Top Ten: Loving those "20th Century Women"

by Nathaniel R

Mike Mill's terrific new film 20th Century Women, inspired by his own mother with Annette Bening further fictionalizing her, doesn't open until Christmas (disappointing as RIGHT NOW or August might've been the perfect time for it). But since it played the NYFF and we said so little, it's time to attempt to share the joy it offers. In lieu of a standard review...

Ten Amazing Things About 20th Century Women
first impressions of a film that will surely make our 2016 top ten list

Click to read more ...

New York Film Festival Selects Mike Mills' 20th Century Women for Centerpiece Film

Sound the alarms: there's a fresh new reason to celebrate Annette Bening. Following in the footsteps of last year's selection of Steve Jobs, the New York Film Festival has chosen Mike Mills' 20th Century Women as its 2016 Centerpiece, which stars The Bening as a single mother raising her son in 1979 Santa Barbara, co-habiting with a Bowie-cut Greta Gerwig, nomadic carpenter Billy Crudup, and frequent house guest Elle Fanning. We've been anxiously awaiting Mills' follow up to the intimate, structurally adventurous tone poem that is Beginners for a few years now, and NYFF's programming pick (and description of the film as a vibrantly alive time capsule, plus taste-maker A24's acquisition) signals a strong indication that it's been worth the wait. Imagining The Bening caught at the crux of cultural, decade-splitting identities, and strapped into denim overalls to boot, would be enough reason to anticipate the film, but the thought of another story stripped from the personal headlines of Mills' own life and translated into pure cinema has us downright salivating. I can smell the burnt sage from here.

Thoughts I had while looking at the first "20th Century Women" Image

Readers. I do not know where this image originated but I was so excited when I saw it I stopped breathing for a second. Thoughts that came to me while staring at it without editing them...

I already want to inject this movie directly into my veins. 

The Bening is front and center as it should be. Movies that put her off to the side. They're doing it wrong.

Sometimes it disturbs me when Elle Fanning looks directly into the camera. Like, quite possibly, she's not real. Or maybe an alien (I think she is playing one in How To Talk to Girls At Parties but that's just a clever way to throw us off the scent and hide in plain sight)

Remember when Billy Crudup turned down playing the Hulk in the early Aughts? Remember when Billy Crudup left Mary Louise Parker for Claire Danes when MLP was pregnant and everyone hated him? Remember when Billy Crudup was so great in various things throughout his career?

He looks kind of McConaughey Dallas Buyer's ragged in this image and that worries me. Unless it's for the character.

I didn't even recognize Greta Gerwig. WHOA. That's what a change of hair color and cut will do to a person.

When will this movie be in my eyeballs? WHEN? WHEN?!? I have the impatience.

Confrontational hippie boss realness.

I think the boy on the far right is this dude but I'm not sure. (Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating when I click over to IMDb while writing posts. LOL) The movie has something to do with The Bening's relationship to mothering her boy via her other relationships? 

Mike Mills last movie Beginners was so original and amazing and personal and resonant and all of the things movies should aspire to be and if this one is that good I will die of happiness while watching it only not all the way dead because it will also give me life and there will be more movies to see after it and I don't want to die.

Greta Gerwig looking like someone else is weird because even though she's Indie Queen, she's actually old fashioned movie star in that she always plays herself. Superbly.

Will it finally be Annette Bening's year at the Oscars? It wasn't in 1990. Or 1999. Or 2004. Or 2010. Who, me? Bitter? What's that woman got to do to win an Oscar?

Jason Gives Thanks

Howdy folks it's Jason here - with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" we gave some thanks for two classic Christina Ricci performances (have you voted yet?) but it's a rich world with lots of good to great stuff in it so here are a few more things that have brought a big dumb smile to my big dumb face this year.

