Mike Mills

here's to many hundreds of sandwiches still to come.

Is it just me or was Keanu's hippie orthodontist just a little homoerotic? There was some line that was questionable after which he said "I think we might need to go a little deeper" and half the audience just lost it.

Just caught this movie over the weekend and thought it was lovely and poignant. I cried three times. Go see it if you can.

By this movie I mean "Beginners" starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer. Lovely film.

I will, tho the doggie subtitles in the trailer give me pause.

Just watched the trailer, it looks great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1ZQrYiTMOY

The movie really deserves its own thread.

oh this looks interesting!

i thought this was a shitty movie, can we talk about it?

It seems Mills is allergic to actual conflict interrupting his string of pleasant scenes.

it took NY Times Mag to tell me he's married to Miranda July

Conversations between them must largely consist of well placed "um"s.

It seems Mills is allergic to actual conflict interrupting his string of pleasant scenes.

it would take me ten thousand words to enumerate the problems i had with the whole film, but the bit that comes back to me when i think of it is the montage, in his apartment, when they're breaking up, pacing, back and forth, and mills actually mutes their conversation & settles for, y'know a montage of various pensive & aggrieved expressions, some leaning, different configurations of sitting down and standing up. it feels spectacularly unambitious, to not even try to tell the story through incidents but just through 'states' - he is single; they are together; they are broken up; they are together, &c. like - & i know that this in itself might not strike everyone as a bad thing - it is almost the opposite of cassavetes & the idea of communicating the abrasive emotional tension that is any sort of relationship. instead: piano music, and a sense that we should believe from their tears/smiles, rather than anything more nuanced, that they are happy/sad accordingly.

i think a lot of my complaints after this make me sound like someone in the 1900s complaining that theatrical upstarts no longer use enough exposition, etc, because it sorta becomes my preference of, why are movies like this now (it sorta reminded me of 'submarine' in being a little 1-D). but it did feel so reductive.

(my fav complaint about this film, which i kinda enjoyed disliking, is re: ewan mcgregor as graphic designer, & how we were meant to see the righteousness in him sticking it to the man & refusing to sell out by treading the stagnant water of Drawing A Portrait of a Band, as he had done once before, in his job as a graphic designer)

mills actually mutes their conversation & settles for, y'know a montage of various pensive & aggrieved expressions

Yes. I actually thought Beginners was charming, for about half an hour. Then, it became apparent that everything that had already been alluded to (which I'd understood quite well from those allusions, thank you) was going to have to be spelled out in excruciating, tear-jerking, non-linear detail. That said, I thought the graphic designer fiasco was supposed to make him look pathetic, not righteous.

I hated this movie.

Quite hated it.

haha when i saw you hated this movie i was so relieved because you were like the first person i'd seen who wasn't slobbering over it.

I really want to wear that neck kerchief thing. I doubt this movie is gonna register much, but I hope it pushes the first domino in getting that to be an acceptable look for folks beyond dance instructor stereotypes in sitcoms.

Although that may be due to the fact that I take most of my fashion tips from The Red Shoes.

good review alfred,

a haircut that makes him look like the young Ronald Reagan as an Inca priest

http://media.pcadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3284144/Google_1_button.jpg

Man, if only this movie were just about the dad, and more art shows, maybe.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/09/mike-mills-anti-hollywood-family-films

They came together back in Los Angeles, cinematically: an agreement over lunch to be just friends, sealed with a handshake; a surprise visit by July to drop off two wooden mice she’d found at an estate sale; a lingering kiss. When July saw the model of a house that Mills was building in the Sierras, she probed her finger into it and said, “That could be my room.” After she left, Mills took a photo of the glass of lemonade she’d half finished and a stick that his dog Zoe had fetched for her. When he proposed, years later, he began by showing her a lemonade-and-stick tableau that he’d re-created. She had no idea what it represented.

20th Century Women is several lovely scenes strung throughout a mostly meh indie drama. Unsurprisingly, almost all of these moments belong to Bening: I loved her sad remark about never getting to see her son as he actually is out in the world, and her wistful "I thought it was beautiful" after watching Carter's famous speech. All of the other performers feel like they are far more locked into the affected language and pace of Mills' writing, but Bening alternately enlivens and transcends the material.

