Thumbsucker (2005)
Directed by Mike Mills
Justin Cobb, a teenager in suburban Oregon, copes with his thumb-sucking problem, romance, and his diagnosis with ADHD and subsequent experience using Ritalin.
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What critics compared Thumbsucker to
However, while in theory the concept of flashing back and forward across the years might seem to invite confusion, writer/director Mike Mills ( Thumbsucker ) uses readily identifiable cues to keep things clear.
Mills — who previously directed the 2005 Walter Kirn adaptation Thumbsucker — mixes some inspired technique with some that’s just tired.
A smart screenplay and captivating visual devices deliver genuine emotions in "Beginners," a highly personal exploration into the mysteries of love by filmmaker, artist and graphic designer Mike Mills ("Thumbsucker").
Mills, who previously directed “Thumbsucker” (2005), brings his extensive background in music video and graphic design to bear, developing an impressive visual language here that meshes well with the story.
The last of these is the most wanting, though the fact that the film spends any time there whatsoever is already proof that Beginners is a tremendous stride in the right direction for Mills after his only preceding feature, the excruciating Thumbsucker from 2005.
In only his second feature-film assignment (following 2005's Thumbsucker), writer-director Mike Mills has fashioned a disarming, deeply felt and somewhat autobiographical piece in which an artist named Oliver (Ewan McGregor) recalls his recently deceased father Hal (Christopher Plummer), who announced he was gay at the age of 75, only to pass away from cancer four years later.
Mills, who used to direct music videos and design album covers, broke into filmmaking with Thumbsucker , a terminally twee indie comedy, based on a novel but reminiscent of every suburban coming-of-age story ever to limp its way out of Sundance.
That's what stands for plot in the script that director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker) has generously carved from his own life.
“20th Century Women,” like writer-director Mike Mills’ earlier features “Beginners” and “Thumbsucker,” is an indie film quirkapalooza with more great character work and worthwhile insight than such things usually boast.
A fiercely inquisitive performance from Annette Bening buoys this otherwise pedestrian indie drama by writer-director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker, Beginners), who based Bening's character on his own mother.
He’s made great strides; his feature debut, 2005’s “Thumbsucker,” was a suffocating quirk-a-thon, with a high schooler who symbolically still nursed his fattest digit, to say nothing of a score drenched in The Polyphonic Spree.”
Mike Mills' third and best film (after Beginners and Thumbsucker) is also the closest to his models in the French New Wave.