- For Getting On and the spectacular showcase it's given three crazy talented actresses (not to mention all the smaller roles they fill in with even more under-used gems), letting each of them be both hysterically funny and heartbreaking within the matter of milliseconds (and for introducing the phrase "anal horn" into my vocabulary - that one's a keeper!)

- For the venom that dripped off of Rose Byrne's every ace line reading in Spy (this scene in particular)

- For whoever is tailoring Chad Radwell's khakis on Scream Queens so they're more obscene than if Glen Powell was wearing nothing at all (don't get me wrong, he looks good that way too)

- For the way that Donald Sutherland says the word "PLUCKED" at Julianne Moore in Mockingjay Part 2, which will become my ringtone the minute the clip is available

- For the way that the camera made sweet love to every golden angle of Matthias Schoenaerts in Far From the Madding Crowd (runner-up: Alexander Skarsgard in Diary of a Teenage Girl)

- For the Film Society of Lincoln Center here in NYC, which has spent the last several months spinning from the New York Film Festival (Carol and The Lobster holla) to their annually wonderful "Scary Movies" program to the currently running Todd Haynes retrospective to the upcoming David Lynch & Douglas Sirk series that will swallow whole my holidays -- it's like they're programming one of my favorite screens in the city (at Walter Reade) just for me and me alone, and I like that

- Related to the previous, I am beyond thankful for having gotten to see Bernard Rose's 1988 gem Paperhouse on a big screen, something I've been waiting to do for 25 years

- For Greta Gerwig in Mistress America, who gave yet another stellar comic performance that we'll be grooving on decades from now, long after whatever wins the Best Actress trophy is remembered as much more than a statistic #justiceforcomicbrilliance

- For Catherine Keener's wig on Show Me a Hero

- For Golden Girls repeats (a perennial blessing but Keener's wig made me think of it)

- For Guillermo Del Toro's infatuation with oozing wounds and puffy sleeves and incest, maybe not in that specific order

- For Furiosa!

- For Nathaniel who generously opened up the doors to The Film Experience and let this lunatic in. And of course for all you wonderful people out there in the dark, indulging my whims week after week and offering up some of the funniest randomest and smartest retorts on the web - as a wise old woman in little girl ringlets once said you are all the wind beneath my wings. Fly away, you let me fly so high, oh you, you, you.

While Jason Adams wishes his parents had named him after the killer in the Friday the 13th movies, he takes comfort in the fact that on their first date they went to see The Exorcist. He writes lots of daily nonsense at My New Plaid Pants, mostly about movies and dudes in movies, not necessarily in that order.  [Follow Jason on Twitter]. All of Jason postings here.

More "About" Team Experience.

The Bening to the Rescue!

Murtada here. 2015 is a banner year for actresexuals. From Clouds of Sils Maria in the spring, to the summer of prickly older ladies (Lily, Blythe and Meryl) and through to this month’s Brooklyn and Carol, we were spoiled. Looking forward to 2016 though, it is looking barren. It might just be early days as the release calendar hasn’t taken full shape yet.

But fear not actressexuals, Annette Bening’s coming to rescue us all from more stories about men and the obsession with their legacy and position in the world (ahem Steve Jobs!). Here she is, in glorious ratty overalls on the set of 20th Century Women. Mike Mills' long awaited follow-up to Beginners is a casting dream with lead roles for The Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning. Bening is Dorothea Fields, a mother raising her teenage son, Jamie, in Southern California in the summer of 1979. Also in Jamie’s life are a sophisticated photographer (Gerwig) and his teenage friend (Fanning). Mills based the characters on women he knew growing up.

And what’s with those blue overalls? And she’s not looking too happy. Hopefully that means there’s lots of drama to deal with. Mills after all made a poignant and beautiful story in Beginners, another movie he based on his personal experiences. That led to Christopher Plummer winning an Oscar. Could he work his magic for The Bening as well?

Are you excited for 20th Century Women? What other 2016 releases do you think can continue the actressexuals bliss we are having now?