Friday
Jan132017
"Having your heart broken is a tremendous way to learn about the world."
Friday, January 13, 2017 at 2:30PM 
This is the mantra I will hold close if Bening misses the Best Actress list and Mike Mills misses the Original Screenplay list for the grand wise funny altogether fantastic 20th Century Women. Consider that the final FYC as Oscar ballots close.
(Also it's how I'm going to survive 2017; I'm going to know so much about the world soon!)
Reader Comments (16)
I'd like to remain hopeful, but as the years go by the good roles become scarcer and scarcer for older actresses. She might join Glenn Close and Sigourney Weaver in the overdue-but-Oscarless club.
It's a shame, she is KILLER in this role!
The distributor really fucked up this release. They should've either (a) premiered it at an earlier fall festival, or (b) got it into theaters right after the NYFF. They didn't, and I blame them for holding back what always was going to need to be a slow-burn, word-of-mouth-driven release. Shame.
I agree about the poor distribution. I've been wanting to see this forever-- It's still not playing anywhere near me.
I just saw this last night and am TOTALLY with you. Hands down the best female lead performance in any 2016 movie that I've seen.
I agree that A24 bungled the release date, and it will probably cost Bening a nomination. It's a damn shame.
Distributors really need to take note. Especially on smaller films such as this.
Certainly if this came out before December, I probably would've seen it twice by now in theaters. As it is, I haven't seen it and with everything else going on (and it's decreasing Oscar buzz), it's increasingly likely I'd just wait until it shows up on Netflix.
Such a beautiful, humane film. Keep up the fight.
I can't see this movie until next week!
O/T because I just saw Aquarius, which also seems really unappreciated this awards season. Please give it a Film Bitch Award for Best Ending! (Also, where is Sonia Braga in the Best Actress discussion? At least she came in 4th in the Indiewire poll.)
I want to remain hopeful for Bening, but it's such a competitive year in that category. She may have won if it was released in 2015.
agreed wholeheartedly! i don't know why the script hasn't won every award so far, let alone not shown up as a nominee anywhere? bening and gerwig should certainly be waking up to nominations on the 24th, and without question it's the bad release date (should have been august) that did it. i've been raving about it, but nobody outside of LA or NYC has even heard of it.
Seeing this next week and I cannot wait!
It's that damn release date. I live in LA and I still haven't been able to see it. I was chatting with a friend's friend recently and he saw it at a screening or something and was literally singing unlimited praises. He was like "Did you like Beginners?" and I was like "only one of my favorite films" and he was like "well, 20th Century Women is like Beginners x3456812."
He was like "If Annette Bening doesn't get nominated, I'm going to jump out the window" and I said, "well you might wanna open the window and start preparing because it isn't looking likely"
Philip, it has been playing in LA for a few weeks now.
According to IMDB, 20th CW premiered at NYFF on 8 Oct 2016. Had A24 released it in early Nov or Thanksgiving weekend, it might had the time to build the momentum o Oscar noms
But now, I guess its super late botched up release date costs Bening, Gerwig & Mills their Oscar hopes.
To be fair, 2016 is such a stacked year w so many memorable female performances, its hard to argue tt Meryl & Amy shld sit this one out just bcos they alr have tonnes o nom....
Fingers X that Bening's film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool slated for release this year wont suffer the same atrocious fate.
Jonathan - Really? Lmao, my bad. I will blame the crippling holiday/post-holiday depression I've had for that one. I also have been more focused on seeing Hidden Figures and haven't heard anything about 20th Century Women out here so I kinda assumed, but also drives the point home of bad release date. But I also hadn't seen it playing at any of the theaters I checked. I swear I didn't even see it playing at the Arclight but I might've checked right before it was released.
Though, if anything, this will give Annette Bening some automatic Oscar momentum for whatever buzzy film she does next.
I loved this film. But yeah the marketing has been terrible. There was hardly anyone in the screening I went to and oddly 3 people walked out of the film at different times halfway through through. Were they expecting another kind of film ? It was really odd and disheartening