20th Century Women

"20th Century Women is irreducible ... although certain adjectives and adverbs do leap to mind: generous, reflective, absolutely delightful."

"Despite the movie's title and Bening's central role, women are oddly peripheral."

""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."

"When 20th Century Women concerns itself with the utterly human question of personal satisfaction, it's huggable: the kind of movie you wish more directors had the courage to grab for."

"Mills's world is certainly not devoid of pain, but it's leached of bitterness, leached of conflict, leached of aggression, leached of hostility; the pain and the trauma are leached of consequence."

"Love and loss go hand in hand in "20th Century Women," a funny, emotionally piercing story about a teenager and the women who raise him."

"It's a nice film with some great moments but Mills' touch is too tentative to make all that talk buzz and hum as resonantly as it should."

"A simply glorious Annette Bening leads a stellar cast in Mike Mills' semiautobiographical story about a bohemian women raising a teen in the age of 1970's feminism and punk rock."