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Juno

It feels like Juno had a window of maybe a week — maybe — before the backlash started, and it was multi-pronged. People complained about Diablo Cody’s dialogue, complaining that all of her characters talked in the same, overly-stylized manner (a jab that seems to mostly evade male counterparts like Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, David Mamet, and Aaron Sorkin). People made its teen-pregnancy storyline into some kind of a political hot potato, trying to transform the gentle comedy into an anti-abortion polemic (news flash: if Juno had an abortion, the movie would be forty minutes long). And it was accused of being some sort of faux-hipster twee poseur thing, which is a bag not even worth unpacking. Here’s what I know: this is a warm and likable picture, the characters are relatable but subtly complicated, the dialogue is funny and rarely forced, and the parent/child dynamics are rendered with a nuance seldom seen in mainstream cinema. And Ellen Page is fantastic. And so is Allison Janney. And so is J.K. Simmons. And so is Jennifer Garner. And so is Jason Bateman. And so is Michael Cera. And so on and so on.