20th Century Women

Bon film !

Bon film !

Bon film !

Bon film !

It took the incredible skill and talent of an amazing cast (especially Annette Bening) to keep this otherwise disastrously weak script from entirely falling apart. The film attempts to do a character study, but fails to commit to any one character enough to be well understood or relatable. Invoking next to no emotion from the viewer, I have left the film feeling neither sad or elated, as if I have spent the last 2 hours doing nothing. Perhaps I am being unfair...as an otherwise non- critical viewer, I have strong emotions about leaving a film without something. Was that the mission?! 5/10 stars, all 5 for a cast that worked with nothing and still managed to come up with something.

Elle Fanning uggh yes. Okay, now that that's out of the way lets get to this film. This seemed like an unconventional coming of age film and that is basically what this was. Its not a mindblowingly amazing film and has some flaws. However, what I thought was a flaw may have worked for another viewer. What I can say though, is that the film left a better impression on me than I thought it would. The performances of this film are great, particularly that of Greta Gerwig and Annette Bening. Gerwig is such a real character who is pained but absolutely does what she wants to do in life. She has a hard time finding love but her very open nature makes her identifiable. Bening is tremendous in the best role I've seen from her. She's an easygoing mother who is worried about her son and how he deals with life. Remarkably cool but nuanced. Also, Elle Fanning good lord I love her. Okay, I had to get that out of my system again. All of the characters have substantial depth and you do not leave the film feeling like a character's story was underdeveloped. The main core of characters are all in close proximity with each other and through their interactions you get to see their turmoils, struggles, and comfortable nature with each other. The stories of the characters of the film are at times told by themselves and they seem to be telling the story from a future time, where they have experienced the entirety of their lives. I liked this technique of expansive storytelling. However, there are other things in the film that don't work as well. The slideshow of images of the culture of the 70's seemed gimmicky and didn't exactly add to the film's narrative. It seemed like an attempt to be able to grab viewers but wasn't exactly necessary. There are also times where the scenes have a "psychedelic effect" where the car races off in the highway in a dreamy haze, full with the colors of the rainbow emanating from the car. Again, I thought this was quite gimmicky and trying to harden the fact that this film was supposed to be set in the 70s. I think one of the things that worked with the film was its humor. There is a lot of it, and while its not always subtle and funny a good amount of it works to make you chuckle or really laugh. Its not something I was expecting but is definitely something that made the film more memorable. There are some scenes that really, really work and help you really want to live in the frame of the characters. The film really focuses on women at the time and a teenage boy trying to navigate in a sea of women in his life. While its not always accurate about men, I think its doing a pleasant job of trying to connect the two while showing some of the plights experienced when men and women try to understand each other. What you get here is a well acted, humorous films that works to entertain. 7/10

Mike Mills hits a home-run with '20th Century Women'. Mills, with the help of an Astonishing Annette Bening, creates a film (based in-part on Mills' childhood) so emotionally powerful, its impossible not be moved by it. '20th Century Women' Synopsis: Dorothea (Annette Benning) seeks the help of Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and Julie (Elle Fanning) to raise her son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann). '20th Century Women' is about relationships, primarily of a mother and son. Mills delivers a personal story with genuine feeling. I loved the other dynamics as well. The characters of Abbie & Julie are strong as well. You watch 3 women in different age groups, help a boy know a little more about life. They speak differently, their relations to the boy are vastly diverse, but they're women, who define feminism & the practicalities of life. Mills keeps the narrative heartfelt & by the time this story ends, you're with the characters & you feel for them. Mills' Screenplay, which has earned him a Very-Worthy Oscar- Nomnation, is superior. The Writing is super-strong at all times. I don't recall a single moment when the film lost me, I was with the film throughout. Mills' Direction is simple, but well-done. Cinematography & Editing are super. Roger Neill's Score is perfect. '20th Century Women' is embellished with maddening performances. Annette Benning steals the show & how! Her portrayal of a mother trying to her raise her son without a father, is beyond marvelous. Its hard to keep eyes off the screen when Benning is up. Benning has delivered several memorable performances in her fabulous career, but in '20th Century Women', she surpasses herself. And to the Academy, what in the world made you not nominate her? If this isn't acting of the highest order, then what is? Following Benning, are Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Lucas Jade Zumann and Billy Crudup. Fanning is a treasure. She delivers a restrained, believable performance from start to end. Grewig, a criminally underrated performer, is only getting better with every film. She's fabulous here & the attitude she carries to portray a women fighting a serious illness, is nerve-wracking. Zumann is natural to the core & his scenes with Benning, are the emotional core of the film. Crudup, sandwiched between 3 beautiful women & a rebelling teenager, is a delight. He gets a smaller roll compared to the others, but he leaves a solid impression. On the whole, '20th Century Women' is A Wonder Of A Film. Two Big Thumbs Up!