All the actors are really good in 20th Century Women, particularly Bening, Gerwig and the boy, I think.

Every time I see this thread I think it's about the R.E.M. bassist.

I basically agree with cryptosicko.

also the scene where Gerwig tries to explain The Raincoats to Bening is precisely like me trying to explain punk to a Brit friend who mostly likes pop, classical and opera.

goddamn billy crudup is rocking this stache in 20th century women

I never knew Mike Mills had a thread...Post your thoughts on the film, if you're up to it. I have 20th Century Women in my Top 10 on the upcoming ILX greatest-ever poll.

as a certified mama's boy I can already tell this is going to destroy me lol

I remember enjoying this as a whole, but the scene I remember best, I found dubious! The "older person gets into punk" scene seemed an easy shorthand... to prove that she's likeable and open, we have to see her enjoying this hipster music. As if there's something wrong with a middle-aged person in the late 70s who doesn't want to learn to pogo.

If you're thinking of the scene where Bening and Crudup listen to Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown," I don't think it's quite like you describe it. They try to like punk--because Bening is genuinely curious about what Greta Gerwig hears in it (and I think she knows her son has been to a punk club)--but come up short; they take that off the record player, put on the Talking Heads, and find that much easier to connect with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up0pJ4Otvkk

I liked this but wasn't as affected by it as I thought I would be. I actually thought it worked better as a movie about young heterosocial relationship dynamics (not actually something I've seen tackled this directly all that often, I don't think!) than as a movie about Bening's character. I ended up feeling a little depressed by it for some reason.

I don't think I've quite figured out yet why it gets to me as much as it does.

the relationships have the pleasing geometry of an old school romcom, which is a good fit for Mills' heavy hands (montages and voiceover and stock footage and "ambient music at active volumes" scoring and pleasing needle drops all the way home), but when it threatens to get emotionally volatile he doesn't seem to have the stomach for it

I think movies that contain some rare aspect of reality but then let you down in some other respect are uniquely frustrating, though. it was a good movie on balance.

Thanks for that description, clemenza. I'm probably over-invested in film depictions of musical hipness or lack thereof.

New One

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mzushAOM88

Looks kind of Tree of Life-ish; I suspect I will like it much better than Malick's film.

I didn't know he made 20th Century Women, I did not like that at all.

It looks.. sweet, I guess? The trailer does not compel me to seek it out.

re: the video clemenza posted months ago, I really loved that moment in 20th Century Women.

"I guess we're more the art fag types. I like that"

So I guess the title is from the ... Low album?

I guess that's only one "C'mon," my bad.

https://img.discogs.com/qK2pAqz8DDnAInujWqexHMjQUC0=/fit-in/600x594/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-405395-1417234468-2929.jpeg.jpg

y'all, c'mon c'mon is astonishing

lol

I had to restrain myself from turning it off. "Joaquin Phoenix bonds with cute nephew for 110 minutes" wasn't enough for me. Fabulous as ever use of music, though ("The Ostrich, "Strange").

I'm not being snarky, but, really, what grabbed you?

idk the relationships? the way the focus kept shifting from past to present depending on the dialogue? the interviews with the kids? i cried multiple times

i’m not the only person who likes this movie lol

C'mon C'mon made me think of other movies: Kramer vs. Kramer (the kid being warned about eating the ice cream may have been an allusion), Alice in the Cities--like both of those better--and, a little bit, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. 20th Century Women didn't make me think of anything--I can't think of another film like it (and have trouble describing it to people). Uniqueness is not a prerequisite for a good film, but familiarity can be a problem.

The interviews with all the locals felt unscripted (no idea if that's so), and I thought they worked pretty well. I didn't think the main kid was anything special. There have been a lot of memorable (often weird) kid performances in movies the last 20 years; I think of You Can Count on Me, The Squid & the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, even the daughters on Mad Men and The Americans. I didn't think he was at that level--not bad, but ordinary.

One bit of music I loved: Irma Thomas's "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)." I used to put that on mix-tapes and had completely forgotten about it.