Category Archives: Danielle Macdonald

2025 Films, ASAP Rocky, Christian Slater, Comedy, Conan O'Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Dark Comedy, Drama, Independent, Independent Comedy, Independent Drama, Josh Safdie, Mary Bronstein, Rose Byrne

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You-2025

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If I Had Legs I’d Kick You-2025

Director Mary Bronstein

Starring Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Christian Slater

Scott’s Review #1,521

Reviewed February 25, 2026

Grade: A-

Not being a parent myself, nor ever having the desire to be one, I was nonetheless enthralled by the subject of stressed parenting explored in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025).

Examining our frazzled lead character, Linda’s, descent into madness after enduring day after day of adult chaos and kid problems, the role is wonderfully played by Rose Byrne.

The actor, though memorable in 2011’s classic Bridesmaids, is usually associated with one-note or throwaway roles throughout her long career.

It’s inspiring to see her finally get her due by playing a complex role with so much chops and receiving an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2025.

With her life crashing down around her, Linda, ironically a psychotherapist, attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness amid pressure from her therapist, her absent husband, a missing client, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her own therapist (Conan O’Brien), also a colleague.

After her living room is destroyed by water damage, she is reduced to renting a dingy motel for an extended period, where she encounters hostile motel workers.

Her saving grace is her late-night solitude, when she can peacefully indulge in wine and pot while sitting on the beach, contemplating her life.

Director Mary Bronstein, who also appears as a therapist, cleverly doesn’t show Linda’s daughter or husband for nearly the entire film, revealing them only through their grating voices. They irritate and stress Linda out to no end.

Undoubtedly, Bronstein either wanted to keep the focus on Linda and her daily peril or to leave it uncertain whether they even existed outside Linda’s mind.

The plot mostly involves a medical situation where Linda’s daughter, Delaney, has a pediatric feeding disorder that necessitates nightly supplemental feeding through a tube and participation in a day hospital program.

Her husband, a ship captain, is away, presumably at sea. This leaves Linda to handle everything.

Linda trudges through her days, arguing with a parking attendant and a contractor, while having misunderstandings with her therapist, patients, and a bitchy girl at her motel.

The supporting characters are well cast and add leverage to Linda’s peril by being completely unsympathetic and sour. O’Brien is excellent as the self-absorbed therapist, while Danielle Macdonald is good as a needy patient who ditches her baby.

But the film belongs to Byrne.

From the first scene, she wears a weary look, and her close-up facial expressions speak volumes about her peril. Linda looks washed out and exhausted while things spiral out of control. Nearly dozing off as a patient chatters away, she finally has had enough.

On the other hand, she is constantly on the brink of losing her shit.

Thanks to Byrne, we are treated to fist-pumping scenes where she lets loose on both therapists and the bitchy motel girl, instantly making Linda the only rootable character in the lot.

Still, she’s not exactly likable herself and incessantly makes poor choices. Her irritation with everything grows tiresome until the final sequence, when the film parleys into a message about mental illness.

If I should have found the film depressing, I didn’t.

Sprinkled with macabre humor, the film must have been influenced by the 1970 masterpiece Diary of a Mad Housewife, starring Carrie Snodgrass as a woman emotionally tortured by her selfish family and on the brink of a breakdown.

Bronstein, also the screenwriter, makes Linda the only character the audience should focus on, and all events are told from her perspective, which makes the film a winner.

Never knowing where events are headed, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025) is a sheer delight in comedic/dramatic insanity. Though it carries a strong central theme of mental wellness, it also promotes the important message that it’s also okay not to have kids who will ruin your life.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress-Rose Byrne

Independent Spirit Award Nominations: 1 win-Best Director-Mary Bronstein, Best Lead Performance-Rose Byrne (won)

2020 Films, Azazel Jacobs, Comedy, Danielle Macdonald, Dark Comedy, Imogen Poots, Isaach de Bankolé, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tracy Letts, Valerie Mahaffey

French Exit-2020

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French Exit-2020

Director Azazel Jacobs

Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges

Scott’s Review #1,188

Reviewed October 29, 2021

Grade: C+

French Exit (2020) is a mediocre effort that left me disappointed. I expected to be dazzled by the eccentric French culture and sequences that I had anticipated.

While there are some location shots in historic Paris, they are not enough to compensate for the lackluster writing and unlikable characters the film offers.

Plot-wise, the intriguing premise teeters into the far-fetched, to the point where the result becomes banal and silly.

The film is a miss and should be skipped in favor of other films, such as Midnight in Paris (2011) and Last Tango in Paris (1972), which both offer a better French flair and superior storytelling.

A widowed New York socialite named Frances (Pfeiffer) and her meandering son Malcolm (Hedges) move to Paris after she spends the last of her husband’s inheritance.

Sixty years old and now penniless, she borrows a friend’s apartment where she plans to live out the rest of her days anonymously. Her husband, Franklin, has been dead for twelve years, and all that’s left of him is a cat named Small Frank, who may or may not embody his spirit.

Based on the previews, I anticipated an adventure involving cobblestone Parisian streets, delicious bakeries, and cultural French music. A glimpse of the famous Louve or Eifel Tower would have been a cherry on top.

While there are a few sequences of Frances and Malcolm walking along Parisian streets and an apartment that provides good French flavor, there is not enough to be considered an achievement.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays the main character.

As a fan of some of her more recent projects, like Mother! (2017), a brilliant film directed by Darren Aronofsky, the character didn’t catch fire for me. She’s pretty snobbish throughout and never really gets her comeuppance or learns any lesson.

As the protagonist, I was baffled as to why I was expected to root for a woman who is a bitch.

