Critics tend to accentuate the positive in year-end lists, but cheerleading aside, 2023 wasn’t a great year for mainstream movies, either creatively or commercially.
In this year’s earnest and charming “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” titular preteen Margaret (“Transparent” star Abby Ryder Fortson) pleads with the divine about the vagaries of growing up, which in her case include the prospect of moving to a new town as well as her desperate wish to speed through puberty into womanhood.