, makes a willing co-conspirator for Heller. With her eyes popped wide open, Powley conveys Minnie's desire, bolstered by intermittent bursts of bravado.

In Powley and Heller's hands, Diary feel as alive as its young protagonist. And by the movie's end, it's clear that Heller has fashioned another coming-of-age story -- albeit one that brims with sex, talk about sex and nudity.

Diary of a Teenage Girl is an odd duck of a movie: Brave and cheeky, but not an inch removed from the sometimes wanton behavior of its characters. How you feel about that may well determine how you feel about the movie.