• Mills is an absolute master of tone and intimacy. The film is filled with great montages (more on that in a second) breaking up small honest moments between superb characters acted out by a top-notch staff (bening, gerwig, Crudup, elle fanning, newcomer Zumann
  • Gorgeous opening over the cost of santa barbara
  • Sort of a rag-tag makeshift family of supporting characters with bening doing great work as the matriarch
  • Bright 1970’s California colors—yellow kitchen
  • Punk music photography montage
  • No less than 3 talking heads songs are a character in the film- a sublime addition here
  • Dueling opening voice overs by son and bening and then we’d get those two actors doing the background and future story via voice over (all we get in action is this snapshot in 1979) for the various characters- in fact, bening does her son’s and he does hers
  • Lots of self-analyzation borders on getting a little tired
  • 7-8 montages with voice over—(4 main characters, jimmy carter speech, punk)—actors doing their own epilogues
  • Clearly a companion piece to 2010’s beginners by mills- that one was his father and this is his mother- a very strong pair of films
  • Recommend/Highly Recommend border- leaning towards HR