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20th Century Women, directed by Mike Mills ( R, 1 hour 59 minutes) Dorothea ( Annette Bening), a Birkenstock- wearing 50- something single mom, is an overachiever who doesn’t need a man to complete her but who nevertheless resists feminism. She’s fiercely independent, practical, pragmatic, and fretful for her sensitive 15- year- old son Jamie ( Lucas Jade Zumann).
Set in 1979 Santa Barbara, 20th Century Women concerns Jamie’s coming of age in the company of his mother, her aspiring photographer boarder Abbie ( Greta Gerwig), Jamie’s troubled peer Julie ( Elle Fanning), and gentle oddity of a handyman William ( Billy Crudup).
It’s difficult to sympathize with some of Dorothea’s concerns about her son, who’s obviously going to turn out all right. Jamie is emotionally intelligent and alert to the prerogatives that relate to his maleness, which are obvious as he’s surrounded by women. But his mother worries, so she enlists the others’ help in raising him to become “a good man” in a time when the definitions of masculinity and goodness feel fluid. Dithering and heartfelt philosophical discussions abound.
Bening is the focal point; her performance is understated with just the right undertone of desperation.
But there’s not much conflict. Although director Mills does an excellent job of grazing across the surface of the times with the right music and Jimmy Carter’s gloom in the air, there are too many anachronistic lines and too much nostalgia — resulting in a sweet memory of a movie. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them ( PG- 13, 2 hours, 13 minutes) Novelist J. K. Rowling makes her screenwriting debut by exploring a different corner of the wizard universe: New York in the 1920s. A disheveled Brit named Newt Scamander ( Eddie Redmayne) shows up at immigration with a broken- latched briefcase containing old clothes and traveling odds and ends. Only Scamander and the audience can tell that the case is stuffed with Pokemon- like creatures eager to romp around the Big Apple. The occupants of the case cause havoc all over New York, drawing the attention of magical cops Porpentina Goldstein ( Katherine Waterston) and Percival Graves ( Colin Farrell).
David Yates, who directed the last few Harry Potter movies, is in charge here, an old hand at creating magical environments that don’t overwhelm the actors and the story. His restraint enables the moments of impossible wonder to stick out. In some of the previous movies, some of the sequences of potential awe were lost in a visual deluge.
Rowling demonstrates that her eye for character is as sharp as her imagination. But it’s harder to grasp her new environment on- screen. In print, you can flip back a few pages and figure out why characters are doing what they’re doing or why obvious solutions aren’t explored. In a city where anything can happen, it sometimes helps to have an idea why it does or doesn’t. With Ezra Miller, Ron Perlman.
Why Him? ( R, 1 hour, 51 minutes) There doesn’t seem to be much effort behind this raunchy comedy that resorts to redundancy when wit runs short. Unfortunately, that happens pretty early. James Franco plays warmhearted, foul- mouthed billionaire tech mogul Laird Mayhew, who wins the heart of Stanford student Stephanie Fleming ( Zoey Deutch).
Her self- important dad Ned ( Bryan Cranston) is happy she’s found a financially stable beau, albeit one covered with tattoos whose right- hand man ( Keegan- Michael Key) regularly attacks him so that he can learn to defend himself. Watching Cranston and Franco square off is fun for a while, but director John Hamburg and the screenwriters can’t figure out where to take the relationship from there.