20th Century Women
A24 | Release Date: December 28, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
83
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
36
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
CineVueMaximilian Von ThunFeb 9, 2017
Bright light and dazzling colour dominate, as befits the Santa Barbara setting, while every scene is packed with moments that are in turn engaging, amusing, poignant, awkward, heart-warming, heart-breaking and profound. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorJan 12, 2017
With this complex characterization, Bening looks like a shoo-in for a best-actress nomination come Oscar time, but she is also amply supported here with two performances that nicely capture the insecurities of earlier stages of womanhood. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayJan 12, 2017
As a celebration of personal and social history, 20th Century Women takes the audience back. But it also lifts us up on a wave of openhearted emotion and keen intelligence. It bursts with the sad, messy, ungovernable beauty of life. Read full review
100
New York PostSara StewartDec 27, 2016
Despite being set in the late 1970s, 20th Century Women feels like the perfect movie for this moment. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyDec 26, 2016
The most pleasurable aspect of 20th Century Women (and it's pleasurable throughout) is that it allows itself to be messy. Read full review
100
ConsequenceNico LangOct 17, 2016
Despite the gender gap between the film’s creator and his subjects, the film is beautifully perceptive and, at times, deeply poignant. Mills has created the kind of comedy in which you laugh with recognition because its dilemmas feel so familiar. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattDec 20, 2016
Plotwise, Women is a wisp; as a mood piece, though, it’s almost irresistibly rich. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichOct 7, 2016
This is the rare movie that’s redeemed by its unchecked nostalgia. Read full review
91
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodOct 7, 2016
Masterfully played by Annette Bening, Dorothea is a fascinating character of contradictions. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 27, 2016
20th Century Women is a memory movie, one in which people are conjured up to bump against the larger world, exuberantly and uneasily. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 27, 2016
What makes this droll, darting story about a loose group of family and friends so moving? The answer lies partly in its tone. Mr. Mills seems to have thrown everything he could think of into the mix, dramatic unities be damned, but suffused it all with a poetic sense of life’s goofiness, solemnity and evanescence. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 27, 2016
The beauty of Bening’s performance lies in those marvelously suggestive layers — all the delicate, tendril-like emotional possibilities that she manages to tuck into the margins of any given moment. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 21, 2016
20th Century Women is irreducible, too, although certain adjectives and adverbs do leap to mind: generous, reflective, absolutely delightful. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesJan 18, 2017
This movie is delightful – funny and dreamy and sometimes desperately sad. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonJan 19, 2017
20th Century Women doesn’t have much of a plot — if it has one at all. But the film beautifully evokes the era just before Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrJan 19, 2017
A fairly standard coming-of-age saga on its face, with an effectively pained performance by 15-year-old Lucas Jade Zumann holding center stage. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldJan 18, 2017
The drama of Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women takes place in Annette Bening’s masterful pauses. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 28, 2016
Despite its grandiose title, 20th Century Women unfolds as series of small moments – some hilarious and heartfelt, other silly and sorrowful – that help define the characters and their time. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Dec 20, 2016
While Beginners unfolded almost entirely from the point of view of its directorial stand-in, 20th Century Women creates a more generous equilibrium of perspective. Read full review
83
The Film StageNick NewmanOct 7, 2016
If the screenplay’s sense of scale can begin to feel limited by an overfamiliarity in environment, it’s suddenly made expansive with the realization of how much these places are extensions of these five people’s lives and personalities. Read full review
80
EmpireWill LawrenceFeb 9, 2017
An insightful and, on occasion, laugh-out-loud piece of filmmaking. Artfully shot and structured, while its warmth and wit shine as brightly as the Californian sun. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 12, 2017
It’s refreshing to watch Bening, making the most of her best role in a long time.... It’s just an outstanding performance, and reason enough to see a movie whose charms are as unusual as its characters. Read full review
80
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneyDec 30, 2016
It’s a tender, introspective film you’ll want to pull in close, hold tight, and keep with you. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekDec 27, 2016
This picture has a more melancholy, resonant edge. And as with "Beginners," there’s an extraordinary performance at its heart: Bening is terrific, getting at the way middle-aged loneliness and contentment can be so intermingled that it’s almost impossible to tell which is which. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsStephen Whitty Dec 26, 2016
Kind of like all the other characters Annette Bening plays, year after year - never to nearly enough applause. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 12, 2016
The movie belongs wholeheartedly to Bening, and to the age, come and gone, that she enshrines. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfOct 12, 2016
The characters of 20th Century Women, more interconnected than most, generate a group narrative that’s just substantial enough to keep you in thrall by how uninhibited a movie can be. Read full review
80
The GuardianJordan HoffmanOct 7, 2016
For all of Mills’s cinematic tricks, he’s emerging as a great realist film-maker. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyOct 7, 2016
The sheer likability of these lived-in characters is a powerful magnet, thanks to insightful writing and a note-perfect ensemble anchored by a never-better Annette Bening. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreJan 18, 2017
It’s not a deep film, but it is a rich one — full of flesh and blood characters, realistic “coming of age” moments and pithy homilies on the state of relationships, gender roles, “the California Dream” and the American one. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJan 12, 2017
There’s not a single false, “actor-y” note in Bening’s work. It is a master class in nuanced acting, and it is deserving of an Academy Award. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 12, 2017
20th Century Women is not especially dramatic. At times, it eschews drama. Every time the story is on a knife edge and can drop deeper into turmoil or recede back to the normal flows and ebbs of life, Mills chooses the latter. But this time, the strategy works. It feels real. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 5, 2017
Ever since she took "The Grifters" by storm, Bening has been a spectacular if often ill-used actress. Here, it's a marvelous fit of performer and role, and she makes Dorothea a dozen things at once: warm, chilly, open, wary, worldly, insecure, grave, blithe. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 22, 2016
Without Bening, whose performance is a watchful and laid-back marvel, 20th Century Women, written and directed by Mike Mills, would still be borderline worth seeing because of its supporting cast. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneOct 13, 2016
Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women incurs sorrow at the prospect of saying goodbye to its characters. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonOct 7, 2016
Although a touch too precious and slight, 20th Century Women is lit from within by its endless curiosity about its evolving characters. Read full review
60
We Got This CoveredLauren Humphries-BrooksOct 7, 2016
20th Century Women relegates a set of extraordinary female characters to supporting players in a standard coming-of-age narrative. It's entertaining, but also disappointing. Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanOct 7, 2016
20th Century Women is an endless chain of anecdotes, and though many individual moments are winning, the movie as a whole is rudderless. It never achieves an emotional power surge. Read full review
60
TheWrapDan CallahanOct 7, 2016
20th Century Women mainly overcomes its flaws through the sheer imaginative sensitivity of Mills’s writing. Read full review
40
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonDec 27, 2016
Despite the movie's title and Bening's central role, women are oddly peripheral. Read full review
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