Hedges, a fantastic actor, plays his part according to the script. Still, the morose, one-dimensional Malcolm is uninteresting, and a so-so romantic plot involving his girlfriend Susan (Imogen Poots) is even less so.

On the plus side, Valerie Mahaffey steals the show with her quirky, comedic performance as Reynard.

A fan of Frances’s, she befriends the woman who initially shows no interest in her and dismisses her coldly. An eccentric, her odd demeanor and style are infectious, and she won me over immediately, especially when placed side by side with the other, less flavorful characters.

She was deservedly rewarded with recognition and received a Spirit Award nomination. Hopefully, this leads to more juice roles from Mahaffey.

Azazel Jacobs, who has had modest success on the independent film circuit, offers moderately impressive direction but loses me with the addition of not one but two tired seance sequences. A cat inhabiting a dead body and coming to life with the deceased person’s voice is drab and better suited for low-brow light comedy.

To make matters worse, the inclusion of a plump medium Madeleine (Danielle Macdonald) is about as clichéd as you can get.

There is not enough substance to give French Exit (2020) higher than average marks. Pfeiffer, taking center stage and doing her best, deserves better roles as she enters her senior years. She’s got gusto, so let’s give her better material.

Independent Spirit Award Nominations: Best Supporting Female-Valerie Mahaffey

2017 Films, Beanie Feldstein, Comedy, Daniel Zovatto, Danielle Macdonald, Drama, Greta Gerwig, Independent, Independent Comedy, Independent Drama, Laurie Metcalf, Lois Smith, Lucas Hedges, Saoirse Ronan, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Letts

Lady Bird-2017

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Lady Bird-2017

Director Greta Gerwig

Starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf

Scott’s Review #700

Reviewed November 28, 2017

Grade: A

Lady Bird is a 2017 independent film released by actor-turned-writer/director Greta Gerwig. It is a tremendous effort in her solo directorial debut.

No stranger to the indie syndicate herself, Gerwig puts her unique stamp on the film with a rich, female-centered perspective that works quite well and seeps with charm and wit.

It is worth noting that the story is semi-autobiographical, based on Gerwig’s life and her stormy dealings with her mother. The story is well-written, well-paced, and empathetic as the audience views a slice of life through the eyes of a restless yet kindly teenager on the cusp of womanhood.

Saoirse Ronan gives a bravura performance in the title role. Her given birth name is Christine, but she defiantly changes it to Lady Bird in a show of adolescent independence, and much to her parents, Marion and Larry’s (Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts ) chagrin.

Christine lives in suburban Sacramento, California, and yearns for a more exciting life in New York City, far from what she considers Dullsville, USA. Now, in her senior year, she is attending a Catholic high school.

Christine applies to college after college, hoping to escape her daily dilemmas. Christine’s best friend Julie and somewhat boyfriend Danny (Lucas Hedges) are along for the ride.

The period is 2002- shortly after 9/11.

The brightest moments in Lady Bird are the plentiful scenes between Christine and her mother. The chemistry between Ronan and Metcalf is terrific, and I genuinely buy them as a real mother/daughter duo, warts and all. They fight makeup, get on each other’s nerves, fight, cry, do makeup, etc.

I especially love their knock-down drag-outs, as each actress stands her ground while allowing the other room to shine—feeding off of each other.

My favorite Metcalf scene occurs while she is alone. Having gotten into a tiff with Christine and giving her the silent treatment while Christine flies to New York, Marion reconsiders as she melts into tears. At the same time, she drives away, regretting her decision and missing her daughter already.

Metcalf fills the scene with emotional layers as she does not speak- we watch in awe as her facial expressions tell everything.

Comparably, Ronan—likely to receive her third Oscar nomination at the ripe old age of twenty-three (Atonement, 1997, and Brooklyn, 2015, are the other nods)—successfully gives a layered performance as a teenage girl struggling with her identity and restless to see different worlds and get out of what she sees as a bland city.

Of Irish descent, Ronan is remarkable in her portrayal of a California girl- sometimes selfish, sometimes sarcastic, but always likable and empathetic.

The casting from top to bottom is terrific, as the supporting players lend added meat to the story. Christine’s best friend, Julie, played by young upstart Beanie Feldstein (Jonah Hill’s sister), is compelling as the lovable, chubby, and nerdy theater geek.

Letts is perfect as Christine’s father, depressed at losing his job in the tough economy and having to compete with young talent as he sees his career slip away.

Legendary actress Lois Smith adds heart to Sister Sarah Joan’s role- a by-the-book nun who is an incredible old chick.

Finally, Hedges, seemingly in every film from 2016 to 2017, is emotionally resounding as Danny, Christine’s troubled boyfriend, struggles with his sexuality.

Gerwig does it all with this film—she directs and writes, scripting laugh-out-loud moments and eliciting heartfelt emotion from her enchanted audience.

A hilarious scene occurs as Christine attends a dreary class assembly- an anti-abortion-themed one- by a woman who almost did not exist but for her mother’s decision not to have an abortion.

When a bored Christine icily points out that had the woman’s mother had the abortion, she would not be forced to sit through the assembly, it is a laugh-out-loud moment.

Lady Bird (2017), thanks to a fantastic writer and director and superlative casting, is a film that has its all heart, emotion, humor, and great acting.

The film is intelligently written and forces the audience to embrace its characters quite willingly. Gerwig carves a story, perhaps done many times before in film, but with a fresh and energetic feel.

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director-Greta Gerwig, Best Actress-Saoirse Ronan, Best Supporting Actress-Laurie Metcalf, Best Original Screenplay

Independent Spirit Award Nominations: 1 win-Best Feature, Best Female Lead-Saoirse Ronan, Best Supporting Female-Laurie Metcalf, Best Screenplay (won)