Mike Mills

If you can’t decide what to watch this weekend, ScreenCrush’s Staff Picks are here to help. They’re like the recommendations at an old video store, except you don’t have to put on pants or go outside to get them. Here are four things to watch this weekend:

There’s a scene in Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women that will be remembered as the film’s funniest, a moment that perfectly captures the essence of its trio of titular female characters. With a tinge of annoyance, Annette Bening’s Dorothea calls out her tenant Abbie, a red-haired punk, for dozing off on the table during a dinner party. “I’m menstruating,” Abbie grumpily retorts. Much to Dorothea’s embarrassment, Abbie then prompts the men at the table to confidently utter the word “menstruation.” Capping off the scene, Elle Fanning’s rebellious 16-year-old Julie breaks into an awkward story about losing her virginity. Three women across three generations, all with varying barometers of what it means to be a woman, and what it means to harness femininity.

In Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women, Greta Gerwig is a red-haired punk who listens to the Talking Heads, takes photographs of her belongings as a sort of pre-Instagram self-portrait series, and is recovering from cervical cancer. In every way, Gerwig’s Abbie defies the stereotypes of female characters we often see in indie movies. She’s not the manic pixie dream girl nor the cool girl who falls for the older single guy, two clichés the character could have easily fallen into. Instead Gerwig gives a career-best performance as a woman full of contradictions.

Early in 20th Century Women, Elle Fanning’s rebellious teenager Julie asks, “Don’t you need a man to raise a man?” With little pause, Annette Bening’s single mother Dorothea assuredly responds, “No, I don’t think so.” The latest from Mike Mills (Thumbsucker, Beginners), finds three women helping raise a teenage boy. It’s a premise that could easily crash and burn in the wrong hands by sacrificing nuance for stereotypes or marginalizing female voices to emphasize a male perspective. Yet 20th Century Women avoids all of that. Instead Mills has made not only one of the best films of the year, but one that unabashedly celebrates the feminine spirit.

It’s 1979 in Santa Barbara: the hippie-dippie ‘70s are about to give way to punk and the wave of nihilism that goes with it, Jimmy Carter frets about a crisis of conscience on the TV set, and one kid’s trying to figure out how he fits into all of it.

You know when a trailer captures a mood of a film so well you just want to roll around in it and soak it up? That’s how the first teaser for Mike Mills’ 20th ‘Century Women’ feels, capturing the aura of a bohemian family in late 1970s Santa Barbara so well you can almost smell the ocean water and patchouli oil.