Greetings again from the darkness. Writer/director Mike Mills has found a niche, and a form of therapy, by exploring and exposing his life in a most public manner … on the silver screen. Beginners (2010) brought us the story of his father's (an Oscar winner for Christopher Plummer) late life pronouncement of homosexuality. This time, Mr. Mills turns his lens and his pen towards his mother, and he seems to understand her much better in retrospect than in the summer of 1979 when the film is set. This can be viewed as the story of three women, masked as a coming-of-age story for a teenage boy. Annette Bening stars as Dorothea, a chain-smoking single mother in her mid-50's who seems to have surrendered to her own sadness and loneliness, while simultaneously trying to make sense of a changing world. One of her tenants is Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a photographer and NYC punk scene drop-out, who is now battling cervical cancer. The third female is the seemingly always present Julie (Elle Fanning), a sexually promiscuous and borderline depressive 18 year old who values the platonic friendship she has with Dorothea's 15 year old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zuman). Factor in another tenant in the form of laid-back handyman and former hippie William (Billy Crudup), and we have a makeshift family in a communal setting that seems almost normal for 1979 Santa Barbara. Dorothea enlists the other two women to show Jamie their lives – the intent being to influence his growth in ways an older mother can't. Of course, Jamie is at the age where exploring life isn't necessarily best served by tagging along on a trip to the gynecologist with Abbie or having no-touch sleepovers with Julie. Ms. Bening finds her groove as the story progresses and we feel her struggling to connect to each of the characters. When William plays a Black Flag song, her reaction is priceless: "They know they're not good, right?" She doesn't mean it as a put down, but rather her attempt to understand why her son is drawn to this. An even more emotionally naked moment occurs when Jamie is reading a passage from "The Feminine Mystique" to his mother. It's a passage that captures what he thinks of her, as well as what she thinks of herself … a mostly invisible woman finding it difficult to be a parent while also maintaining a self. Mills is not one to be nostalgic or glorify the past. His brilliant writing includes lines like "Wondering if you are happy is a great short cut to being depressed." The movie can be slow moving at times, but it's the best I've seen in awhile at expressing what makes us tick. The film is what Running with Scissors should have been. Real people are sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, and sometimes annoying. Each of the characters here are all of the above (just like you and me).

"Guys aren't supposed to look like they're thinking about what they look like." Julie (Elle Fanning) No they're not, but in Mike Mills' 20th Century Women, some rules don't apply, and the young man, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), is well on his way to come of age in a most unusual household. It's 1979, before the Internet and Reagan and after the Punk rage. In other words, it's a time of cultural and personal transition. No one is more responsible for this cultural migration in the Fields family than Dorothea (Annette Bening), a middle-aged matriarch with wit and lungs that will, in 20 years, surrender to the assault of her incessant smoking (her voice-over narration tells us so). Dorothea has the calm, contemplative, accepting nature to guide her two children, Jamie and Abbie (Greta Gerwig), into a responsible adulthood prefaced by sexual exploration and establishment defiance. Although I rarely comment on acting, I must single out Bening for a performance of rich nuance, eschewing the theatrics of Oscar baiting to give us a character with immense affection and uncertainty, just like many of us, I suspect. Her low-key but powerful interpretation should get an Oscar nod. While the examination of teen sexuality in flux is well described, so too is Dorothea's odyssey from a broken marriage to a Zen-like acceptance. As in the iconic Seinfeld world, nothing seems to be happening. However beneath that middle-class ambiance lie hearts struggling with their own shifting shapes under the watchful eye of family. 20th Century Women is all about the overwhelming part family plays in human development, not in grandly dramatic exercises but in the small notes like sitting in bed chatting or going with mother to a nightclub. As the credit sequence will tell you, life turns out fairly well despite the uncertainties of daily vicissitudes documented so distinctly here.

I understand the rage of many other US reviewers because this movie is so far from usual Hollywood clichés that it does not even look like an US movie! It seems an European movie. Bergman, Fellini and stuff... It is NOT boring. It has its pace and it is exacly what it has to be. I identified myself at different levels. I was born in 1958, just like the main actress (great performance). And like Dorothea I had a daugther when I was in my 40s (she now is 15, like Jamie, Dorothea's son) and I don't know how to talk to her, I don't like much of the music she likes and so on. I was a teenager in the 70s, so I identified with Jamie, great character: I wish I had one thousandth of his self-consciousness when I was his age! This movie was oxygen for suffocating US major's movies, after sequels and remakes and CGI shows finally something to think about.