Waste of Money.

Fantastic!

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

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.

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.

I found this movie on Netflix streaming movies. I have been a fan of Bening's for a long time, her performances made movies like 'American President', 'American Beauty', and 'The Kids are All Right.' In this movie she is 55-yr-old Dorothea Fields, living in Southern California in 1979. She has a 15-yr-old son, Lucas Jade Zumann as Jamie, she is concerned that she may be too out of touch with the modern world to raise him adequately so she enlists the help to two women.One is Elle Fanning as 17-yr-old neighbor Julie, the other is 30- something Greta Gerwig as Abbie Porter, aspiring professional photography boarding with Dorothea and Lamie. Plus there is Billy Crudup as handyman William, working to renovate their old house, also boarding there.The movie is well-written and well-acted. We enjoyed it.

An ode to women and the chaos they inspire in the world of a fatherless teenage boy."20th Century Women" has a laid back vibe and lots of period detail that will probably appeal to the audience members who were themselves coming of age in the period -- late 70s and early 80s -- in which the movie is set. It follows three principal female characters and charts the influence they have on our teenage protagonist. Annette Bening is the freewheeling mom, doing the best she can without someone to provide a positive male influence for her son. Greta Gerwig is the boarder who teaches him about girls and music. And Elle Fanning is his female friend who refuses to be his girlfriend. The conclusion he and the movie comes to seems to be that women are necessary but confusing. I found myself irritated by all of them. They spend all of their time trying to teach him what and how to think without ever letting him develop an identity of his own.The film is entertaining enough, but there is something lacking, and I'm not surprised that it wasn't one of the stand out movies of the year. I love Bening and would watch her in anything, and she does as much as she probably can with her character, but one can't help but wonder how much better a performance she could have given with better writing and directing at her back.Grade: B