Movies: ‘20th Century Women.’
‘20th Century Women’
Being a parent is a complicated job. Sometimes it doesn’t take a village, but it does take a houseful.
Or so Annette Bening’s single mom determines in “20th Century Women,” Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical comedydrama.
Set in a 1979 California between eras, with Jimmy Carter on the wane and punk music on the rise, the story centers on Bening’s efforts to find role models for her teenage son, played by Lucas Jade Zumann. She turns to two of her boardinghouse tenants, a handyman (Billy Crudup) and a punk photographer (Greta Gerwig), as well as her son’s best friend (Elle Fanning) for help.
But Bening, playing a character based on Mills’ mother, is the heart of the movie, and the focus of most of its awards-season hopes.
In her 4-star review, Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday called Bening’s performance “both spiky and soft, weathered and gentle,” saying the movie “lifts us up on a wave of openhearted emotion and keen intelligence. It bursts with the sad, messy, ungovernable beauty of life.”
“20th Century Women” is rated R for sexual material, language, some nudity and brief drug use. It runs for 118 minutes.
‘The Founder’
Ray Kroc is one of the singular figures of business history, taking a California burger joint and turning it into a fast-food franchise that revolutionized American dining and global pop culture.
The operative word in that sentence, the movie “The Founder” asserts, is “taking.”
Michael Keaton plays Kroc, a tenacious salesman who stumbles on a restaurant run by McDonald brothers (Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch). Impressed by the brothers’ operation, he muscles his way in — and begins to muscle them out.
Keaton has been getting raves in the role of Kroc. “Keaton plays Kroc as a man both pathetic and singularly possessed, cannily resisting lovability at every turn, while delivering the internalized self-help speak of his sales pitches with chillingly glib precision,” Variety critic Guy Lodge wrote.
“The Founder” is rated PG-13 for brief language. It runs for 115 minutes.
‘Split’
In M. Night Shyamalan’s new horror-thriller “Split,” James McAvoy plays a person at war with himself — 23 times over.
One of his character’s personalities kidnaps three girls and keeps them prisoner in a downstairs dungeon of sorts, where the girls, led by AnyaTaylor Joy, meet some of his other iterations, including a prim and proper woman and a 9-yearold boy. And they learn that imprisonment might not be the worst thing they’ll face.
Although the movie’s demonization of split-personality disorder isn’t likely to sit well, Shyamalan’s usual plot-twisty storytelling is getting some good reviews. John DeFore, in his review in The Hollywood Reporter, called “Split” “arguably the director’s most satisfying picture since ‘The Sixth Sense.’ ”
“Split” is rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic content and behavior, violence and some language. It runs for 117 minutes.
‘xXx: The Return of Xander Cage’
Xander Cage is back. Did you miss him?
Maybe not, but you might have missed Vin Diesel, who hasn’t played the character since 2002. (Ice Cube played a detour version in 2005’s “XXX: State of the Nation.”) In “xXx: The Return of Xander Cage,” Cage, an extreme-sports athlete turned government operative, comes out of self-imposed exile to stop a bad guy with a badder weapon. Samuel L. Jackson and Toni Collette are also on the side of the good guys.
“xXx: The Return of Xander Cage” is rated PG-13 for violence, sexual material and language. It runs for 107 minutes.
‘The Resurrection of Gavin Stone’
A former child star turned, well, jerk is forced to do his community service at a megachurch, where he poses as a person of faith so he can land the role of Jesus in the church’s annual Passion Play and return to the limelight. He winds up seeing a different kind of light in “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone,” a new faith-fueled drama.
Brett Dalton plays the title character, in a cast including Neil Flynn, D.B. Sweeney, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes and Shawn Michaels.
“The Resurrection of Gavin Stone” is rated PG for thematic elements. It runs for 92 minutes.